ECHOES AND UPDATES

Ecopornographer Brodeur has another scientific piece on the "Calamity on Meadow Street" in the New Yorker (7/31). People in a street with a substation and power line nearby got can-cer, kidney conditions, and headaches; Connecticut P&L was told, but did nothing about it¾another horrid case of social irrespon-sibility. (The scientific rigor of this case does not even reach that of an inscription that I once saw in a Czech beer hall: "He who drank died; he who did not drink died also.") But there was another sub-station that did not merit the ecofreaks' attention: the one in Chicago where a transformer caught fire and knocked out power to 40,000 West side households and businesses. It took 700 ComEd workers to redirect power from other substations by rewiring the entire area for four days before power was completely restored. Damage to customers is estimated at $10 million, and city politicians want ComEd to reimburse them. What escaped their attention was that the fire was in effect set by a well known ar-sonist: the EPA. Power transformers used to use PCB as a cooling liquid, mainly because it is incombustible. On the dubious grounds that it is a carcinogen, and perhaps to protect all thirsty citizens who would otherwise drill holes into transformer casings to quench their irrepressible craving for PCB, the EPA outlawed the incombustible liquid, and caused virtually all US transformer sta-tions to go back to mineral oil. Happy Fireworks from the dedi-cated protectors of the environment!