History repeats itself in the East End

East End resident William Klopfstein protested during a Cincinnati City Council meeting hours after a chemical spill at Queen City Terminal, Feb. 21, 1985.

To longtime Cincinnati environmentalists, last week's chemical leak from a railroad car in the East End was like deja vu.

Twenty years ago, a chemical spill from a railroad car carrying benzene happened not 100 yards from the site of last week's scare, galvanizing a growing environmental movement in Cincinnati.

What made the 1985 incident even more bizarre was that the neighboring Columbia-Tusculum Community Council had been fighting Sohio's planned shipment of benzene to Queen City Terminal for months. The neighborhood found out about the planned shipments using the city's newly enacted Right-to-Know Ordinance, and launched an intense lobbying effort to stop them.

Then, the very first shipment, the rail cars leaked.

"We were promised that these were state-of-the-art rail cars, that they were foolproof, and nothing-can-go-wrong, can-go-wrong, can-go-wrong, and then -- the damn trains showed up, and then the things leak!" said Timothy M. Burke, the lawyer who represented the community council and now chairs the Hamilton County Democratic Party.

City Council immediately suspended the benzene transports, but efforts to permanently block them were ultimately overturned by a federal court.

So what does this have to do with 2005?

Mayoral candidate Mark L. Mallory has laid responsibility for the last week's styrene leak at the feet of City Council, which eliminated the 11-year-old Office of Environmental Management in the 2002 budget. The city's top environmental watchdog, Dennis Murphey, left for Oregon.

"If the Office of Environmental Management had been in operation, they would have been monitoring Westlake Styrene Co. to ensure that they were in compliance with their permits to transport dangerous chemicals within city limits," Mallory said in a statement last Monday afternoon. "The office would protect the health of the city by centralizing the coordination of permit enforcement, environmental oversight, and citizen complaints."

That position has won Mallory the support of local environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, who want to see the city's environmental law enforcement beefed up. But Mallory's opponents -- and even some environmentalists -- are skeptical that a few more bureaucrats could police every potential environmental hazard in the city.

"The lesson of Queen City Terminal 20 years ago was, I think, that we became aware that environmental law enforcement requires community scrutiny, and not just cops," said D. David Altman, an environmental lawyer who was the head of the city's Environmental Advisory Council in 1985. "You can have 100 Dennis Murpheys and you still have to understand that it's the community being aware."

(Photo by Dick Swaim/The Cincinnati Enquirer)