The Putnam Scoop

Two Bhopal, India residents and an Indian activist will be speaking this evening at 7:00 in the Wilson Student Union at West Virginia State University. WVSU is a stop on their tour of the United States and Canada, speaking on the issues of safety concerns at chemical plants.

Rachna Dhingra, one of the speakers, says, “We have learned very little from the Bhopal disaster. We are letting companies get away with anything — just for a few dollars of profit.“

You can learn more about tonight’s event from The Charleston Gazette.

Also of note is this article concerning the lack of a written follow up report from Bayer to state and local authorities regarding the explosion last August. The Charleston Gazette states, “Under federal law, companies are supposed to file such reports ‘as soon as practicable’ after accidents that release certain amounts of certain toxic chemicals.” Bayer says in this situation, it’s not required.

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This is a good time for me to remind you that I’m not a journalist, I just happen to live here and don’t care to be quiet. I’m doing my best to bring together information from actual news sources to tell you the story. But I haven’t yet heard something I need to hear, so this is just me talking to Bayer.

Bayer, something big and scary happened at your plant. Most of us around here felt or heard the explosion, some even lost loved ones. We do understand that living near chemical plants has it’s own unique risks, and we’re not going to belittle the fact that you do in fact take great strides to keep us safe. We do appreciate that. But this scared even us, the ones who coexist with chemical companies.

According to reliable sources of investigation, this time you screwed up. (My words, not theirs.) Your workers were exhausted and unfamiliar with their equipment, you’re storing a crazy huge amount of MIC and you worked harder to hide information than you did to keep us safe in the first place. I’m not trying to throw stones here, and I know that each and every one of us messes up.

Then you wanted to “marginalize” People concerned About MIC and the Gazette. Five years ago, they might have been all you needed to worry about, but communication between people is just amazingly easy these days. You needed to think about all of your neighbors as well, all of those individual people, and we’re not so easily marginalized.

When I wrote about Bayer earlier this week, I used Twitter to share the post. Twitter has millions of users world-wide, and that day I was in the top five most talked about users. They weren’t talking about me, they were talking about how a chemical company is treating it’s neighbors. They were shocked enough to keep spreading the story. Bayer, I am not the media and I am not a group - but when I want to I can get thousands of people talking. There is nothing special about me. Anyone can do this. I have a thousand or so friends in Twitter and Facebook and they all have groups of friends who have groups of friends. Do you see? Broadcasting information is cheap and easy and literally ANYONE can do it.

I realized when you talked about who to marginalize, you missed the boat. I understand that the world has changed and a lot of companies don’t yet see it. We’re neighbors of a sort and I do want you to do well - you provide good jobs to people here, and I like that about you. So let me tell you how to make it better.

1. Tell us what really happened. Fill out the stinking reports even if you think you shouldn’t have to, because your neighbors want information. Withholding stuff like that makes our imaginations run wild.
2. Tell us you’re sorry it happened. This doesn’t have to be the same as accepting blame, just show you care a little about the community. (Because you do, right?)
3. Tell us what you’re doing now to make sure it doesn’t happen again. We need to hear that you fixed the things that led to the explosion. And by the way, you mind moving that MIC out of here?

Meanwhile, all of us are going to keep talking to each other - worldwide, via social media as well as through the traditional media you might have expected. It’s just what people do. This may not feel like it, but this is an opportunity for you. Turning all this bad press around takes just three little steps.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 1st, 2009 at 11:50 am and is filed under WV Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.