From: Protect Badin Lake

Hello everyone,
A couple of us met with Macey, Valerie and Richard from West Badin this morning. It was a wonderful conversation, though overwhelmingly depressing. We have a hard time believing that human beings in corporations are so incredibly evil, ignorant and/or greedy. Macey, Valerie and Richard told us stories about many incidents they experienced during their employment at Alcoa of discrimination, contamination, and awful work conditions in addition to how the employment conditions continue to affect their families for generations.

We shared why Protect Badin Lake was created and why we feel so strongly that we work with them. It is interesting that as we shared some of our communications with Alcoa, NCDEQ and East Badin, we could find so many lies. It appears that all of the key parties are trying to keep us all separated. No surprise!!

Macey, Richard and Valerie seemed very happy that we are involved simply because as Valerie stated, “There is strength in numbers!” Maybe we can find a way for them to share their stories with all of you. We could never do it justice.

When the meeting finished, we were disappointed that we all had to go our separate ways even though it had been 2 hours. So incredibly sad that Alcoa is this negligent and they have had minimal accountability. My heart breaks for all of them and their families. They have been given a “green flag” for so many years. Now thousands of people are suffering physically, emotionally and financially because of it. They have been made to clean up their properties in other areas used for the same purpose. Why not Badin? We need to find more ways to fight this fight for our entire community. This is a cause of concern for us all because the pollutants that remain on that property, leach into the ground, through the storm water drains and into our lake. If Alcoa is permitted by the state to divert any storm water drain into this lake, what will they be permitted to do next to correct another problem?

Have you all checked out the website? www.protectbadinlake.com

Have you exhausted your asks to sign our petition?

Have you written to all of our elected representatives to ask NCDEQ and Governor Cooper to either hand it back to the EPA or to make Alcoa clean it up?

Thank you everyone for doing your part!!

Stay healthy,
Protect Badin Lake