Before I begin, I want to let you know that UK IMC was inaccessible to me last week; thus I failed to post "The Destiny of IMC's "Closeted" Collectives" Id=71046. Look for it elsewhere. You will find your "andiarebeit" featured in it.

I am sending you this because the streets of your cities were probably also lit by coal-gas during the 19th century. Even if you are having no problem with streetlighting now, you are probably in the "dark" about what the byproducts of coal-gassification are doing to your body.

The New York State DEC recently sent me a notice of a 10/16/01 meeting "To Discuss Remedial Investigation NYSEG Ithaca Cayuga Inlet Coal Tar Site" at Greater Ithaca Activity Center. Having been double-billed by NYSEG for a $13 service charge on gas every other month for two years, my Daddy wants you to know that I am risking more of the same to report on the stupidity that prevails here, so don't you be telling anybody about it.

As I reported in "Chemical Modus Operandi Continued" Id=47525, I detected the petroleum contamination that had leached into the ground water as a result of the drought this spring when I smelled it at the pool, and it disintegrated the rubber strap on my goggles. The two outdoor city pools in this town seem to have the only wells still in use in this city. I reported that a notice about contamination from the old coal-gas plant in this town was published this spring probably because they had detected contamination when digging the foundation for a $30 million dollar bridge over the creek on the east side of town. They must have gone 20 feet deep for the foundation of this 30 Ton bridge which they now report costed $1.2 million. Since the ground water moves towards the ocean that is probably why the contamination became an issue this year; however this notice claims that the area of concern to be addressed is a previously remediated site on the west side of town where a wooden duct was used to transport coal tar to be loaded onto a barge on the Cayuga Inlet from 1852 to 1927.

If you have read "Coal-Gassification Cover-up: Let Them Drink "Blood"!" Id=48856; you would understand that this matter of making gas from coal resulted in the contamination of the entire earth to such an extent that it was probably the biggest crime of all time. I wonder what the heck they were doing with the tar before they started shipping it in 1852. Since Baltimore started lighting their streets with coal gas in 1817, you can be sure that Ithaca started doing the same shortly after; thus it was very likely that they were dumping this tar on top of the coke that they were dumping, thinking that the tar would be absorbed back into the porous coke. They were dumping .7 ton of coke from every ton of coal that they destructively-distilled, and they were using 8 tons of coal to produce one ton of product. Don't forget that coke is practically the hottest burning substance that there is! Wet coke is about as heavy as lead; but if you dry it out, it is probably the lightest rock there is. You can understand why they would think that the coke would soak up all that toxic tar; but you would think that they would test it to see if it would leach out again before they dumped it.

As you should know, there is very little on the toxicity of petroleum in modern times. The only information that I could find revealed that 30 years ago, they published that a pint of kerosene was a fatal dose. Petroleum is composed of thousands of different chemicals including many heavy hydrocarbons with methanol being the lightest one. Methanol is what they were distilling out of the coke, and they were making methane to keep these street lights lit 24 hours a day because they hadn't figured how to shut them off. It is the heavier hydrocarbons that are the issue; but it seems like the only research that they are going to pursue will be on the toxicity of methanol if they do any at all. Areas that have been toxified by coal-gas by-products smell like the ground after gasoline has been spilled on it for that is what these heavier hydrocarbons smell like. Millions of tons of toxified coal are probably what make the waters around Baltimore Inner Harbor smell the way that they do. The Love Canal fiasco was probably the result of millions of tons of the same from Buffalo. Let me tell you that if alcohol is the fifth most potent poison known to man, petroleum can't be far behind if not ahead of alcohol. If you don't believe that is true about alcohol, consider that 200 proof is only about 85% alcohol, for proof is a relative measurement. Also consider that most of the alcohol is absorbed immediately into your tongue. That every ailment that you can imagine can arise from petroleum poisoning is not hard to imagine either, for that stuff can literally dissolve the human body. As I reported in "Persian Gulf War Delusions.." Id=36001, the Gulf War Syndrome was probably petroleum poisoning from the burning oil wells, and immediate efforts to rid the body of contaminants should have been initiated. If municipal water plants are masking petoleum contamination with salt, I bet that doesn't detoxify the water at all. Even though England was probably the first place to use coal gas on a large scale; they were the first to stop dumping the coke, yet in the 1920s it was reported that there were still 350 gas plants in Great Britain; thus contamination is probably universal over there.

As for the scene in Ithaca, this place probably used to be known as the "City of Lights" because it was lit up to such an extent in the first half of the 19th century, and that is probably why Cornell was located here. I have a map from around 1900, showing that 60% of the flat portion of this town used to be underwater. If you dig down anyplace that was filled in here, you will probably find wet heavy pieces of coke. I grew tomatoes this year and they were plagued by the biggest slugs that I've ever seen, up to 5" long and 2" around. Earthworms do not survive in this soil at all unless it is composted heavily. That most of the formerely submerged portion of this town was filled in with coke is quite obvious; the important issue is how much of it had tar dumped with it. When they dug the Cayuga Inlet, the last canal of the New York Canal System in 1908, they had plans to dig it to Newfield and Spencer. Now Newfield is up pretty high on a hill, so they would have had to row pretty hard to get there, and I doubt if they were serious about that. But through Spencer they planned to establish barge traffic to Baltimore via the Susquehanna River, which is a hard route even by canoe. They actually dreamed this up in 1908 after the railroads had already been here for 50 years or more. They did dig a canal to Turbacks, which is a good mile or so south of town, where there was probably much celebration of their grand design. And there are pictures on the wall at Turbacks of them standing around what was probably a dry canal lock; but they will never admit what it was all about. In reality they probably got the Canal System to dig them a "sludge pit", hoping to trap the toxins from the discarded tar, for it seems like brain-damage was rampant in this town. (Shush!) When the Army Corps of Engineers dredged the Inlet around 1961, the old canal was probably little more than a ditch, but they want you to keep quiet about this dredging business too. It seems like the toxic sediment that was dredged contaminated the lake to such an extent that everyone went bald and they permanently closed Stewart Park to bathing. When I was swimming at the city pool down by the inlet this summer, a boater went up and down the inlet stirring up the sediment close to the banks to such an extent that the fumes were practically overwhelming. This was probably their brainstorm for justifying that the old tar site on the inlet was the source of the contamination that needed to be addressed.

As I reported, they immediately removed the "History of the New York Canal System" (1940s?) from the shelves when I found this information on the Cayuga Inlet "Canal". What can you do when people will go to such an extent to conceal past blunders? Well I certainly hope that NYSEG won't be raising these service charges or anything like that, for my gas bill is usually less than half the service charge as it is. We have clean ways to dispose of this coke nowadays, and that is probably the best way to address the matter here and worldwide, for there must be billions of tons of toxified coal everywhere. Mobile powerplants are probably the answer. Not only is this stuff close to the surface of the ground but they could also make it so it wouldn't have to be transported at all to utilize it. Sure there is going to be some rock and dirt in it; but tolerating a noisy powerplant would sure beat drinking those toxins. This seems to be the only way to address contamination from coal-gassification. They will probably never admit that it is toxic, but your pointing out that it has to be the cheapest source of energy available will probably result in their acting on it. There's "black gold" in that ground! Coke it is! As for this town having people kick dirt around down by the Inlet, saying "this is the way to deal with the issue"; you could tell them that you are going to report them to David Barry. "I'm not making this up!" For those of you with bright ideas, I want you to know that you have to hit this coke with a hammer before you snort it.

Referenced articles on www.indymedia.org.. To access via Id#, access any article, change the Id=# in the address bar, and press "Enter".

Respectfully yours, Robert Meade "Bobby" "Israel" Deaf Messenger