The Stench of Deregulation

For the last several days, there has been a ring about the valley in which I live. It is hovering below the mountains, a line of pollution that I can see in every direction I look.

I can smell it, too, when I go outside. It reminds me of my childhood. When I was about 10 years old, I would frequently go outside in the mornings and smell this awful smell.

"I smell Covington," was the line we used. It was the line everyone used, because the paper mill was in Covington and it sent wafts of pollution into the air on an hourly basis. When the wind was right, we all smelled Covington, even though it's about a 45 minute drive away.

And now I smell Covington again, only I don't think it's Covington. I think it's the cement plant. We also have new industries that have sprang up in the last 20 years and who knows what they're throwing up in the air.

(Also, folks are burning wood in their fireplaces now because it's winter, it's cold, and despite all this winning we have in the economy, lots of folks must burn wood to keep warm.)

Many of these local industries in 2017 fell under deregulations put in place by the current administration. Regulations that were meant to stop pollution so that people like me, people with asthma and other breathing problems, might live our lives without choking when we walk out the door. Twenty-one different regulations that stopped air pollution were "rolled back" so that the company owners might make a higher profit.

In 2018, the Environmental Protection Agency decided to reread the rules to suit themselves, and in so doing, they allowed even more pollution to enter our air.

This is supposed to save every household $3,100 over a 5 to 10 year period. The White House has a lovely .pdf that I've linked to that proclaims this deregulation stuff to be the best thing since Nixon said, "I am not a crook." This is a bunch of made-up guess-work (some would call it Fake News). Does anyone really think the corporations are going to take their savings and make the cost of their products less? Do you see the cost of products lessening? I don't. Those savings are going to the pockets of CEOS and shareholders.

All this is doing for me is increasing my doctor bills.

An inhaler costs me $40 under my insurance plan. I'm supposed to use it every 4 hours, two puffs at a time. It only has 200 inhalations. At that rate it won't last a month.

So I skimp on my inhaler and don't use it as prescribed. That means I'm not taking in enough air and I'm tired all the time. The last time I was checked by my asthma doctor, I was only able to use about 70 percent of my lung capacity without an inhaler.

My father asked me a while back how my life has been affected under this presidency when I complained about this administration.

Well, this is one way.

I can't breathe.

Pollution rising from the cement plant, which is just over the ridge. Photo taken on 11-13-2019.