Boiling Frogs-Intel vs. the Village

"Boiling Frogs - Intel vs. the Village" recounts the story of Intel Rio Rancho's impact on the air and water in the Village of Corrales from the mid-1980s to the present day. Updates to this ongoing saga will be posted here.

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Rosemary Keefe Has Died

Rosemary Keefe recently underwent a lung transplant at Duke. She was doing well, off oxygen and went home to recover. The other day she died quietly as the sun came up.

Response to Intel's Testing of Hydrogen Flouride

Here is the response from Fred Marsh to Intel's proposed testing of HF: "There is zero chance that Intel would find themselves culpable for the continuing health problems of nearby residents that began with Intel's major expansions in the early 1990s, whether due to HF or the many other toxic chemicals Intel releases. Consider fluoro-phosgene as an example. This deadly chemical was found on Intel property 622 times by Intel's own TRC contractor during August of 2003. Fluoro-phosgene was also repeatedly found near the Intel boundary by the community- owned FTIR, as well as by a different FTIR operated by Arcadis for NMED during this low-production period that was scheduled by Intel to coincide with these measurements.. Intel's response to this massive amount of incriminating evidence was to shop around until they found someone they could hire to declare these many hundreds of fluoro-phosgene measurements were "false positives." The release of flluoro-phosgene by Intel was separately confirmed by stack testing results cited in Intel’s third quarter report of 2003, in which fluoro-phosgene was measured repeatedly on Intel’s Central Utility Building scrubber 8s.4.2ab at concentrations as high as 2,280 parts per billion! Significantly, this same scrubber, where such high levels of fluoro-phosgene were measured, was the source of many of the toxic pollutants that have plagued Corrales, according to two Intel whistle-blowers, Yet Intel denies it was releasing fluoro-phosgene, and denied that this deadly compound can even exist. A study worthy of our consideration was done by Prof. Darkin Koracin, in which he found a high correlation between Intel emissions and reports of health problems by nearby residents. This Koracin report caused NMED to cancel meetings of the task force that would consider it, while reprimanding NMED technical staff who endorsed it. Trusting Intel to investigate their own release of toxic hydrogen fluoride is foolhardy at best, and suicidal at worst."