|
| Rose Munford voices her complaints Monday night to Craig Branchfield, Solutia’s project manager for PCBs cleanup during a meeting held by Community Against Pollution at the Carver Community Center. Photo: Trent Penny/The Anniston Star |
Community Against Pollution had called the meeting to update Anniston residents on the federal Tolbert PCBs settlement payments, the PCB Health Study and Solutia’s PCBs cleanup.
Monsanto manufactured PCBs in western Anniston from the 1930s to the 1970s, contaminating the area’s soil and residents’ bodies. The federal Tolbert lawsuit settled in August 2003 for $300 million on behalf of 18,000 plaintiffs has stirred much controversy over lower-than-anticipated awards, a lengthy payment process and $25 million set aside for a health clinic.
"All of us are on edge," said Tolbert plaintiff Rose Munford. "This has torn this community apart. That’s why we have confusion."
David and Shirley Baker of CAP said the meeting had been rescheduled from last week so that Ed Gentle, the Tolbert settlement claims administrator, could attend. However, Gentle canceled Thursday. The plaintiffs’ attorneys were also invited, but did not attend, the Bakers said.
Craig Branchfield, Solutia’s project manager for PCBs cleanup, attended the meeting of more than 80 community members took questions about residential cleanup and the landfills.
When he finished, Shirley Baker made a few comments before the meeting was supposed to move to an open discussion. But that discussion never happened.
"CAP, we started this fight back in 1998," Shirley Baker told the crowd. "This whole community was behind us but it has since divided. Unless we come together we are not going to get anything done."
As Baker began to explain the importance of the health clinic and the health study, she directed her comments toward an audience member, Faye Hanner, who has criticized the study.
Hanner, whose mother is a plaintiff in the Tolbert suit, was sitting in the front row and stood up to respond. The two women were instantly yelling incoherently at one another.
"CAP is being paid. CAP is being paid," Hanner yelled to the people walking out.
"What has she done? What has she done? She ain’t done nothing in this community but raise hell," Shirley yelled out as an elderly woman grabbed her arm as if to hold her back.
Rose Munford, who gathered names with Hanner for a petition objecting to the Tolbert settlement and its payment distribution, said someone in a position of authority needs to see what’s going on and try to bring the community back together.
"It doesn’t seem that we can come to the table with civilized speaking," Munford said.
She added that Gentle, by canceling, was not doing his job.
Wanda Champion, a Tolbert plaintiff, said she has only received her $500 advance payments but wants to move the conversation past the money and the turmoil and focus on the cleanup and health study.
"It hurts me because this is my home," she said. Champion hopes the study will address the health of her grandchildren and the cleanup will bring about economic development so that she can feel pride in her community.
David Baker, CAP executive director, said at the meeting’s outset that he wanted to set the record straight on some things.
Baker said the health study came about as a result of his testimony at a 2002 U.S. Senate hearing and he was able to get there because of the members of the community who donated their nickels and dimes to send him. Baker assured people the $3.2 million study funded by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry was not connected to a lawsuit. He urged people to continue to sign up and tell their friends and family members to do the same in order to save their children and their grandchildren from the death that plagues the area.
David Baker said the contract CAP has to do outreach for the health study has been taken out of context. He said it’s not about selling anything, and it wasn’t making anyone rich.
"CAP has no money," he said. "We fought Solutia and Monsanto with a sling shot. There’s a whole lot of misperception out there."
He said the health clinic was his idea, and at one time what the majority of community members said they wanted.
"I was here for the least of these, the people that came to our office and asked for money out of our pockets to buy their medicine at Winn-Dixie," he said. "We got people in Anniston that can’t afford medicine, that can’t afford to go to the doctor."
Baker once again asked that rumors against him be stopped and said he and his wife, Shirley Baker are not being paid to be part of the Community Advisory Group to the cleanup.
"The people round here need to get together," said Tolbert plaintiff Henry Lewis. "We’re all God’s children. We’re the ones whose dying."