Hi my name is Lyn Griffith Taylor,
I'm the Energy Democracy Specialist at NIRS. I also coordinate the
Marylanders for Energy Democracy and Affordability network, or MEDA, which works to advance the just transition to clean energy, climate justice, and
energy democracy in Maryland. I'm asking you today to support NIRS's Don't Waste America campaign. I am in Baltimore City, Maryland,
the site of one of the worst train derailments, fires, and disasters in our nation's history.
Back in 2001 a 60-car CSX freight train derailed in the tunnel under Howard Street-- that tunnel right there--
in this very densely populated part of the city.
The train derailment sparked a chemical fire which burned for five days and shut down virtually everything in this part of Baltimore.
The Howard Street tunnel is one of the proposed shipment routes for high-level
radioactive waste on its way to a location where it can never be safely stored. So, just imagine if that freight train
had been carrying some of the most dangerous radioactive waste ever created.
165,000 Baltimoreans live in the Howard tunnel's blast zone, that's the area that would be directly
impacted should a train derail and catch fire in the city.
So, if a train accident like the 2001 event were to include
radioactive waste, as the government is proposing, the results or the effects would be disastrous.
Thousands of Baltimoreans would have to be evacuated in order to avoid radioactive contamination.
Yet, still up to five thousand of them would die as a result of
cancer. And
the cleanup costs to
contain all the radioactive contamination
would total over $14 billion dollars. We cannot allow that to happen!
So, we need your help!
NIRS needs your help to keep up the fight! We need to be mobilizing,
organizing, and
advocating to ensure public health and the safety of communities along nuclear waste shipment routes.
That's why I'm asking you to support our Don't Waste America campaign.
Every donation counts, it makes a difference, and it will be matched by one of our wonderful anonymous donors.
So again please support the Don't Waste America campaign.
Share,
spread the news about the event widely, and share on Facebook and
social media using the hashtags #DontWasteAmerica and
#RealSolutionsNow. We need Congress to stop generating nuclear waste and instead
generate real solutions to our nuclear waste crisis. Thanks a lot, and thanks for everything that you do! Thanks.
