Original All-Star Panelist Crom Carmichael’s Crommentary on Wednesday’s episode of The Tennessee Star Report discussed the biggest environmental problem that few people are even aware of: the thousands of miles of abandoned, lead lined cables that are degrading into soil, water, and even the air.
TRANSCRIPT
Michael Patrick Leahy: Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, here is the Crommentary for Wednesday, July 12th, 2023.
Crom Carmichael: Michael, as we know, the Biden administration has spent trillions of dollars on either infrastructure, a combination of what he calls infrastructure, and what he calls green energy programs.
And there was an article in the Wall Street Journal that caught my eye. And I did not even know that this problem existed, and it’s a big one. And that is that the title of the column is America is Wrapped in Miles of Toxic Lead Cables.
AT&T, Verizon, and whatnot over the decades installing phone lines and utility lines and all these various kinds of cables, over the decades, they used to be covered in lead – that was back before we knew that that was a terrible thing.
And so now you have, examples and the Wall Street Journal went all out. This was, like, a 20 page article in the Wall Street Journal.
So it was, it was a very, very deep dive into what is a significant problem because it’s everywhere, but it is especially prevalent in the older areas of the country, which is up east to Midwest. And so for example, but this one is in Louisiana.
It’s in New Iberia I’m quoting here: “A New Iberia fishing spot, lead leaching into the sediment near a cable in June of 2022, measured 14.5 times EPA threshold. For the areas where children play.”
And the article goes on and cites many, many examples, but it also gives the thousands and thousands of miles of cable that’s been laid that’s now been abandoned and replaced by glass fiber.
And so now we have this cable that is now useless, but is now leaching lead into the soil and into the air. Where the soil, where the cables are not in the ground. They might be under water. So they’re getting into the water supply, they’re getting into the soil, and then where they’re in the air, the particulates are going off into the air.
And so we have a very, very serious problem.
The phone companies will semi-acknowledge – reminds me a little bit of the cigarette companies.
The phone companies who installed these cables decades and decades ago acknowledge a problem to a point. There is also this question, and this is similar to asbestos, and that is that asbestos, if it remains inert, is not is not dangerous.
Where it gets dangerous in the removal of asbestos is in the removal process. If you don’t do it properly, then you get asbestos particles in the air in the removal process.
And so, how we solve this problem is as important as recognizing it and then dealing with it. But what troubles me about the Biden administration is that it is spending money in the trillions of dollars to help the billionaire class that’s backing the Democrat party with all kinds of money and social media spend and social media involvement.
And so you have this problem that until two days ago, for me, I didn’t know it existed. And it is a big one and one that is gonna have to be addressed.
And it should be – the sooner it is addressed, the better. Because the longer it is not addressed, the worse it gets for our environment. And so here you have a real environmental problem that the Biden administration just seems to want to ignore.
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Photo “Lead Cables” by Matt Brown. CC BY 2.0.
