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ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

The Reminiscences of Len Marinaccio

The University of Arizona 2018

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PREFACE

The following oral history is the result of a recorded interview with Len Marinaccio conducted by Denise Moreno Ramírez on October 23, 2018. This interview is part of Moreno Ramírez’s dissertation research at the University of Arizona. Readers are asked to bear in mind that they are reading a transcript of the spoken word, rather than written prose. The interview focuses on Marinaccio’s recollections about his life in Arizona and his experience related to the Iron King Mine and Humboldt Smelter Superfund site located in Dewey-Humboldt, Arizona.

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Transcription Service: Verbal Ink Session: 1 (Oral History) Interviewee: Len Marinaccio Location: Prescott, Arizona Interviewer: Denise Moreno Ramírez (Q) Date: October 23, 2018 Q: Hi Len, how are you doing? Marinaccio: I'm on the right side of the dirt. Q: Oh, that's good. So, we're gonna begin your interview and we're gonna

start from the beginning. Basically, I would like to know where you were born.

Marinaccio: Uh, near a little town called Koppel, Pennsylvania. So, it's, uh, about 40

miles north of Pittsburgh. Q: And, uh, how was your childhood? Uh, did you grow up in a rural area? Marinaccio: Oh definitely. It was a rural area. I mean, uh, the nearest town was about a

half a mile away but it was a very small town, very – not very much in it, so, uh, um, so I grew up, uh, in a very old stone house on 76 acres of land and a lot of forest, and so it was a real, real good upbringing as far as I was concerned.

Q: And how – did you go straight from Pennsylvania to Arizona? Marinaccio: Well, um, after I had gotten, um, after college there were no jobs to be had

where I was. I lived in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. This was, uh, early '80s, middle '80s, I think, if you call it, and, um, it was the middle '80s and the steel mills were all closing and that was the lifeblood of the area. And so, the economies, you know, in the various towns were just collapsing left and right, and you couldn't get a job doing anything. I mean, you know, janitorial work was gonna be hard to come by. Um, I was skilled in computer sciences, and so I was a good programmer, and I found opportunities in Arizona and so I decided to make the move.

Q: And did you move straight to Dewey-Humboldt or [Cross Talk]- Marinaccio: No, no. I, um, I moved first to Phoenix, and I lived in Phoenix for 20

years, and I hated living in Phoenix. I'm not a city mouse, I'm just not. Uh, so it was very difficult to do but I made my escape to a more rural area and that was Dewey-Humboldt

Q: And how did you learn of Dewey-Humboldt? Marinaccio: Well, um my brother and his wife moved to Arizona before I had made the

move up to Dewey-Humboldt and about five years prior to my move they

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moved to Dewey-Humboldt. And they had – I had, uh, helped them look for places and they had, uh, they decided on something that was in Dewey-Humboldt, and so that's what they picked. And so, while I was out looking for a place to live, uh, that was on my list. It wasn't necessarily my first choice but it was on my list, and after all was said and done, I still needed to be reasonably handy to Phoenix when I needed to be there, so Dewey-Humboldt turned out to be good as far as location and the surroundings and all of that. So that's how I chose it.

Q: And so, when you first arrived to Dewey-Humboldt, um, did you notice

the mine tailings? Marinaccio: I did notice the tailings right off the bat. I mean they're very obvious right

on the side of the highway so it's very obvious what they are, and I was unsure – and I didn't know at the time the extent of the contamination. I knew that it was mining, uh, mining tailings and, you know, it was a, it was a scar, but I did not know the extent of the, uh, contamination. And I didn't know, uh, how portable that might be, how much it was going to get out and get into the environment. And I kind of felt that I was at a reasonably safe distance from it, uh, given that the wind would always blow a different direction. So, I was not too worried about it.

Q: And do you live, or your current residence, is it in the area that's impacted

by the Superfund site, then? Marinaccio: You could probably say there is nobody closer to ground zero than I am.

Seriously speaking, there is, I am right between the mine and the smelter, and the contamination, the level picks up at Third Street and South, and I am just south of Third Street, and my property extends into the wash, where some of the highest contamination is. Now, the worst contamination is at the mine in those tailings, but as far as anything that has traveled off of either of those two sites, I'm right in between them.

Q: Is there a specific street that you live on? Marinaccio: I live on Third Street. Q: Third Street. And when did you first learn about the contamination that's

associated with the Iron King Mine and Humboldt Smelter site? Marinaccio: Well, I was a member of the Environmental Issues Advisory Committee,

that's an advisory committee to the town council, and so when I was on that committee, we, uh – the committee is charged with identifying and assessing possible or potential environmental problems or threats to the community. And so on that, uh – so on that committee, we were looking at some different issues that had, uh, come up with the – both the sites, the

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mine and the smelter sites, but primarily the mine site because there were businesses operating there, and there were some actions by, uh, ADEQ against some of the businesses there because there were – there had been some violations of various sorts with various property owners, and I won't get into those details because that's unimportant. Um, but looking into that, we, we became aware of the CERCLA designation that the mine had had. So that's not a Superfund designation but it's a designation given by the EPA that says, “Hey, there are known contaminants here, um, but it doesn't go so far as to say it's a threat to the community or that – you know, it doesn't assess a threat to the community or a need to clean up. It just, it basically says – and you need to check with EPA on exactly what CERCLA means, but it basically says, “Yes, we know about this and there are issues but we haven't gone all the way down the field to, to decide what that's gonna mean.” So we knew about the CERCLA designations, and as we began putting pieces together, we started thinking, you know, this could really be a threat to the community and that's where it all started. That's when I first learned that there was a real issue with the mine.

Q: And how did you first become involved in the Environmental Issues

Advisory Committee? Marinaccio: Uh, wow, that's, I'm not sure exactly how it started. I think it was asked by

the chair of the committee to join the committee, because, uh, she and I had talked about some environmental things, uh, some environmental, hmm, issues that, you know, we hadn't gone that far into it at that time yet. But I was – but she said, you know, you care and you think about this well and you've got a good mind for it and all that stuff, so you, uh, you would probably do well on the committee, I'd like to have you. So, I said, “You know, I can do that,” so I did.

Q: And what are your – it seems to me that you were involved basically at the

beginning and also at ground zero when the community started, uh, being involved in the Superfund site with these issues too.

Marinaccio: Yes. Uh, as a part of the committee, uh, when we looked at the situation

with the, uh, the contamination at the mine and began to realize how big and how broad it was, the question came up, do we talk about Superfund and trying to get a Superfund designation? And I will tell you that every one of us on the committee and every person on the council was saying no way, we don't want the US government in here taking ahold of this and doing its thing. We didn't want that, that outside involvement from the outset.

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However, as time went on and we began to look at what the possible remedies would be, we realized there was almost nothing. Uh, ADEQ is not situated to deal with a Superfund situation. They have certain things they can and can't do. The EPA has certain things it can and can't do. Private entities, it's all voluntary on their part and there really wasn't the willingness to do anything that would be meaningful. There was some willingness on the part of, uh, a couple of the property owners there to do something, but when we looked at what those somethings were, we realized there is no way to hold any feet to the fire, there's, there – it's doubtful that it would be fruitful because there was great skepticism from property owners and from some citizens that there was really any danger at all. Even though the science very clearly said differently.

Q: And do you have any memories from this time how were the committee

meetings, how were members from the community receiving this information? I think you talked a little bit about that. Is there any specific memories from that time?

Marinaccio: Yes. Uh, I should go back a little bit and say that it was a very contentious

time. The town had just incorporated, uh, probably three years earlier, uh, approximately, uh, maybe two years earlier. But at any rate, the town was recently incorporated and that was a little bit contentious because there was a lot of people that were against it. Uh, and not long after that, the, the Young's Farm was sold to, uh, development, it was sold for development, and that was a real contentious issue because then came the people who owned the land, the new owners of the land trying to get rezoning done and putting in subdivisions that a huge portion of the population was totally against. They said, “Wait a second, we understand it's not a farm now but, but this,” and so there was – it was very contentious. And so it went like two rounds of attempted rezonings, and let's just say that politically it was very rough. It, uh, to say it was smooth would be – all you could say is that we exercised processes and, you know, we stuck up for those interests that we felt we should stick, stick up for, but it was not pretty. So now, the stage had been set for a lot of contentious interactions between all of the different people involved, whether it's the local government or the EPA or ADEQ or anybody else involved, those of us on the council. It was really rough seas. So when the, the suggestion of Superfund came along, the tempers were flaring immediately, and there were people saying absolutely not, there's no danger here, these people have lived here all their lives and, uh, and, and they haven't died yet so there's no problem. Um, but once again, the science spoke very differently. The science was about risk not about who

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– are we all gonna die.

Q: And so, I know that – I read in the newspapers that you were a council member for the town of Dewey-Humboldt. Were you first, then, a member of the Environmental Committee Advisory Committee and then you became a council member?

Marinaccio: Uh, no, I became the council member first and then shortly after that I was

asked to join the committee. Q: And why did you decide to become a council member? Marinaccio: That was due, in large part, to the, uh, the Young's Farm situation. It was

very contentious and, uh, so there were groups of people meeting on both sides of the issue, and I was a member of one of the groups that, that – besides just trying to keep the farmland from turning into something really ugly and very city like, which we felt the community was not embracing and polls eventually showed that to be the case, they were not embracing a city type of atmosphere, they wanted a rural atmosphere, even if you did have housing developments. Well, uh, as I was involved in, uh, one of those groups, there was a lot of, uh, push to get more politically involved, and I was rather [Laughs] – I was pushed toward the forefront of this group. Who could we get in this group that would like to run for council? In the end, I didn't run for council initially, I was appointed to council when a seat became vacant, and then that lasted for like eight months until I had to run for my seat, which I did successfully.

Q: Uh, can you describe how the town of Dewey-Humboldt, uh, Environment

Committee came into existence? Do you have any of –? Marinaccio: Yes. I can tell you. Treesha De France was one of a small handful of

people who were very, very instrumental. You could narrow it down to about three people who did the most work to get the town incorporated. And so, uh, it was still a small group of people that, that said, hey, wait a minute, once we incorporate, you know, we have to have a set of ordinance, we have – we have to have something to – you have to have some ordinances in place no matter what when you're going to incorporate because you have to have not just some sense of order but you have to have the basis for how you operate, uh, and for a long time, we didn't have some of those. Uh, we had problems with abatement, things we couldn't legally do if there was a – you know, even if there was a huge problem that's a public safety hazard. If you don't have the code in place that allows you to deal

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with it, you can't do it. Uh Treesha had the fore-foresight to say we need to think about the environment, and we need to think about water. So, she advocated getting these two committees started from the outset of the town. So those were put into, uh, it might have been by ordinance, it might have been by resolution, either way, uh, they were put in from the very beginning of the – by intention, from the very beginning of, of the setup of the initial set of ordinances.

Q: And do you remember who else was part of the committee? Marinaccio: At the time, yeah, there were, there were various people that came in and

out, but primarily it was Treesha De France, there was myself, Nancy Wright. Uh, for a period of time Floyd Wright was involved, um, with the committee. Uh, for a period of time Jack Hamilton had a little bit of involvement. Um, and I think he – I think – I'm – you know, don't quote me, he might not have actually been a member, but he would always be at the – he would show up at some of the meetings. Doris Cellarius was, uh, she lived in Prescott Valley, but she had – she was very, very savvy in environmental issues, and so she was part of it as well. And, uh, there were, uh, a few other people that came in and out. Um, but, uh, the bigger – oh, Mike Randall was a member of the committee at the time as well. He is a doctor and that was advantageous to have someone with that background on the committee.

Q: And you mentioned a little bit about how the committee saw this issue as

something that it should take on, just how did that start? Was there government agencies that came in and discovered the issue? It was just a hunch?

Marinaccio: Uh, it wasn't, uh, it, it – there had been, from the beginning of the town, a,

a, a, an informal tradition of meeting with ADEQ, um, when the – on a quarterly basis. Now, that didn't happen immediately but by the time I had gotten onto the council and into the committee there had been these quarterly meetings happening that was just kind of a catch-up. “Uh, hey, how are things going.” And that didn't come accidentally, that came because there had been some issues with ADEQ, uh, finding, uh, some behavior on the side of the Iron King Mine primarily, uh, where there were problems and, uh, they needed to be dealt with, and there – you know, it was hard to get compliance. And so, there was some back and forth with the town, and so that sort of rose up in importance that these quarterly meetings happen. Uh, we got the – the EPA got involved whe- when the EPA was – needed to get involved. We – they were asked in, I think, initially because it was

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questions for them. What can you do? What should you do? And we began to learn the limitations of what the EPA could do, what ADEQ could do, and what any other agency that we might have been dealing with could actually do. So we ended up with these quarterly meetings where we would get everybody together and say, “Okay, how are things going, uh, what's the situation here, what can we do about it.” I should note that when the Environmental Committee was formed, as part of its forming document, the ordinance that creates it, said that – described its mission and part of its purpose was to identify and assess. Now, I'm not quoting exactly, I'm paraphrasing it, but identify was absolutely critical. That gave the Environmental Issues Advisory Committee the responsibility to not just wait until something comes along and present itself in a big, ugly fashion, but to be proactive about identifying something that is a potential or known or serious threat to the community. So, it, it not only allowed us to be proactive, but it required us to be proactive

Q: And do you remember how and why the town, or the community began

discussing the possibility of establishing a Superfund site for the Iron King and the Humboldt Smelter?

Marinaccio: I don't remember the – it might have been 2007, it might have been 2008, I

am not remembering my years very well. I didn't go back and pull out all these notes and research. Um, but it was springtime and we had a quarterly meeting and, uh, some things had come out of that, and it became apparent to the Environmental Committee that this is a problem that wasn't going to go away, and so we said, “Well, what can we do about it.” And around the springtime, if you'd have asked anybody on council, and I was on council, would you think Superfund, we'd have said, “No.” The Environmental Committee said, “Well, gosh, if there's any way we can avoid it, we would want to avoid it. We want to be able to solve this locally.” Uh, but the more we looked at it, the more we realized there was not going to be a local solution because any of the solutions that were forthcoming, first off, there was a lot of political charge to this too. There were people saying, “Go away, go away, don't look at this, don't try to solve this, there's nothing that needs to be solved.” But as we were looking at, um, documents that came from the EPA, um, that, that were all about research that had already been done, we looked at these and we read, I mean reams and reams of documents on what the science was saying, what the conclusions were, and we were going, wait a minute, I think we really do have a problem here. And so, um, so we said, “Well, we're gonna research further and research further and then we'll decide if we really need Superfund.” And as the research went on and on

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and on, we realized there was no other way to fix this. We didn't like it but there was no other way to fix this.

Q: Can you tell me, I guess, your memories or stories, what happened at the

government level leading to the establishment? How was the, I guess the government functioning with all of this?

Marinaccio: Well, the Environmental Committee is part of government, uh, as it is an

advisory committee. But on the council side it was very interesting too. There, there is always people counting votes, guessing how they think the councilpersons will vote, and counting them up and going, “Where are we now with this, do you think we'll have a majority.” And that's really annoying thing in government but it happens and that's just how it is. It went from nobody on the council favoring this to slowly you could see meeting after meeting from various comments from the councilpersons, “Wait a minute, there's – there really is a problem here, there really is a problem here and something's got to be done. What can we do? And wow, there isn't much of a solution.” In the end, the Environmental Committee, se- we tried to be as impartial as we could be, but in the end we looked at the reality and that was we are going to have to decide what advice we, as a committee, give to the council, what's it gonna be? And we looked around at each other and we were all unanimous on it, we have to look at Superfund, there is no other way to fix this. There and the sell to the council was interesting because we had each person on that committee, each of us had our own fortes, and we divided up the task and we had to talk about this isn't a matter of people dropping dead, this is a matter of elevating risk of things like cancer and presenting a risk that will last generations and generations and generations. We had Mike Randall talk about it because he's a doctor and he put it in really great eloquent terms. He cut to the chase. He did a really good job of it. When we had to talk about certain things, uh, uh, environmental systems, Doris Cellarius would talk, or maybe Treesha would. And so, when we had to talk about the things that brushed against the political natures, that was my ballpark. And so we had a, we had a pivotal meeting with the council where we said this is, this is it, this is our recommendation, this is why. We're not crazy about it but it is really the only way out. In the end, the vote was 5 to 2 favoring a letter to the governor asking for a Superfund designation.

Q: And at that time, it was Janet Napolitano, correct, who was the governor? Marinaccio: Um, oh my gosh, no, I, I, I would have to go back and look.

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Q: Okay. Marinaccio: Um, but I thought that, no, no, I thought it was Jan Brewer at the time

because Janet Napolitano had already gone on to Homeland Security. Q: Okay. And so, it seems that – it- the interesting part is what you

mentioned, that you went through this whole phase, right, at first you don't want the government to come in, uh –.

Marinaccio: That's right. Q: And it seems like it was a sentiment with a lot of the political figures. Marinaccio: Yes. Q: But then as you started learning about it, it was something that you

realized this is something that needs outside help for it. Marinaccio: Yes. Um, I think something that's very important here is that as the

Environment Committee, we made no claims of anything, and Treesha was adamant about that. She said, “We don't take on any claims, we bring to the council what we know from the people who are smarter than us. We are not scientists but we're smart enough to read through this and figure out where we have to go for the next piece of information.” So there were times that in a meeting we would say, “Yeah, well, you know, this is gonna elevate the risk to, to residents living in this area,” and Treesha would say, “We don't know that.” And I said – she says, “No, we don't know that until an expert tells us that, and then we will cite that expert.” “Oh yeah, okay.” So she put us on a really – she really helped us be as politically neutral as possible, and I think that was absolutely critical because the Environmental Committee maintained its credibility as best it could throughout this whole ordeal, and I'm gonna call it that because there were slings and arrows left and right the entire way, but nobody could look at us and say you guys are frauds because what we really did is we said, “This is what these experts say, this is what these experts say and this is what these experts say, and this is what they don't say.” When we talked to – uh, we talked to an expert on mortality and morbidity and he said, “You don't have a big enough sample size in that area for us to determine one way or another if somebody is gonna die from this. You don't have a big enough sample size period, so you can't say – if somebody gets cancer and dies, you cannot say it was from that site.” “Okay, that's what he said,” and that's what we reported. But the Department of Health Services said, uh, “But you can say that there is an elevated risk and here

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is the research that shows approximately what that elevation would be.” So, we reported that as well.

Q: And you were also working not only in the political side of it but you're a

community member, right, of Dewey-Humboldt. Marinaccio: Oh, of course. Q: And so, can you tell me a little bit about what was going on at the

community level at this time? Marinaccio: Um, once again it was very contentious on the community level because

from the, from the incorporation to the Young's Farm, uh, development attempts, to, um, to this, people were on one side or another. And, and then – it's not that there were just two sides but there were generally two sides. There were the people that wanted to turn this into a city and the people that wanted to keep it rural and that was sort of how the line was drawn even if it wasn't really that accurate. And, and so it was very contentious, and you knew your neighbors and you like your neighbors, and you knew that they hated your politics, though. They, they didn't like how you stood, and others just loved you and said, “Oh, you're our guy, this is great.” It was hard to work inside that, but you had to separate yourself from it and that was the secret, is you separate yourself from the politics and you just do the work. The best advice I ever got from anybody, no matter what the subject was, was detach yourself from the outcome, stop thinking about how you want it to be and just do the work you need to do, and it'll manifest itself, and it always did.

Q: Okay, Len. Um, so I don't know if you can talk a little bit about the key

players at the government level, and then also some of the key players at the community level.

Marinaccio: Okay. The, uh, at the government level there is obviously the council. Uh,

their – town staff did what town staff does and town staff was pretty good and pretty impartial about everything and I really appreciated that. Um, at the – there was the Environmental Advisory Committee as well, uh, and we've talked a great deal about it. At the community level, there were a number of individuals that would, uh, attend most of the meetings that they could. Uh, Jack Hamilton showed up quite a lot throughout this. Um, Ashley Preston, uh, made herself known and she, she came in, uh, with a lot of concerns for her family, and she lived, uh, uh near the smelter, not really near the mine, but, you know, that's close enough. And you know, when you get, uh,

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parents coming in saying, “Hey, look, you know, I'm raising kids here, I want to know that things are safe, you know, what's in our water, what's in the air and what's in the soil and, and, uh, how's, how's this going to affect us,” it matters, and it really made a difference for them standing up saying so. There were, uh, business persons and property owners that should be, I think, included here. They were key players as well. Some of them, I don't want to get into intentions or anything like that. Um some of them, I would say, nobody says, “I want a contaminated community.” And I don't think any of these businessmen wanted anything bad to happen to the community. I, I can't see that. But it's – many people don't believe that there is a threat when there really is a threat, or many people might want to minimize the perception of a threat that might be there. I mean they might not want to believe themselves that what they're doing is really that bad. Uh, even if ADEQ says differently, uh, or if the EPA says differently, they still don't want to believe it. So, I don't think their intents were to hurt the community, but they, um, but they have businesses to run and they don't want a lot of interference from the government or from the local government or from anybody in – you know, anybody for that matter, interference in their business. So, you can understand that there is gonna be a lot of contention coming from that side. So I don't hold much of a grudge because I see where their motivations are. But in the end what's important is the safety of the community. And so it got to be really difficult, you didn't want to say, “I don't like that guy, he's doing bad things,” but at the same time you had to say, “You know, we're looking at reports here and it's, it's well researched and there is an issue there that needs to be addressed.” On the community level, you would have – I mean at any one time you could have dozens of people with, you know, pitchforks and torches, you know, figuratively speaking, showing up at town hall and, and creating, you know, quite a stir. You know, you know lining up with the public comment period and, and voicing their opinions very vehemently sometimes. And you would get some sidings very strongly with the business people saying, “Uh, they're not doing anything wrong, nobody has died, end of story.” And you get people lining up saying, “This is all about safety and lowering risk and, and all of that.” And so it got to be very tough and there was a lot of – you could see the attempts at manipulation coming from the community. You know, not that they could do that much, but you could see it coming and you would see

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people threatening. You know, “We're gonna vote you out if blah, blah, blah.”

Um, around that time, um, for various reasons, uh I was, I became the subject of a recall election. So, they tried to recall me from the council and, uh, they tried to do that for Nancy Wright as well and, um, that recall failed. And so that gave us some indication that we were on the right track, that the public did care enough about what we were doing and that we were doing enough of the right thing that we were on the right track. We were representing the community properly.

What you were asking earlier about the community. Q: Mm-hmm Marinaccio: You know Dewey-Humboldt is it- it’s a very fiercely independent mindset

here. There are so many people who move here want to be left alone. Move here don’t what the government involved in anything. You know uh, so it’s, it’s different than grow- it’s different than living in the city. I mean, it’s a lot of rural area are this way.

Q: Yeah, I always wondered about that because it was a sharp contrast of my

work in Tucson. Marinaccio: Right, Q: Mm-hmm. Marinaccio: -right. Q: Now we are gonna move on a little bit about you becoming mayor and

how all of that happened. I don't know if you kind of can tell us the story. Marinaccio: Oh, I sure can. Q: Mm-hmm. Marinaccio: Um, when Earl Goodwin was mayor, uh, it – it was very interesting

having him as mayor because he was, a lot of people liked him, a lot of people didn't like him, but he was a stabilizing force, um, from a new community that had just incorporated, had two mayors that were both heavily involved in the incorporation and so were very much trying to push that in a particular direction and, um, there was a lot of pushback against it. Earl was a stabilizing force. He was, um, still – you have to talk to him about exactly what his intentions were but he was not as pushy as

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he was wanting to do things right, okay. So he said, you know, “If we don't progress quickly as a community that's okay, but we have to start at the foundation again and do things the way things ought to be done, put the systems in place that need to be in place so that they can function and so we're not doing things off the cuff.” Because there was a lot of, there was a lot of that earlier, just kind of, uh, not as much direction as there could have been. And it isn't that – it isn't for lack of people wanting to do the right thing, it was for lack of not knowing how to run a community and do government – governance the right way. So, um, Earl helped a lot to get things in place and things functioning so that you didn't have to maintain every little detail of government, it could function. And so, he was good for that. Um, he served for one term and I'll never forget just, just out of the blue in one meeting, when it was time for the – time to announce that we're gonna have an election, he just says, “And I will not be running,” and we were like – everybody was floored. And there was one other person, a prior mayor, who threw in his hat immediately and said, “Well, I'm gonna run.” And nobody was running against him, and I had people urging me left and right, “Well, you know, you are kind of well-spoken and, you know, you would be a great mayor and all this, and you should run.” I'm going wow, that's not really what I wanted to do but – and I thought about it, and I said, “You know what, it would – I should do this, it would be a really good experience,” and, and, and I'll be a little conceited here, you know, I thought I could do a better job. So, um, so I threw my hat in the ring and I said, “Yeah, I'm gonna do this.” And it was not – and you know, it could be – I – some campaigns are really, really messy and nasty, this one was not so bad, you know. Um, both sides were reasonably well-behaved. Toward the very end it got a little contentious as it always does when you get near the end of an election, but, uh, I had very good people surrounding me on my campaign committee. Um I, I – one of my rules is, you know, I pretend I'm smart but really what you do is you, you – all you have to be is smart enough to know that you get smarter people than you around you to help you and that's what I did in my campaign committee. They steered me in ways that I didn't expect to go, and I ended up winning the election. It was narrow, by 54 votes, so it's, uh, you know, 52 percent of the vote so it's not by much. Um, I was generally considered the underdog because people thought, well, this – you know, I was ten years younger, you know, “This guy, this guy is not gonna win,” you know. So, a lot of guys – a lot of people didn't think it

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was gonna happen. But they liked what I had to say, and I think that made all the difference. Um, I did a few little things that showed people I really did care about the community and, and it's not that the other gentleman didn't, but, uh, it was the way I presented myself, and I think that's what put me over the top. So here I am, all the sudden, mayor. I will say that somewhat unrelated to this but it's very important that people know, newly elected people know about as much about what they're doing as the average person. Now, they know more because they've been campaigning and they've been researching issues and all that, but it is not uncommon for a person to land in a seat and go, “Wow, now what do I do.” I had a much better sense of, of what I needed to do than most when they suddenly end up becoming mayor, but still, the learning curve, you know, there was a little bit of a learning curve there. But the, the most important thing is you maintain a little bit of humility and you keep those smarter people around you, and you'll be just fine.

Q: And, uh, can you – so this basically fell when the Superfund site was

already, uh, being established? Marinaccio: The Superfund site, I talked about the – in the springtime we were like,

“Oh, no way, we don't want to see this happen.” By fall we had, we had come to the understanding that there was no other way, and later that fall, um, we had the vote. Uh, I hope I get the timing right because, you know, like I said, I didn't go back and read through, uh, town notes or anything. But it was easily within a year, not much more than six months that, uh, we had made the decision and council had decided that it was gonna go ahead and go with the Superfund site. Um, it wasn't too much longer after that that we got the news that we were listed on the NPL. Uh, and let me tell you something that was odd, and this is something people should know. The EPA works very much according to what is an empowered – very much according to what its empowered to do and what it's disallowed to do. So, it walks a very fine line in very many ways. There are times when it cannot tell you things. It keeps things relatively confidential to not taint the work that it is doing, to not draw political blowback. It says, “We got it, we're working on it, we'll let you know.” And so, we went a long time having no idea if we were gonna get listed or not. And so, when we heard the news we were just like, “Wow! This happened.”

Q: And so that actually leads to my next question about, uh, your

collaboration with the different governments involved, like, state, federal, local. Can you talk a little bit about how you worked with them through

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the process and, I don't know, maybe some of the memories that you have of that?

Marinaccio: Well, there's a couple ways. First off, we had the quarterly meetings with

the EPA and ADEQ, and occasionally, um, the Department of Health Services might be there. Uh, there might be other entities depending on what, how far this had progressed and who we needed to hear from. We tried not to waste people's time by bringing them in if there was nothing to say. Um, so there was that interaction, and you'd have the public involved. The committee itself could speak with individuals from these agencies too, but we self-imposed a rule which said if you're gonna have any communication with any of them you have to make a record of that, that you did, and what it was about. Because if anybody ever wants to know, we want to be transparent about that. Um, there were certain individuals with the EPA that we, that we would talk to, there were two in particular, um, but it was mostly for our own edification. You know, you can't lobby the EPA. You can say, “Please, please, please, please, this, that, the other thing.” You can't do that because their decision is made very meticulously by people that don't know you and will never talk to you, who are only looking at pieces of paper with results of studies, uh, reports and that's where the decision making is done, and I think in this instance it's a good thing because you don't get um political influences changing those decisions. The, um, we would speak with uh– there were some people with ADEQ we would talk with. Um, we found that both agencies were good to work with. It was so frustrating not getting information because, “We're sorry, we can't tell you that.” It was really frustrating but that's just how it was, and we understood why. Um, ADEQ and EPA were both very professional. They were good at telling you what they could tell you, good at being as helpful as they could be, but they were also good at not telling you what they shouldn't tell you. And well, that's the nature of it. But I, uh – the, the interactions were always good. They were always professional, and we never felt like – with the EPA, we never felt like they wanted us to do one thing or another. It didn't feel like that at all. Um, with ADEQ, um, they didn't seem to have an interest steering us one way or another, “It's whatever you want to do with Superfund because we're not Superfund. We have our own program which is kind of like Superfund like but it's really voluntary and maybe nothing will ever come of it even if , if you go with it.” Uh, it's a voluntary remediation program and it really has no teeth whatsoever, and they know it, but they said, “We're here to represent it and we'll tell you what it does and what it doesn't do and the whole thing” they're very good at that.

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So, the interactions were really good and we appreciated that they tended not to be very biased. Now, EPA, I would say virtually no bias at all. With ADEQ, you could tell that there was an interest in promoting safety because they are charged to do that, but you could tell that it was there. I had met one of the people that we used to talk to with the ADEQ, uh, socially years later, and he told me off the record, “I'm really glad that you guys did what you did, you know, I wouldn't say so then.” And it totally blew me away that he said that, but he had an opinion on this, but I wouldn't have known while we were dealing with ADEQ.

Q: And do you want, um – what do you want others to know about the

Dewey-Humboldt Environmental Committee, maybe something that was not well-known?

Marinaccio: The – I think what's most important about the committee to understand is

that – was that policy we had that Treesha was adamant about and that is that we don't make claims. We just analyze what's out there, we report what's out there. We get together the best information we can get together and then we present it the best way we know how, and we'll give our advice, you know, we're not gonna be – we'll be neutral as far as the research goes, but when the committee has come to a decision on its recommendation to council, we're gonna stick by that and we're gonna present it as best we possibly can. But the most important thing is that the Superfund might not have happened at all if the data said something different. If the data said anything differently, we would have gone where the data said to go because we were not gonna put our own personal opinions into this unless we were asked. You know, if somebody asked me, “How do you feel about, you know, what it will be like raising a family in that site?” Then I'll give that opinion. But when it came to the science that was not ours, it was always somebody else's and we could always cite where it came from.

Q: And what do you want others to know about your position as a mayor

when the Superfund site was being established? Maybe something that was not [Crosstalk}–.

Marinaccio: Well, it's important to, it's important to note that I was not mayor at the

time the Superfund was established. That happened just before I became mayor. So, uh, I was on council at the time, uh, and as I said before, it was a very contentious time politically, so that was tough. You know, when when you're entering town hall and somebody in the parking lot is threatening you and the police wander over to be sure nobody is gonna get hurt, you know, that's a little weird. You know, I didn't really – wasn't really that afraid for my safety but it is weird to see that level of anger in

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some folks, and I understand it. You know, if you see somebody who is gonna take a big step and bring in big government to solve a local problem and you don't go that way, I could see how you'd get really angry and I don't blame anybody for feeling angry about that. Um, but dealing with that range of emotions from that, that, “Hoorah, support, love what you're doing”, to, um, to, you know, “One day they're gonna carry you out in a bag,” you know, “It won't be me, don't worry, I wouldn't hurt you, but you know, boy, it's gonna go bad for you someday,” you know, that sort of thing. You know, that's, um, that's pretty strange to be dealing with that much intensity. And that –I think the best strategy there is you do the work. You just focus on the task at hand and that's what you do. You do it as impartially as you can do it and that's the best thing you can do. We're not gonna make everybody happy, it's just not gonna happen, but you just got to do the best you can do.

Q: What are you most proud of when it comes to your involvement with the

Arizona – for the Iron King Mine and Humboldt Smelter Superfund site? Marinaccio: Wow. What I'm most proud of would be that we did it right. We could

have gotten, we could have gotten very political about it, and we could have used the politics to drive the decision, but we chose to use the data and the science to drive the decision. It was risky, of course, doing it politically would be risky too, because that can just – that can cause all kinds of blowback and it completely goes the other way. But we made the decision that this is gonna be about the science and this is gonna be about how we present this and, and if it goes, it goes, if it doesn't go, it doesn't go and that's just how it is. There is a certain – there was a certain surrender in that because you can't control everything, and some people can try and maybe some people will succeed but we weren't gonna do this by trying to control the situation, we were gonna do it by seeing if people would get onboard with, uh, the message, the science.

Q: And do you have something interesting that you know about the history

that you would like to tell me, the little-known history of the area, about pioneers, the Iron King mine, Ironite, Humboldt Smelter or Mexican miners or anything of that sort?

Marinaccio: Uh, I'm a big rail fan, I love trains. My brother and I, that's one of the

things that, uh, he and I would talk about extensively because he's very interested in the history of the area as it pertains to railroads. He likes the history too but especially as it pertains to the railroads. And so, um, so my

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pasture, I have a fence around my pasture that's made from the railroad ties from the railroad that was there and there's date stamps in there going back into the teens, last century. These are 100-year-old date spikes in a few of these ties. It's amazing. But, uh, what the railroad did was – it was just amazing the railroad itself, where it went, how they pulled it off, and, uh, as it was slowly retreating into history, you know, parts of it being abandoned and salvaged. Um, it's interesting that the role that it played, uh, in the smelter. Uh, what's interesting is that the, the mine and the smelter, there was virtually no connection between the two. There was the owner of the – the Bluebell Mine was one and then I'm trying to think of the other mine, I'm forgetting it now, Desoto Mine, I think was the other, was owned by the same person who owned the railroad or at least had a controlling interest in the railroad, and the – and so those mines, their ore was produced and refined in the smelter and that's what it primarily worked with. The Iron King Mine, its ore went somewhere else and most people don't know that. Most people don't know that the two were not really that connected. There was other few experiments where they used some of the ore in the local smelter but the smelter was geared up for what it was geared to do, and – you know, and it did some other things, uh, around, uh, around wartime where they were doing some experiments and, you know, uh, those refined – this – can we do something different, you know. So, um, but I think it's very interesting to, to – I'm very interested in the railroad and its history and it's very interesting that ownership, that ownership, how it played into how things actually operated. The, the – there was a tipple at Third Street and the railroad tracks, and they would haul ore from the mine in a truck up to the tipple, because there was a trestle, and you can still see where this is. If you look, as you drive past the Chevron station toward Phoenix and you look to the right-hand side, you can see where the railroad went and there's a big gap where there used to be a trestle there. Um, the railroad, for a while, stopped pretty much where the mine was and they used to load it on trains and stuff, but at some point, that trestle became unusable so they trucked it up Third Street to this tipple, up by the railroad tracks and that's how some of the contamination got into where some of the yards are up by the, uh, Sweet Pea Lane and up in that general –. Now, Sweet Pea, there were tracks right there, but not quite at Sweet Pea, a little further off the tracks, there was contamination and that's because that's where the trucks would go to unload.

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And there was a woman named Edna Richards, who used to drive that truck. For a period of time she was the driver. And there's also a story about how that truck – and not while she was driving, but how that truck backed up on the tipple and when you raised the bed of the truck, you, you raise it slowly so that the, the ore will come out and into the cars. If you raise it too quickly it unbalances the truck, and this happened, and it fell over backwards and they – and that was a big mess. But I just find that an entertaining story. And somewhere there – I thought there was a picture of it somewhere, but I've never been able to find it, so I – so if anybody has that, I'd love to see it.

Q: And then what do you think is important for community members to be

aware that they might not know about the site? Marinaccio: Oh man. I don't think I can stress this enough, and it isn't just about this

site, but it does apply to this site, absolutely. But it's about, um, environmental problems in general. Now, I don't like to think of myself as an environmentalist because that carries a stigma with it, but, uh, I have served on easily a half a dozen or more water committees. I have lost count at this time. Um, one of which was very heavily involved in the developing the science of, uh, of what we need to know in this area. And so I would work alongside scientists and alongside people who were environmentally minded, and, uh, not that I didn't learn some of these lessons with, uh, with the development of the Superfund site, but, but, um, but there – I was working alongside scientists themselves having conversations with them. And when you – when you're sitting on your couch on Google and you're looking up environmental issues here or issues there, you only get the tip of the iceberg. The rest of that iceberg looks like this. There is this whole community of people who study very intently matters of the environment, matters of water, its quality, its availability, the things around us, the ability of the Earth to sustain humans on it and that science is very well developed. People don't understand how well developed it is. Now, it'll always change, it'll always – as time goes by, but it's very well developed. And there is a very strong picture of various threats that do face us as humans, but most people are completely unaware of this. You can't go to either side of the political spectrum and find people that'll say, “Hey, let's trash the environment, what do you say.” You're not gonna find it. Nobody thinks we should do that. But lots of people have no idea how close we are to being in danger from the things we are doing to the environment but it's happened before.

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If you look at Easter Island and at its history, you'll see a drastic demise – or no, reduction of a – it didn't completely die out, but, uh, but the virtual wipeout of a culture because they misused the land. Because it was an island it wasn't that hard for a group of people to influence the whole thing. In this day and age, since, uh, World War II, roughly, but since the, uh, since the industrial and the chemical revolutions, we've had the ability to damage mass amounts of the planet that we live on, and again, it's not like, oh, let's save the Earth. The Earth is gonna be fine, we're the ones that might not survive when we are unable to sustain ourselves. We are very overpopulated as it is. We are seeing how it stresses resources, and one of the first resources that we're going to see disappear, uh, to the point that it affects our ability to live, is water. It will happen probably while I'm still alive, certainly while you're still alive. We will see it and we will say, “Oh my gosh, how did we get here, how so we fix this”, and we will see how drastically expensive it's going to be. I can already tell you why water will be extraordinarily expensive, because it costs a lot to get it from one place to another, and we can make as much as we want. We can find cheap ways of desalinating water but moving it around will be expensive. Not for us to drink but if you have to grow crops, where somebody wants to pay 1/100th of a penny per gallon of water but it's gonna cost them a penny, that will – that has massive implications on agriculture. So, my point is, there is a great deal we know about the planet and its ability to maintain our species, and I am so disheartened when I see people completely unaware. It's not their fault, they were never taught. We don't teach people the things they need to know most. Nobody will say, “Yeah, nuclear war, not a big deal.” No, nuclear war is a huge deal, but we don't have a concept of how near or how far we are from it happening. That's the problem. The problem isn't that we are an evil species, it isn't. The problem is we are an uninformed species on the things that matter most to our survival.

Q: And thinking back on your experience at the Superfund site, what would

you recommend or like to see future generations learn from this experience?

Marinaccio: I'd like future generations to know that it is their responsibility to know the

consequences of whatever they do. The Superfund site came to be largely, not entirely but largely because you had people generations ago, who said, “It is very important that we mine this ore. It is very profitable. But for various reasons we need to do this.” But they didn't take into account the effects of what they did. There were people at the time who said, “There are things in here that are bad for us,” they knew this, but it was not

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understood to a great degree how bad that was. We need to say, okay, we don't know for sure this thing you were doing is really gonna be bad but if there is a reasonable suspicion that it might be, we need to not go down that road. Climate change is one of them. A lot of people are very convinced about it, some are in denial about it, but I think without taking one position or the other vehemently, we need to say if it is really a problem then we need to act absolutely right now, or we need to minimize it right now because the stakes are that high if it is a problem. And so that's why, you know, whether you believe, whether you don't believe, I know where the science is on it, but whether you believe or whether you don't believe, you need to act as if it really could be a problem because if it is you can't afford the price you have to pay.

Q: Okay, Len. So, my next question is how would you like the memory of

your experience to be remembered? Marinaccio: Wow. I, I have this philosophy that when you're in government you don't

expect your name go to on anything. You do what you do and if you leave a legacy then you leave a legacy, but nobody remembers who you are. You know, that's, that’s how I think about it, because it isn't really important who did what but that it was done. Uh, so my name's not gonna end up on anything and so the memory of this, I think what I want – what I would like for people to remember, you know, beyond who was involved is that we saw this problem, we analyzed this problem and we took action the best we knew how. Now, I'm gonna temper that to say if you ask me if I was 100 percent happy with how this has all turned out, I'd say no. I still believe Superfund was the right way to go because it was the best avenue to take, but it didn't turn out as well as I would like to have seen it because there were, there were problems along the way. There were data gaps, so there was some initial work done by the EPA, some investigation, and when they started putting all the numbers together, they – you have to get to what's called a record of decision. This is what we found, this is what we're going to do about it, here is the strategy, let's go. Um, by the time they were pushing toward that record of decision, they said, “Wait a minute, this all doesn't quite add up. We can't make a decision based on what we have. We need to do more research.” And so, it was like, oh no, it was working so well on track. When we, uh – through the process of getting this Superfund designation, um, one of the people with the EPA we worked with was Leah Butler and she was phenomenal, soft-spoken. She was a go-getter but you wouldn't know it because she, she was a great thinker because she understood what

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had to be done, what the process was and how to line up the pieces so that it works, and she did this and she was really good at it. But what happened is somewhere along the line the pieces that we needed to have for that record of decision didn't seem to all be there. Now, the EPA could comment more on exactly the details. I wouldn't be the expert on that. But when they got that far down the road they said, “Wait a minute, um, based on what we've collected we realize the problem is just a little different here, and we need to redo this and so they did.” Then there was some changeover in the EPA and so some – the ball might get dropped for a little while, and then okay, somebody picks it back up and let's go with this. And um, um, and they would work on it and it's dragged and dragged and dragged and dragged, and that is the one thing that I really regret seeing, is that the community has had to wait and wait and wait and wait. Now, the EPA has come in and it's done, uh, emergency removals. So, somebody's got a significant contamination in their yard and it's got to be dealt with, then they come in and they do it, and they have done that and it's great to see that that kind of action has happened because nobody else would have done that. So, I'm happy about that. I just wish this would have gone quicker. When people look back on this, that will stick out as a sore spot, and I know it will, and I'm not happy about it. But what I want people to remember is that we did the right thing. We looked at this thing from top to bottom and we realized there was going to be no other solution, and had we left that untouched this would be a problem for generation after generation after generation and on and on and on. Mother Nature straightens out things here and there but four million tons of contaminated mine tailings – and if you look at some of the numbers of what's really in those tailings, it's it's not good. That would last longer than the species would last.

Q: And how do you think that the memory then of the Superfund site and the

contamination should be remembered? Marinaccio: It should be remembered as a lesson, both in how we conduct ourselves at

the time that contamination is introduced but in how we show the discipline to take it and do something with it and not pass it off to the next generation. So, I think that is – that's the most important lesson from this, and if we're, um, like I said, I'd love to have seen this work out a little differently, but we did what we did and I think we did the right thing. So, it's all a lesson in how we conduct ourselves and then how we clean up after ourselves and being responsible.

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Q: And how did you learn about the progress of the clean-up of the Superfund site?

Marinaccio: Well, the EPA – uh once we were listed, the progress of the clean-up, the

EPA issues, um, issues letters to people within the area. So, I get some letters that the rest of the community won't get, and it's just an update, here's how things are going, here is what we know, here is what's new. And there isn't very much of that, because EPA also has to wait around for the proper funding do to – because, you know, it has to juggle with its various projects. So it has to wait for the right things to be in place, money and the resources and everything before they're going to take the next step. Uh, so there are these letters, but, uh, there are also periodic, although not , not that regular, meetings with the council and, uh, and various community, uh, efforts. There is, uh, there has been local groups. There was a CAG and a TAG put together, uh, to facilitate between the EPA and the community, and, uh, help some communication go that way. But largely, there has been progress but not at the rate that I would like to see it. So that – so that so in short, the EPA does have methods in place that it uses to keep, uh, some communication going. It's always open to feedback if somebody wants to take that initiative, but we've gotten to this point where the community is less fired up about this and more interested in, like, “Well, we'll wait around 'til it gets done.”

Q: Uh, so what was or was not useful when it came to the information, uh, that was reported? So, for example, maybe some of the language that was used, how they presented it to you.

Marinaccio: Mm-hmm. Q: I don't know, sometimes, maybe it wasn't, uh, provided in a way for a

policymaker like government agency, I don't know. Marinaccio: Okay. The – while we were doing research on the Environmental

Committee, everything they gave us was useful. I mean it was, because we would ask and in as much as they could deliver, they would deliver, and it was very useful. After the Superfund site came into play, some of the information was not as useful because a lot of it we already knew. Now, to those of us who weren't on the committee and weren't in government and weren't keeping up with this, it would be like, “Oh, wait a minute, okay, so here is phases, uh, feasibility study down to the down to the record of decision and then the actual remediation,” you know, that was news to them and that's useful and that's good. It wasn't as useful to us.

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But, uh, one of the things that was difficult was after the – after the Superfund site came into being, the information you would get was generally useful but it was the information you didn't get that you wish you had, that was what was the biggest problem. Everybody wanted to know timelines, how are we doing, how close are we, what's next, and the EPA was always good at what's next, but when, they couldn't tell you. I'm not gonna say they wouldn't tell you because I know that the way they work, a lot of times they can't tell you. And so that was really frustrating, and so there was a certain level of frustration in that not knowing. If I could – if the EPA would come to us and say this site will be completely done in January of 2021, no ifs ands or buts, finished, the community would go, “Okay, we'll take it. That's way further out, we were hoping this would be done by 2017,” you know, that was our hope. EPA would absolutely not guarantee that. But, um, I mean that's what we were hoping, but it's the stuff that you don't know and that they can't tell you that is the most frustrating.

Q: Were you surprised by anything that occurred through your longevity of

the Superfund site? Anything that was surprising, I guess, like maybe in committee meetings or health studies being conducted?

Marinaccio: Well, prior to, prior to the designation, when we were doing – when we

were working on health studies, trying to gather information on health studies, I was surprised that it is very difficult to definitively tie a disease to a place. If you have a cancer cluster that's different because you have a statistically high number of people, but if you don't have a statistically – if you don't have a high number of people with an illness, you have to have a very broad sample size so that you can find statistical significance. And so what surprised me – because you know, you'd hear stories of, well, this person who lives in this area died of cancer, and everybody wants to know, “Well, was it related to the Superfund site,” and some people would swear up and down that it was. But we don't have the sample size, we don't have this huge number of people dying because we don't have this huge number of people living there in the first place. Uh, so we can't tie any particular death or illness. You know, I could name off people right in my area, right in my neighborhood who have cancer right now, but I can't tie any of that to the Superfund site, not that it – there is no link, but we don't know that there is a link. We just don't know. So that is the part that I was surprised by because all of this other science could say very definitively, hey, we know this, boom, there it is, but the health studies, I didn't realize that we needed so many more people in that area to come anywhere close to getting a sample size that would give a definite link. What we do know is what the approximate elevation and risk

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is. That doesn't equate to you are going to get cancer or you won't, but that was a lesson for me. That was, that was something I didn't expect.

Q: So, um, did you attend any community meetings about the health studies

being conducted in the area? Marinaccio: Yes. Um, so before the designation of the Superfund site, obviously there

were the meetings that involved, uh, Department of Health Services, and we had, um, uh, we had talked to a healthcare professional, the committee itself did, uh, talking about what's significant and what's not significant and can you or can you not determine that there is a link between disease and the Superfund site. Uh, so there was that prior to the designation. Once this became a Superfund site, then there were, uh, there were meetings talking about, uh, the health. Uh, some of that was under the auspices of water testing, because, uh, many of us had our wells tested as a part of the study of whether or not we had groundwater migration of contaminants. And then there was, um, metal study in children, so I mean are you getting arsenic, are you getting lead in your blood, what's the deal, and so my kids were part of it and they had, uh, blood tests done and that went into the part of this – part of the study to help determine, uh, was there a significant difference with people in the Superfund site, yes or on and all of that. And you'd have to refer to that study. I'm not gonna quote anything that I don't – that I'm not the professional on.

Q: And did you, uh, have any impact to your family maybe of that study or

the results from that study? Marinaccio: Um, there was – yes. There – I can't comment on how statistically

significant it is but there were some elevated levels in both of the kids. Um, how that compares to normal, uh, I mean elevated, above normal, yes, but not really bad is how I would summarize it. Not really bad, anything like that. So it was not the kind of thing you go to the doctor and say, “Okay, now what do we do,” it wasn't that bad, but it was, like, well, this is a little higher than normal, you know, than, that what you'd normally find in the general area. You'd have to refer to that study to find out if – how localized that elevation was.

Q: And was it arsenic or lead? Marinaccio: Uh, it was, uh, it was both, but it was more lead than arsenic, really,

which, uh, is a little bit of a surprise. Now, our well tested low in arsenic and some wells are not even in the site in this area because you have naturally occurring arsenic, tested very, very high. So, um, in the end, the EPA said, “You know, we're not seeing any significant, uh, groundwater migration problems with this, and so we weren't really worried about

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that.” But, uh, we didn't have – and my kids don't spend a lot of time out and in the wash, and my land – there is a portion of it where the levels are – where they recommend, you know, just don't go there, or if you do, make sure you wash your shoes and don't breathe dust from it. So, don't do things that kick up dust. Most of my land is in really good shape for being right in the middle of the whole site. Some of the biggest problems in the contaminated properties, contaminated residences didn't come, um, directly from ah- windblown materials or anything like that. I mean there is some of that, but the biggest problems came from people who needed fill dirt and they went hey, you know, this is what, 1930s or whatever, let's go over to the mine and grab some of those tailings that are sitting there and we'll use it for fill dirt. And so you would find yards at random spots in town totally contaminated and then others that weren't, right next door. And that was why, some people would say, yeah, let's try throwing that on the driveway, you know. I don't know. And so that was the biggest problem. The way my land sits and where it is and the way the wind blows and all of that leaves most of my land in pretty good shape. So, the kids can go out and have fun and do all this and that and the other thing, but there are certain – a couple of areas on it that we're supposed to treat very carefully.

Q: And what advice do you have for state and federal government, uh,

personnel that oversees the clean-up? Marinaccio: That oversees the clean-up. Keep us up to date on what's going on and ask

for our feedback as much as you can get it. Make it easy for us to give you feedback. Uh, invite the feedback. In the end, I can tell you with great confidence that everybody wants to know when this is gonna get done. We're not all stressing about it in a real big way. I'm kind of liking it. I didn't know this until after the Superfund site come into play that, uh, the county assessor's office, uh, gives you half off on your taxes on the land portion if it's in a Superfund site, and I'm like, “Wow, that's cool,” but I didn't know this. But for most of us, we just want it done and I do too. I don't care about the – it's not much taxes in land anyway, but, um, uh, but I want to see it done, I want to see it concluded, because there's – there's future development that we want to see happen eventually and it's, it's – you can develop in a Superfund site but it's a little more complicated, a little more difficult. There is the Open Space and Trails Committee would love to see some trails developed on some of the contaminated area but they don't want to do it before it's cleaned up, so those plans have to sit on hold. There are

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some things that could be done that if this was all finished it would open up more opportunity for either development or preservation or whatever the town wants to do, and we would like to get this done.

Q: Are you keeping up with the latest information, uh, on the Superfund site?

From what I understand, they did a lot of the residential, this emergency clean-up that you mentioned.

Marinaccio: Yes. Q: And now they're moving on to the plans on what they're gonna do with the

actual Super-, the Iron King Mine and I imagine also the Humboldt Smelter.

Marinaccio: Yes. Uh, I am keeping up on it somewhat. Um, I'm – I've been really busy

with another couple – with a couple of very long-term projects and with a couple of organizations that, uh, deal with either water or sustainability, and so that's been a little lower on my radar, but I've been somewhat keeping with it. I'm a little bit behind the times now on it but, uh, but I have the advantage of being able to see whenever they bring the technicians in and they go in there taking samples or they're going and doing this or that and the other thing. And I just walk up to them and say, “Hey, how's it going, what are you working on,” you know, and usually they'll tell me. You know, they don't give me – they're careful about how much they reveal. You know, they don't speak on behalf of the EPA and say, “Yeah, we're in – we're just, we're taking these samples, blah, blah, blah,” and that's what we're doing, you know. But I can see when things are happening and when things aren't, and right now, it's really not much of anything going on. I pay more attention when I see that there are, you know, people in safety vests going and taking samples and stuff, and then I'm like, oh, something's going on, let's catch up, but it's been – a frustration is that it's taken a long time now, so I'm not as, you know –. I'm interested but I'm not as on top of it when I see nothing happening.

Q: Did you, um, did the Superfund site change your thinking about the

sources of chemical exposure in your community or your household? Marinaccio: Absolutely, absolutely. You know, I was not an expert coming into this,

um, I learned a great deal. When you talk with scientists, and I don't mean read some flashy little article on the Internet somewhere, sit down with a scientist, have a conversation, you will learn so much more than you could ever get from an article because you learn how the thinking works. And when you learn how the thinking works you learn how you should be looking at it.

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When I see – when I see the way we treat trash I'm like, wow, we are so much in the stone ages of how we should be dealing with trash. Why do I say that? Because I talk to people who deal with trash in one way or another, whether it's recycling, whether it's the effects of, uh, what it does long-term on the environment, whether it's, uh, whether it's, uh, from a resources perspective, whether it's from the possibility of contamination of water tables. You know, few people realize that when you contaminate a water table what you've really done. Few people realize that. So when you talk to scientists it completely changes your world and it changed my world. You know, at first, I was like, “Yeah, you know, save the trees, yeah, it's kind of a good thing, we'll save the trees.” It's not all about saving the trees, it's such a – it's – caring about the environment is, in my mind, what you have to do to care about humanity. And when you talk to scientists, you're able to see a much, much, much bigger picture than just saving a tree. Just saving a tree is not gonna save the planet, it's not gonna do it. You have to think about the magnitude of what we really do and how it treats us in return when we do what we do.

Q: Is there anything else that you would like to discuss that I might have

missed in my previous interview questions? Marinaccio: Oh, I think I've talked a long time. Um, in the end we have to be

responsible because we cannot kick the can down the road any longer. We have reached and exceeded the ability of the planet itself to sustain our population naturally. We're into where we have to use technology to sustain this population. This population is only gonna grow – if you run population models, it's – we're looking at 12 billion people at some point. We don't have the water for that, we just plain don't. We can make it, but it'll be very expensive to transport it. It isn't that we can't invent the technology to do what needs to be done to keep us alive, but do you want to write the check? I hear people say, well, I don't want to pay for such and such, so, you know, people try to shy away from environmentalism because what it'll cost. I learned by speaking with lots of experts that the costs will be so much higher if we don't deal with these problems now, incredibly high. High in ways you can't imagine. You know that if you have a piece of steak on your plate there's 1,000 gallons of water that went into that one piece of steak, not the whole cow, that one piece of steak, between its water that it drinks, the water used to grow its feed, all the way down to its processing, all the way to when it lands on your plate, there's 1,000 gallons of water in that one steak. If water goes from a tenth of a cent or 100th of a cent per gallon which is

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what a farmer might expect to pay for it when he draws it from a well, to a penny a gallon that 1,000 gallons turns into $10.00 worth of water instead of a few cents. Add $10.00 to the cost of that steak. That's an example I like to use that says when we have to pay for the technology to maintain what was free yesterday, we're not gonna be able to afford it. Somebody is gonna have to write that check, who is it going to be? This is a really sobering question. So, we – it behooves us to learn to be responsible sooner than later. Again with water, you can make as much as you want. You can find ways of cheaply purifying it. Try getting it from there to where you need it. You know, we grow a massive proportion of the world's food supply right in the middle of the U.S.A, that's a whole lot of pipeline to get water from the oceans to there. That's a tough order. How are we gonna do it?

[End of Interview Session] Transcription Service: Verbal Ink Session: 2 (Photovoice) Interviewee: Len Marinaccio Location: Prescott, Arizona Interviewer: Denise Moreno Ramírez (Q) Date: October 23, 2018 Q: Okay, Len, so let's talk about, uh, your first image that you're gonna

submit to the photo essay component of it. And it's the Arizona Republic, um, front page –

Marinaccio: Yes. Q: News article, uh, that was written about you in 2007. So, can you tell me

why you selected this image, what it means to you and what do you want people to learn from it?

Marinaccio: Well, um, not just because it's me or because it landed on the front page,

but that picture, there's only me in the picture in these surroundings that are obviously contaminated, and I felt at the time like the Environmental Committee was setting out on its own through some forbidden territory to, uh, to go and research this thing that politically might not play well, that a lot of people were really not going to like. And so there was a certain feeling like we were really alone and that picture said the same thing to me. Here is me, I'm out there, I'm in the middle of this and it's like being – I'm alone in the picture and we felt alone as we were doing this research because there was nobody else who was gonna help us. It was come what may.

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Q: And what do you want someone else to learn from this image? Marinaccio: That you can, that no matter what it looks like, no matter how hard

something looks to do, you can do it. Q: And so, the second image, uh, is this image of wind blowing dust, can you

also let me know why you selected this picture, what does it mean to you and what do you want someone to learn from this?

Marinaccio: This is what it looked like before the Superfund site was established. Once

the Superfund site was in place there were some projects to minimize the, the blowing dust. Now, you have to understand that that dust is coming off a pile that has very, very, very highly contaminated materials in it, primarily lead and arsenic, and that is just blowing free in the wind. Now, it was generally, as far as we know, landing in less inhabited places and I don't know how far the soil surveys went to determine. Um in the end that impact didn't seem to be as significant as the picture would show but when that much dust was blowing off of that four million tons of tailings it was quite a stunning sight. Yet, residents would largely ignore it. That's the strange thing. It was commonplace and you would just ignore it.

[End of Interview Session]