The Huffington Post has concluded a three part series on the environment and public health crisis that has taken over the 35th Avenue Birmingham Superfund site. The three articles cover the history of the Superfund site and examine the current health crisis that remains for residents still exposed to contaminants left by a legacy of production in North Birmingham.
Read Part One
Read Part Two
Read Part Three
Tag: contamination
The eastern coast of Texas has proven to be a vulnerable spot for natural disasters, tropical storms, and facility pollution. In the wake of tropical storm Imelda, the Houston and Baytown areas have reported a release of tens of thousands of pounds of pollutants due to the power outages, shutdowns, and storage tank failures caused by the storm. After the facility failures following Hurricane Harvey, legislators and industries have called for more stringent regulations and technology on storage tank in order to prevent future failures from approaching storms. Read More.
New Jersey officials announced Monday, September 23, that EPA approved faucet filters have effectively made water in Newark, NJ safe to drink from lead contamination. The state is now waiting for the Trump administration to pass the Clean Water State Revolving Fund that will allow states to reallocate funds to address public health problems. New Jersey has been able to replace more than 900 of the 6,500 homes in Newark that have requested lead service line replacements. The passage of the bill will allow the city to be able to further replace the 18,000 privately owned service lines throughout Newark. Read More.
Represnetative Brian Baldridge proposed a bill that will prohibit Dayton, Ohio fire departments from training with PFAS infused foam. The dangerous chemical has been found to have contaminated an aquifer underneath the fire training center that sources the city’s drinking water. The bill still allows for the use of the foam in necessary fire fighting circumstances; however, departments must find an alternative training source by January 1, 2020. Read More.
By Sharon Franklin
Elizabeth Gribkoff of the Vermont Digger recently reported in her article Years after discovery, PFOA looms over Bennington residents, that individuals such as Sandy Sumner and his wife who live in North Bennington, Vermont have their lives permanently altered by contamination from the former ChemFab plant, a Teflon coating plant. The Sumners use to have a large vegetable patch in front of their house, but they are now afraid to eat anything grown on their property because the soil and groundwater is contaminated with chemicals that are very harmful. When the plant was operational, Sumner and neighbors complained to the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the factory management about the acrid emissions from the smokestacks. Sumner states “My wife and I, we were constantly sick,” “We couldn’t keep our windows and doors open. We got headaches, migraines, sore throats, nosebleeds.” When the plant closed in 2002, the Sumners found out from the state that their drinking water well was contaminated with 580 parts per trillion of Perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA — more than 29 times higher than the Vermont drinking water standard.
In April, 2019 the state of Vermont reached a final agreement with Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics, the current owner of the ChemFab factory. As stated in the agreement “Under this final settlement, … Saint-Gobain will directly fund a significant portion of the waterline extensions and be responsible for long-term monitoring, the drilling of replacement wells, and the long-term operation and maintenance of in-home treatment systems. Waterline work in the East Side of the Town of Bennington is estimated at $20 to $25 million. Pending final budget approval, the State has agreed to commit $4.7 million to extend waterlines to the maximum extent feasible.”
In the Fall of 2018, Water-line extensions were completed at roughly 200 houses on the western side of the contaminated area, including the Sumners’ home. Construction on the second phase of water line extensions in Bennington has begun, but many homes won’t be connected until 2020. However, the Bennington residents like the Sumners impacted by perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) contamination are still dealing with potential long-term health impacts, costs of water bills and resignation that their properties will be indefinitely contaminated.
Some good news for the Sumners came on August 27, 2019. The lawsuit he and his wife with eight other residents filed against Saint-Gobain, seeking to make the company pay for property damages and long-term medical monitoring for PFOA-related illnesses, took a step forward, when a federal judge allowed the case to advance as a class action.
Sandy Sumner says “We’re not happy to be involved in the class action.”. “It’s stressful. But I wouldn’t shy away from it — it’s too important.” He hopes the lawsuit will help pressure chemical companies to prevent contamination like this from occurring. “Because they’re not going to do it on their own,”.
Jim Sullivan, one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against St. Gobain Performance Plastics, says “The airborne PFOA contamination in Bennington differs from, say, an industrial spill, where the focus is on cleaning up a particular site, “But in this case, the contaminated site is right here, we’re living on it,” he said. “And everybody who’s had their property contaminated is living on the contaminated site.”
Sitting in the living room of his home, Sumner said the impact of the PFOA contamination on the property value remains a “question mark.” As the house is his family’s nest egg, he hopes they can get a good price for it when they eventually go to sell it. “At the same time, anyone who wants to buy this house, I would make damn sure that they knew that even though those flower beds are beautiful, that the soil and groundwater is contaminated”. “And, it will be while you’re living here.”
Photos by: Mike Dougherty/VTDigger
The water samples drawn Aug. 8 at Crete-Monee Middle School found numerous school drinking fountains that tested well above the EPA action level, including one that was 90 times above the level on first draw and 30 times above the level after a 30-second flush, according to district-supplied data. Read more.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers has signed an executive order to curb contamination from chemicals in firefighting foam, non-stick cookware and fast-food wrappers, his office announced Friday.
The state DNR will have to create a council to develop a PFAS action plan for the state and evaluate the risk PFAS pose to public health. The agency already has a PFAS technical advisory group that examines the chemicals’ impact on the state but it doesn’t have an appointed membership. Anyone can attend the group’s meetings.
The DNR also must develop regulatory standards for the chemicals. Evers’ administration in June proposed a new PFAS enforcement standard of 20 parts per trillion, far below the 70 parts per trillion federal standard. The DNR is currently gathering public input on the standards. DNR spokeswoman Sarah Hoye said the executive order allows the department to propose rules implementing the new standards. Read more.
Times Beach made national headlines in December 1982 when state and federal health officials declared the town uninhabitable because its unpaved roadways were polluted with dioxin, a toxic chemical. “Everything that was near and dear to the people in this community. All the houses and the city equipment. Everything that they didn’t take with them that was left in their homes is buried here,” said Marilyn Leistner, the last mayor of Times Beach. Read more.
Photo: A copy of the promotion for Times Beach that was published in the St. Louis Times newspaper in 1925.
CREDIT ST. LOUIS TIMES
Wilson County residents and other North Carolina property owners fighting the Atlantic Coast Pipeline won a small legal victory Wednesday when a federal judge extended a stay in a dozen cases.
“It’s just completely unnecessary expense and aggravation and the judge made a common-sense decision,” Therese Vick (BREDL) said. “This would be just irreparable harm to these folks, these families and farmers and property owners.”
Some Pittsboro, North Carolina residents have been suspicious of their water since testing in 2017 showed that there were elevated levels of PFAs in Cape Fear River, their main water source. The toxins come from the Chemours Fayetteville Works chemical plant, located upriver of Pittsboro.
According to Pittsboro’s mayor, very few residents are aware that their water may be contaminated with PFAS. While the levels found weren’t technically above the legal limits, research suggests that there isn’t a safe level of PFAS contamination in water because the chemical remains in people’s systems for extended periods of time.
Duke University will be conducting a study on the impacts of PFAS in the bloodstream on human health, and will take blood samples of atleast 30 Pittsboro residents in the coming year. <Read more>