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| Douglas Virden, left, president of Equal Justice for All, says he has liver cancer due to contamination. Here Virden talks with Sylvester Harris and the Rev. Thomas Long. Photo: Bill Wilson/The Anniston Star |
Charm Bradford was mowing the yard of a west Anniston funeral home when it started to rain, and a mist rose up from the grass.
The next thing he knew, the 46-year-old woke up in Anniston’s Regional Medical Center, where doctors told him he’d suffered a stroke.
"Everybody has abandoned the area because they say it’s contaminated," said Bradford, who hadn’t heeded official warnings to wear a dust mask while working outside. "Nobody wants to help us anymore."
In this western Anniston neighborhood, the pollution didn’t leave when the headlines faded. Polychlorinated biphenyls, lead and mercury were dumped around town, and can be found as easily in everyday conversation as they can in the Environmental Protection Agency’s pollution guidebook.
Those living within a mile of the source of the PCBs have the nation’s highest blood levels of the contaminant, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry reports. Meanwhile, exposures in west Anniston are continuing in the air around Solutia, the plant that produced the toxic chemical.
Company records show PCBs are escaping into the air at concentrations higher than those found in major urban centers such as Chicago and Baltimore, not to mention the excessive levels found in the soil; and the ATSDR has reported that children in the neighborhood still show high concentrations of the chemical in their blood.
Solutia’s remedial projects manager, Craig Branchfield, maintains that, on average, the exposures are generally consistent with ambient levels found in urban areas across the country and are declining as the clean-up proceeds.
According to a company study, the concentration of PCBs in the air around the plant ranged from an average of 15 parts per trillion in 1998 to 12 parts per trillion in 2003; it reached a maximum of 116 parts per trillion in 2000.
"The question isn’t whether someone is exposed," Branchfield said, "the question is whether it’s an unacceptable risk. Given what I know about PCBs in air around the country, I don’t think there are unacceptable exposures, but that’s up to the EPA to decide."
EPA spokeswoman Dawn Harris-Young said the federal agency is using Solutia’s study to determine if PCB levels in the air pose a risk to the local population. No federal standards exist for ambient air levels of PCBs, she said.
Risk or no, the air emissions and the city’s other environmental concerns are a continual reminder of the problems faced by state and federal regulatory agencies. In Alabama, where environmental policy is often stacked toward industry, some worry whether another Anniston could be waiting to happen. Their concerns have only grown in recent years as the government, both state and federal, has cut funding for environmental protection.
During the recent economic downturn, Alabama slashed its contribution to ADEM nearly in half, putting the agency on a fiscal 1983 footing. The EPA’s budget, meanwhile, remains the same as it was five years ago, rising from $7.6 billion to $8 billion between 2000 and 2003, and then falling back to $7.6 billion this fiscal year.
At the same time, the EPA has reduced its contribution to state regulatory agencies by about five percent, said R. Steven Brown, executive director of the Environmental Council of the States, the national association of state environmental agency leaders.
Such reductions have an inordinate impact on ADEM’s finances, Brown said. While the average state agency receives about a third of its money from the EPA, ADEM has received nearly half of its budget from the agency in recent years. In contrast, California gets only 5 percent of its budget from federal sources.
"If you’re getting above 50 percent," said Brown, "you’re unduly reliant on federal sources."
EPA slow to clean
Local residents see parallels between the state and federal response to the contamination in their neighborhoods. Where the Alabama Department of Environmental Management once dragged out the cleanup, the EPA is doing so now, they say.
"I feel they have handicapped the Anniston community, because any viable business would not want to come here," said Rose Munford, a former nurse and community activist. She was angry about the slow cleanup and the decision to dump contaminated dirt in specified places downtown.
"It’s an outrage that the whole community isn’t in an uproar about what has gone on here. Look at Love Canal in New York. That was an affluent community and they totally cleaned it up. If we’re 10 times worse, why aren’t we being cleaned up?"
Alabama Department of Environmental Management officials say they began work as soon as they were notified of the problem, spending as much as $50 million – a substantial portion of their budget – to assess the scope of the damage. Residents simply didn’t know it at first because the agency’s method of testing was relatively noninvasive, said Clint Niemeyer, a spokesman for ADEM.
While the overall lack of agency funding may have slowed the pace of their work, it didn’t change the outcome, he said.
"The process takes time," Niemeyer said. "It is not always as fast as the average citizen would like to see it, but it is a necessary solution to the problem."
Pam Scully, the EPA’s project manager in Anniston, echoed him. The federal agency is required by law to seek public input at each stage in the cleanup process, she said: the EPA plans to decontaminate Solutia’s property by the end of the year, the surrounding neighborhood a few years after that, and then the 40-mile stretch of downstream waterways.
"So it’s going to take a lot longer," Scully said. "But that’s the way you do it if you want community involvement."
Undertaker Sylvester Harris questions the government timetable. In recent years, his tomatoes turned black and several of his dogs died after escaping into a nearby creek. Now, he’s waiting for compensation from the government for the contamination of his property.
He watches the dump trucks pile contaminated dirt across the street from his funeral parlor. When a strong wind kicks up, dust blows across his yard and covers his fleet of hearses.
"Ain’t nobody comin’ over here now but your friends," Harris said, explaining how his business has suffered. "What they comin’ over here for? It’s all ’taminated. The dead man don’t know; he’ll say, ‘Well, you can have my body,’ but when you dead, then the people send you somewhere else, you see? They say, ‘I ain’t going over there in that mess.’
"And now they’re putting it right behind me— two dumps — and you know good and well there’s lead in there."
Harris’ blood contains a high level of PCBs, and his property is contaminated with lead, another pollutant that was dumped around town. But he doesn’t suffer major health problems, at least not yet.
Residents suffering
Other residents weren’t so lucky.
Ray Young, 54, describes plucking fruit from the trees that grew over Solutia’s fence. Now, he takes dialysis treatments three times a week.
"They were some of the sweetest peaches, I mean sugar sweet," he recalls, running a finger over the stents in his forearms.
Annette King remembers getting nosebleeds and stomach cramps when she lived near the plant. The stench from the chemicals filled her parents’ home, said the 57-year-old, who today suffers a litany of health problems including migraines, skin rashes, and fibromyalgia.
"It just sticks to your throat," she said.
Dan Hughley was diagnosed with lupus, an autoimmune disease commonly found in west Anniston. He blames his illness on PCBs.
"All this stuff, they say it ain’t doing it to you," said Hughley, 57. "Somebody’s telling a lie."
Douglas Verdin, 53, carries around 130 times the level of PCBs considered safe. He developed liver cancer, and is undergoing chemotherapy for more than a dozen malignant tumors. But now the chemo has stopped working, and the compensation he received from a class-action lawsuit against Solutia isn’t enough to pay his medical bills.
"It’s ridiculous the way they doing, you know," Verdin said. "I mean, we’re sick, and nobody’s helping us."
Records show the region has a higher-than-average incidence of serious diseases. According to the Alabama Statewide Cancer Registry, Calhoun County has the seventh-highest cancer rate in the state, just behind Birmingham and Mobile. Meanwhile, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry has reported that nearly half of the residents of west Anniston it sampled had higher blood levels of PCBs than the federal maximum of five parts per million; a third of those sampled, including children, had twice that level, and some elderly residents had 20 times that level.
State officials were shocked by the findings.
"They thought at that time that they would not see such high levels in people unless they actually were working with PCBs," said Cheryl Browder, an educator with the Alabama Department of Public Health. "These were people who were just living in the neighborhood."
Thomas Long has lived in west Anniston all his life. At 58, the Methodist minister suffers a disabling, chronic case of bronchitis as well as rhinitis, an inflammation of the nasal passages. Tests show Long’s blood contains 12 times the federal safety level of PCBs. His house and property also are badly contaminated.
"People think it’s all about money, but it’s not about that, it’s about people," Long said, referring to the pollution. "People who are still being born are being brought into a contaminated environment (and) will have no recourse. And they’ll say, you should have done something."
Long threw out all of his furniture several years ago after discovering his home was tainted with lead and PCBs. He doesn’t work, having been disabled, and for a long time he couldn’t eat because of an allergic reaction to food.
Most nights, he just sits in his empty living room, waiting for Solutia or the EPA to clean up his property.
He no longer believes anyone’s coming to rescue him.
"I didn’t want to leave my home because I was told that this thing could be fixed," Long said. "That was 10 years ago. They didn’t fix it."