Letter to State EPA Official Jay Stimmel

Dear Mr. Stimmel,

Thank you for letting me know about the forthcoming meeting on January 7, 2010 to discuss Intel's latest request for revisions in its emission factors for VOCs and HAPs.

Until the State of New Mexico recognizes the need to completely revise Intel's Minor Source Permit, changing it to a more truthful Major Source permit, these periodical changes (always rubber stamped) are the equivalent of switching around deck chairs on a sinking Titanic.

The pollution from Intel, especially of late, has been noticeable and noxious, both here at my home, two miles from the plant, and whenever I venture forth into Rio Rancho. I don't bother to make reports to NMED or Intel because you don't pay any attention to them. The stench appears to be solvents. These are not simply "odors;" these are olfactory alarm bells that together with headaches, sinus problems, coughing, skin rashes, etc., tell us that the air we're breathing is seriously polluted with extremely harmful contaminants, including known carcinogens, that Intel continually releases on our unsuspecting population, often without abatement from its faulty pollution abatement equipment.

It is my fervent hope that our new administration in Washington, as well as the EPA, and perhaps even the ineffectual lame duck Richardson administration's NMED, will recognize that the time for allowing large, politically powerful, wealthy, arrogant manufacturers to pollute at will and cause irreparable harm nearby living beings is over.

Sincerely,

Martha J. Egan
Village Representative, EPA Study Group, 2002-2004
Corrales, NM