ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, March 11, 1996 TAG: 9603110121
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: PENSACOLA, FLA.
SOURCE: BILL KACZOR ASSOCIATED PRESS
note: below
NOBODY DENIES it's a toxic site. Nobody blames the residents for wanting to escape. But nobody's giving them much help, either.
These are the things that have happened to the people who lived in Margaret Williams' house:
Her parents and an uncle died of cancer. Williams had a baby who was stillborn and another who died of respiratory problems after three months. Her daughter gave birth to a child with six toes on each foot.
A constant over the decades has been two toxic waste sites, blocks from the single-story, brown brick house where Williams' family has lived and suffered.
Were those sites to blame for their heartache? Williams thinks so. And her neighbors - with their own tales of cancer, skin rashes, breathing problems, heart disease and other illnesses - are convinced that they have been sickened by the poisons around them.
But the story of ``Mount Dioxin,'' as the more polluted of the two sites is known, is not just about environmental horrors; it is about race, too. Williams and most of her neighbors are black, and many are certain this is why the government has not done more to get them out.
``I think if this had been a white neighborhood living between two Superfund sites, and once they found out the levels of contamination here, we wouldn't have had a problem,'' said Williams, a retired teacher and president of Citizens Against Toxic Exposure.
Federal officials deny that racism was involved.
``In fact, this community is getting extra consideration,'' said Mark Fite, project director for the Environmental Protection Agency. ``We've moved and accelerated this thing much more than the normal site.'' The government is considering a $23.1 million proposal to relocate up to 453 families.
But it has been a long time coming.
For years, the Escambia Wood Treating Co. bathed wooden pilings and utility poles in creosote and pentachlorophenol. At a nearby plant, another company, Agrico, manufactured fertilizer.
James Robinson, who has lived near the fertilizer plant for 36 years, recalled when the air was thick with dust.
``There were times when you start off from three blocks to go to your house and you couldn't see your house,'' he said. His wife often had to rinse clothes again after they had been hung out to dry.
The factories were abandoned in the 1980s.
The EPA spent $4 million on an emergency basis to excavate 250,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil - enough to fill 12,500 dump trucks - at the Escambia site in 1993 to halt contamination of ground water.
But the soil remains piled at the site, standing nearly 60 feet high and covered by gray plastic sheeting - hence, the ``Mount Dioxin'' nickname. Two intersecting mounds of soil, one about 1,000 feet long and the other about 300 feet - together roughly the size of four football fields - will stay until EPA decides on a permanent solution.
Taxpayers probably will have to foot the bill, estimated at $35 million to $154 million, to clean up the Escambia site; the company is defunct. A $10 million cleanup project has begun at the Agrico site, with the former owners paying the cost.
For nearly four years, residents of this tree-lined community of modest but well-kept homes have sought government help to move.
The EPA was worried about setting a precedent by admitting dioxin is more dangerous than previously thought, and it has responded cautiously. For years, the EPA contended that toxins from the sites had not spread significantly.
Finally neighbors persuaded the agency to test their yards last summer, and this is what they found:
Arsenic, PCBs, benzo-(a)pyrene, lead and dieldrin, a pesticide banned in the 1970s. And dioxin - in 16 yards, at levels exceeding the EPA standard.
A preliminary EPA study has found dioxin is a likely cause of cancer and a threat to immune, reproductive and developmental systems. As a result of the tests, the EPA classified Pensacola as a pilot project, distinct from past pollution relocations such as those at Love Canal in Niagara Falls, N.Y., and Times Beach, Mo., which had higher dioxin levels.
Lois Gibbs, a former Love Canal resident and founder of Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste in Falls Church, Va., says Pensacola is ``absolutely the worst'' of the nation's Superfund sites because of the many different toxins.
The EPA maintains there is no evidence linking toxic waste to the deaths and ailments in the neighborhood. The federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry proposed a study to find out, but residents refused to cooperate. Williams said they were afraid the study would be rigged to support EPA's conclusions. She is trying instead to obtain state data on cancer deaths in the neighborhoods.
Fite says the government is obligated to help only the 16 families whose yards are contaminated, but officials recognize the plight of others nearby - the stress they are under and the financial hardships they suffer because they can't sell their homes.
Retirees Jimmy and Ollie McWaine say they would not sell their home, about a block from Mount Dioxin, to a private buyer even if they could find one.
``Why would I sell this house to somebody else and get them to come in here and live in all this contamination when I'm trying to get out of here?'' Ollie McWaine said. ``I wouldn't do that to nobody.''
LENGTH: Long : 102 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP Sammie Jones and Margaret Williams blame the toxicby CNBwaste site they call ``Mount Dioxin'' for many deaths and illnesses
in the community. color