Tuesday, August 30, 2016

'SCI-Frackville's Flint': Prisoners Claim Water Contamination is Rampant

 

By Alex Rudolph

Prisoners are calling home complaining that the water at SCI Mahanoy is brown and has a foul odor. They cannot drink it. Prison Radio is monitoring the situation and advocating that everyone at the prison have access to clean bottled water. 

This follows our reports a week ago about the purported water main break at SCI Frackville. Frackville SCI is across Highway 81 and down the road from SCI Mahanoy; both are located in Frackville, PA. 

The prison has also been experiencing water contamination. The DOC memo, from August 22, 2016, regarding the contamination is available here

Listen to on-the-ground reporting by Prison Radio's Bryant Arroyo in his essay "Frackville's Flint."

This past weekend Prison Radio correspondent Bryant Arroyo, a jailhouse environmentalist, gave a keynote address to the Bending the Bars Conference in Columbus, Ohio. It details his ground breaking campaign to stop a coal gasification plant within a few hundred yards of SCI Mahanoy. Listen here. 

"Frackville" the town name does not refer to fracking (a water-poisoning extractive gas industry). The town was named for Daniel Frack in 1876, while the guy who wanted the gas plant was a powerful plant operator and major landowner in the Mahanoy Susquehanna County named John W. Rich, Jr. Just a coincidence that the name and awful practice line up all these years later.

Source: Prison Radio

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