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Julie Reiten
Minot
The proposed pig iron plant has me pondering the industrial disasters Minot has experienced in the last 40 years and how they have affected our respiratory health.
On April 4, 1987, the Westchem agricultural chemicals company's warehouse on South Broadway caught fire. The warehouse contained 54 different chemicals, many of them toxic. It was the United State’s first major agricultural chemicals fire, and it featured 40 foot flames and a mile-wide cloud of black smoke that drifted north over the city. 10,000 people in Minot were evacuated, and there were numerous cases of respiratory distress, some of which resulted in hospitalization.
In the early morning hours of January 18, 2002, a Canadian Pacific train derailed just west of town in the Tierrecita Vallejo development. 5 tanker cars containing anhydrous ammonia ruptured, sending a cloud of ammonia-laced air over the city. There was one death and numerous hospitalizations, most due to respiratory distress.
While I’m not old enough to remember the Westchem fire, during and after the 2002 ammonia incident, my asthma considerably worsened, as did that of several other Minot residents I know. It wasn't bad enough for us to seek medical treatment or compensation from CP Rail, so we don’t appear in any statistics about the effects of the disaster. I strongly suspect that we’re not the only long-time Minot residents who were affected but felt that other people needed medical and financial help more than we did, and we're probably not the only Minot residents concerned what the proposed pig iron plant could do to our asthma and other respiratory issues.
For those of us concerned that a reduction in air quality created by the pig iron plant will further damage our respiratory health, history does give a little hope. After the warehouse fire, Westchem wanted to build a new warehouse just off the Hwy 83 Bypass, northwest of town. Local residents strongly objected, and Westchem eventually decided to build their new warehouse further away from the city.
We can object to the pig iron plant, too, by sending comments to AirQuality@nd.gov or North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality, Division of Air Quality, 4201 Normandy St., 2nd Floor, Bismarck, ND 58503-1324 before the comment period ends on November 20th and attending the public hearing at 5:30 PM on Dec 2nd at the Minot City Hall.