They Know No Shame

 [Updates below]

The above photo was taken by photojournalist Katie Falkenberg, who gave it this caption:

Erica and Rully Urias must bathe their daughter, Makayla, age 5, in contaminated water that is the color of tea. Their water has been tested and contains high levels of arsenic. The family attributes this water problem primarily to the blasting which they believe has disrupted the water table and cracked the casing in their well, allowing seepage of heavy metals into their water, and also to the runoff from the mountaintop removal sites surrounding their home. The coal company that mines the land around their home has never admitted to causing this problem, but they do supply the family with bottled water for drinking and cooking. Contaminated and colored water in has occurred in other coalfield communities as well where mountaintop mining is practiced.

The extraordinary and outrageous story behind that photo can be read here:  Obscenity: I Know it When I See It:

Now, that photo of Makayla Urias is a photograph of a naked child, a child exactly as naked as nine-year-old Kim Phuc was when, forty years ago, an Associated Press photographer snapped a picture of her, while she was running and crying from American napalm. You’ve probably seen that photo.It’s iconic. The photographer got a Pulitzer prize for taking it.

Yesterday, on the other hand, Maria was told that she would not be allowed to show that photo. It was not appropriate. She had the blessing of the child’s parents, but Republicans on the subcommittee alerted the capitol police (according to Spencer Pederson, a spokesman for GOP panel members), and after the hearing, the capitol police took Maria aside for questioning about “child pornography.”

I have an eerily similar experience to share.

In March 2008, I went to Passaic City, NJ to take some shots of contaminated toxic sites near schools.

I was investigating the NJ Schools Development Authority (SDA) and documenting how they spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars buying contaminated land, so they could put poor urban kids in schools on toxic sites.

I used the photos in this post: How the Other Half Schools 

I spoke to the Principal of Public School #9, told her what I was doing and why I was doing it, and got her permission to take photographs.

She suggested that when I was done with PS #9, that I go and take shots of a nearby preschool that was adjacent to a contaminated site, a former hospital.

Not only had the community lost a hospital for their residents, but now their children were being exposed to radioactive waste found during demolition of the hospital site – take a look at the kids’ school – in trailers, being exposed to radioactive dust:

Pre-school trailers can be seen in background. This brownfield site is a SDA construction site known as the “Dr. Robert Holster Education Complex”. A school was supposed to have been built there over 4 years ago but the site still sits vacant. A community hospital was torn down by SDA to build the school.

Now comes the part that I was reminded of by the West Virginia coal mining story and photo above.

Shortly after I got home from Passaic City and was eating dinner, a local West Amwell police officer knocked on my door.

He told me he had got a call from Passaic, complaining that I was taking photographs of young children and might be a pedophile!

Same bullshit – West Virginia to NJ. These scumbags know no shame.

[Update 2 – I just looked into the issues involved in that House hearing, titled: “Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources Oversight Hearing on the “Obama Administration’s Actions Against the Spruce Coal Mine: Canceled Permits, Lawsuits and Lost Jobs”  ( you can listen here).

I strongly urge anyone interested in the politics of environmental regulation and the economy to check it out. Republicans, the Chamber of Commerce, and the National Association of Manufacturers pulled out all the myths and spin about regulatory uncertainty.

I also read the US District Court’s opinion which found that EPA’s withdrawal of a previously approved disposal area specified in a USACE dredge permit was not authorized by the Clean Water Act. The mining corporation lawyers challenged EPA under 14 counts – after the oral hearing, in an unusual move (a Minute Order), the judge herself raised the issue and requested briefs on whether the EPA had the authority under the CWA, and issue not even raised by the mining company lawyers!  Talk about activist judges! And this was an Obama nominee! I put up a $10 bet that she gets reversed!

Update 1- the photographer who took the above bathtub photo, Ms. Falkenberg, sent me the following note to take exception to my posting of her work:

Dear Mr. Wolfe,

I was pointed to your website today about your post, “They Know no Shame.” I am the photographer who took the photo of the child in the bathtub that you posted. Respectfully, I ask that you please take down the photograph from your site. You are more than welcome, of course, to link to the photo on my site, but those photographs are copyrighted and may not be published without prior permission.

Thank you for your understanding.

Most sincerely,

Katie Falkenberg

Unfortunately, as a matter of principle, I was forced to refuse that request with the following reply, which notes fair use and attribution:,

Hi Katie:

First of all, I am a photographer too, so understand the artistic impulse. But I welcome any posting of my work, with attribution (and a link).

I learned of your work via a link in a post about political issues – e.g testimony before Congress.

I used your work -WITH express attribution and link – in a public interest post regarding broader but related issues.

As such, I think I respected your work, credited your work, and posted it under fair use doctrine.

In response to your concerns, I will provide a link to your website.

But I wil keep that photo as I posted it.

Sorry, if that is not satisfactory.

So please visit Ms. Falkenberg’s website and show her some love.

(I wonder if she had the same problem with Zunguzungu, who’s linked to her website? Or Digby, who linked to both.)