HUD Helps Banks Unload Koppers Toxic Homes
23 Aug514 NW 31st Lane
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- Categories Beazer East, Death, EPA Corruption, Florida, Fraud, Gainesville, Gainesville redevelopment, Koppers, Uncategorized
Koppers Update: Stephen Foster Neighborhood
2 NovKoppers Health Warnings
In August 2009, ATSDR and the Florida Department of Health began issuing an ongoing series of health warnings to residents of Stephen Foster Neighborhood including:
*Residents should wash hands after contact with soil and water.
*Parents should keep children from playing in contaminated soils.
*Residents should mow lawns only when it is not dry and dusty, and should avoid exposure to dust from mowing.
*Residents should keep chickens used for homegrown eggs in elevated coops because dioxin contamination was found in eggs from neighborhood free-range chickens.
*Eating homegrown vegetables such as zucchini could cause thyroid changes and fertility problems, and increase cancer risk. There are many unknowns in assessing the real health risk.
“In a million years, I wouldn’t live there with my kids.” –City Commissioner Todd Chase on Koppers contamination in Stephen Foster Neighborhood
Koppers Disclosure Required by Law
Florida Statutes require the presence of Koppers and its contamination to be fully disclosed to homebuyers and renters in our neighborhood.
Recent homebuyers and renters are reporting that they received no disclosure of Koppers Superfund and its contamination. Some report receiving incomplete or misleading information about the Site and its health hazards.
Non-disclosed or improperly disclosed homeowners and renters have three years from the date they first learn of the contamination to take legal action, and some recent homebuyers are currently filing non-disclosure lawsuits. Renters who went before the City Commission about their non-disclosure have been let out of their leases by their landlords.
Homes More Contaminated Inside than Out
Over 100 local homes were independently tested for Dioxin, Arsenic and PAH’s. The results are alarming: the inside of tested Stephen Foster Neighborhood homes average 400 to over 1,100 times more contamination than the toxic soil that EPA/Beazer East is removing from yards.
“We have a very serious problem here that one foot of soil is not going to cure” -timber industry and remediation expert Bob Burton
No Guarantee that Soil Replacement will Work- and No Second Chance
Residents refusing EPA/Beazer East’s one foot soil replacement are doing so because soil replacement did not work here in the past: two to sixty feet of toxic soil were removed and replaced with new soil. When the new soil was tested three years later, it had become just as contaminated as the original soil.
EPA/Beazer East will not guarantee that the soil replacement will work- and they have stated that they will not test the new soil later. If the new soil becomes contaminated -as has happened every time in the past -residents who had the soil replacement will be left with toxic soil and toxic homes with no entity legally bound to help them out.
However, Beazer East’s Mitchell Brourman stated at the soil remediation meeting in May that residents can back out of the soil replacement contract anytime before soil removal is performed on their property.
“We’re not coming back.” -Mitchell Brourman to City Commission: Beazer East is done in Stephen Foster Neighborhood after twelve inch soil removal- even if it fails.
Residents’ Relocation Efforts Unaffected by Koppers Consent Decree
There are many precedents for relocation in Superfund Communities like Stephen Foster Neighborhood. Beazer East can choose to be a good neighbor in reality and introduce an option to help families move out of Koppers contaminated homes.
Superfund Communities who have achieved relocation for their families advise Stephen Foster Neighborhood residents that their relocations were achieved after federal consent decrees were signed. They stress the importance of continuing to demand relocation out of Dioxin-Arsenic-PAH contaminated homes.
Gainesville City Commissioner Hinson-Rawls wants residents made whole and told Beazer East to “Just purchase the homes”
Update provided by
Stephen Foster Neighborhood Association, Inc.
Stephen Foster Neighborhood Protection Group
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Gainesville Commissioner Chase says of Stephen Foster Neighborhood, “In a million years, I wouldn’t live there with my kids.”
7 OctResident Sharon Sheets wants relocation: “Half my life in contamination“
Resident Farinda O’Steen: “I’m up to 20 in my family that have died over that (Koppers) plant and I want out of the neighborhood”
Resident Alice Alonso wants to know why Beazer East/Koppers executives like Mitchell Brourman haven’t been jailed. Mayor Braddy agrees that Mrs. Alonso would be arrested for terrorism if she purchased their deadly chemical cocktail that’s killing her family and neighbors.
Industry Expert Bob Burton tells Commission, “We have a very serious problem here that one foot of soil is not going to cure”
Gainesville Commissioner Hinson-Rawls wants residents made whole: “Just purchase the homes“
“We’re not coming back.” Beazer East executive Mitchell Brourman says they’re done in Stephen Foster Neighborhood after twelve inch soil removal even if it fails.
Gainesville Commissioner Chase says of Stephen Foster Neighborhood, “In a million years, I wouldn’t live there with my kids.“
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National Institute of Health (NIH): Dioxin exposure causes transgenerational health effects
27 SepIn a WSU press release, Skinner said of his latest findings, “It is not just the individuals exposed, but potentially the great-grandchildren that may experience increased adult-onset disease susceptibility.”
By Brant Hamel
A new study, funded in part by NIEHS, found that dioxin affects not only the health of an exposed rat, but also unexposed descendants through a mechanism of epigenetic transgenerational inheritance.
The study was conducted in the laboratory of Michael Skinner, Ph.D., a professor in the Center for Reproductive Biology in the Department of Biological Sciences at Washington State University (WSU) who designed the study. Co-authors included assistant research professor Mohan Manikkam, Ph.D., research technician Rebecca Tracey, and postdoctoral researcher Carlos Guerrero-Bosagna, Ph.D.
“Although not designed for risk assessment, these results have implications for the human populations that are exposed to dioxin and are experiencing declines in fertility and increases in adult onset disease, with a potential to transmit them to later generations,” the authors concluded.
Dangers of dioxin last for decades after initial exposure
Dioxin, 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo[p]dioxin (TCDD), is a chemical compound that constitutes part of the Agent Orange herbicide used as a defoliant in the Vietnam War. According to research cited in the study, exposure is estimated to have caused 400,000 deaths and 500,000 birth defects. Dioxin has also been released from industrial accidents, leading to human exposures. Due to its extremely long half-life of up to 10 years in humans, dioxin may still affect pregnancies occurring even 20 years after exposure.
In the Skinner group’s experiments, exposure to dioxin caused changes in the DNA methylation patterns of sperm that were transmitted across generations, in an imprinted-like manner, to affect the health of multiple generations of descendents. The grandchildren of exposed rats showed dioxin-induced effects ranging from polycystic ovarian disease to kidney disease. The work raises the serious concern that even if toxic chemicals, such as dioxin, were completely removed from the environment, they could continue to cause disease for multiple generations.
Health effects of dioxin include early onset of puberty in females
Skinner’s group used low in vivo doses of dioxin, so that toxic effects were not expected. Female rats were exposed while pregnant, and both their direct progeny and descendants two generations removed were examined.
Although the most prominent phenotypes were kidney disease in males and polycystic ovarian disease in females, a number of other effects including abscesses, colon impaction, lung abnormalities, and missing testes were also observed in animals from the dioxin-treated lineage. Additionally, females from the dioxin-exposed lineage experienced the early onset of puberty. Conversely, males showed delayed puberty, suggesting sex-specific effects of exposure. Early puberty in humans has increased over recent decades and is believed to have an environmental link.
Dioxin alters methylation patterns in germ line DNA across generations
The researchers were able to identify 50 specific regions of DNA that were differentially methylated in the dioxin-treated animals. These regions were permanently reprogrammed and protected from DNA methylation, in a manner that allowed them to be passed down across generations. In the future, these regions may serve as biomarkers that would allow early detection of exposure and risk for disease.
Other chemical compounds, including bisphenol A, phthalates, the insecticide DEET, and the jet fuel JP8 have all been shown to promote disease across generations, through a similar mechanism of epigenetic transgenerational inheritance (see story). This pathway of disease propagation exists not only in rats, but also in humans, mice, worms, flies, and even plants. Thus, future research will be needed to see if other environmental compounds may also lead to health effects across generations.
In addition to NIEHS, NIH and the U.S. Department of Defense provided support for the study.
Citation: Manikkam M, Tracey R, Guerrero-Bosagna C, Skinner MK. 2012. Dioxin (TCDD) induces epigenetic transgenerational inheritance of adult onset disease and sperm epimutations. PLoS One 7(9):e46249.
(Brant Hamel, Ph.D., is an Intramural Research Training Award fellow in the NIEHS Laboratory of Signal Transduction.)
http://www.niehs.nih.gov/news/newsletter/2012/11/science-dioxin/
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Koppers Consent Decree is Irrelevant to Relocation of Residents
9 SepSuperfund Communities across the US who achieved relocation for their families continue to advise Gainesville Koppers Victims and Refugees that relocation was achieved well after consent decrees were signed. They further stress that this is the time to begin really advocating loudly for our families’ relocation out of dioxin-arsenic-pah deathtrap contaminated homes.
Beazer East is certainly not a good neighbor- in fact, there are numerous instances where infamous Dow Chemical is a far better neighbor and citizen than Beazer East.
In July 2012, DOW Chemical offered to purchase 50 dioxin contaminated homes in Midland, Michigan to enable families near the Tittabawassee River Superfund Site to move out of harm’s way. Residents and government agencies did not initiate these offers- Dow undertook this humanitarian action on its own.
Contrast this with Beazer East’s cold-blooded treatment of residents in Gainesville’s Superfund Community: not only has Beazer East failed to reach out to families who need to evacuate their dangerously contaminated homes- residents, many with catastrophic illnesses known to result from chemical exposure, who contact Beazer East with buyout negotiation requests have been uniformly turned down by Beazer East representatives.
Dow Chemical also bought out homes on contaminated land near their Morrisonville, Louisiana plant in order to create a safety zone. Louisiana environmental officials noted that industrial facilities and residences do not mix. Likewise, superfund sites and residences do not mix. Dow executives said buyouts were a sensible approach to moving people out of harm’s way, and good citizenship.
Just this summer, chemical corporation Sasol North America announced plans to introduce a Voluntary Property Purchase Program in Mossville, Louisiana. Mossville residents have been fighting for relocation since at least the 1990’s, so this is huge news for this community whose health and property values have suffered for decades and yet was denied Superfund designation by EPA 2011.
There are many more precedents for relocation buyouts in contaminated communities, including Superfund Communities. Beazer East can choose to be a good neighbor in reality and introduce a buyout option so help their victims get their families out of toxic homes instead of perpetuating the collusion and coverup that will keep harming Gainesville families. In the meantime, Koppers Victims and Refugees will advocate ever more loudly for relocation out of dioxin-arsenic-pah contaminated deathtrap homes…
Sandra Watts Kennedy
President, Stephen Foster Neighborhood Association, Inc.
09/05/13 remarks to Gainesville City Commission
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Rally Against Wells Fargo’s Greed and Prejudice on July 19th!
9 JulWells Fargo, Greed and Prejudice
Wells Fargo Willfully Sells Agent Orange Homes to Low-Income and Minority Gainesville Families
Rally Against Wells Fargo’s Greed and Prejudice! Friday, July 19th 5:00-6:00pm Meet at Bo Diddley Plaza & March to Rally at Wells Fargo at 104 North Main Street
Wells Fargo spokeswoman Debora Blume told the Palm Beach Post that Wells Fargo requires their appraisers to identify contamination hazards, stating “Our agencies and investors prohibit the sale of loans when a proven property hazard affects safety and habitability.” Yet Wells Fargo continues to sell Gainesville houses that are documented to be severely contaminated with arsenic, PAH’s, and dioxins (aka agent orange) to unsuspecting low-income and minority families in neighborhoods surrounding the notorious Koppers Superfund Site, violating Florida Statutes that require full disclosure of this hazard with seeming impunity. Wells Fargo’s callous practice has brought misery to countless local families who have paid for WF’s lies with their health, even with their lives. Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf, the highest paid CEO in US history, is still dissatisfied with his taxpayers’ bailout. Stumpf and his cronies give themselves outrageous bonuses while sentencing local families to a toxic nightmare, knowingly selling highly contaminated homes with no disclosure of the danger to homebuyers’ health and lives. This is just one of the many ways that Wells Fargo singles out innocent, vulnerable members of our community, a practice WF has been heavily fined for in other states.
Tell Wells Fargo Our Families Are Worth More Than Your Profits!
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GAINESVILLE RESIDENTS REJECT FRAUDULENT SOIL TEST RESULTS
19 JunWe the victims of Koppers Gainesville, one of the Nation’s oldest and most toxic Superfund Sites, outright reject AMEC’s soil sampling due to these facts:
Trees absorb contaminants from adjacent soils, thereby lowering the toxin levels in those soils. Stephen Foster Neighborhood residents saw employees of AMEC- also known as MACTEC- break soil collection protocol by taking samples from soil immediately next to tree-trunks. And, in the months prior to soil collection, residents saw new soil added to several properties where soil samples were later collected.
Worse, many residents witnessed AMEC employees diluting soil samples. They were seen performing the following actions:
1. Placing clean soil from a potting soil bag into a stainless steel mixing bowl
2. Collecting a small scraping of soil from a resident’s yard using a trowel
3. Adding the collected soil to the clean potting soil in the mixing bowl
4. Very vigorously mixing the two soils
5. Placing some of the resulting soil mixture into a sample jar
6. And pouring the remaining soil mixture onto the ground. Homeowners witnessing this action called neighborhood representatives and asked them to come out to see for themselves. The representatives that responded also witnessed these actions.
AMEC employees were seen repeating this process at properties throughout the neighborhood. Their tampering renders Beazer East’s soil testing inadmissible. We do not accept Beazer East’s fraudulent test results. Our families need out of the dioxin, PAH, arsenic contaminated homes that are making us sick.
Willingness to accept counterfeit test results and Beazer East & EPA’s “raw deal” for Gainesville families is inhumane. Decades of collusion and negligence at every level of government has allowed Gainesville to become a Toxic City.
Susan Fairforest
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- Categories Beazer East, Death, EPA Corruption, Florida, Gainesville, Koppers, Uncategorized
Beazer East & EPA: Keeping Gainesville Toxic with a Little Help from AMEC
19 JunThe United States has recovered more than 19 million from AMEC in damages and penalties to settle litigation regarding fraud, false claims and kickbacks on Federal contracts in Sacramento, San Francisco, St. Louis and New Jersey.
At the World Trade Center, AMEC destroyed very important evidence during the clean-up. This and the tampering witnessed by many residents in our neighborhood render AMEC’s soils test results false and unacceptable and Un-American. Why are we entrusting the health and the lives of Gainesville’s children to AMEC?
The “Raw Deal” as acknowledged by this Commission earlier this year really gives us a toxic waste dump. Dumping additional toxic residential soil on top of the already contaminated superfund site allows creosote, and other Koppers chemicals to continue to contaminate our drinking water, the Floridan Aquifer.
Removing one foot of polluted soil and entombing residents in toxic homes does nothing to protect families. Officials already know that in some homes two to four feet and even twenty to forty feet of toxic soil have already been replaced with clean soil, only to find out later that the replacement soil is just as contaminated as the original soil.
According to Beazer East employee Mitch Brourman, this clean-up is “the best clean-up ever in the nation”. No, EPA and Beazer East, this is NOT “the best clean-up ever” and it is NOT protective of Gainesville residents and our city. This is nothing more than a criminal cover-up that is Keeping Gainesville Toxic. We need and want out of our toxic homes!
Residents want to thank Todd Chase: he is the only City Commissioner that fully understood the implications of accepting this cover-up/raw deal. We are grateful to him for voting against it. This Raw Deal will forever stamp Gainesville with the stigma of Toxic City.
Ron Hodill
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Sandra Watts Kennedy on AMEC’s Canadian Scandal
14 JunCity of Gainesville Commission Meeting
June 6, 2013
AMEC engineers and scientists hired to do environmental assessment for the Raven Coal Corporation in Port Alberni Canada falsified data about the Alberni Airshed, not once but twice.
When AMEC published their final assessment of air pollutant concentrations in the Alberni Airshed, they claimed that DIOXIN levels in the airshed were well below the safe level standard for air quality set by the Canadian Government and the World Health Organization. But AMEC was not aware that the Canadian Government monitors the Alberni Airshed for air pollutant concentrations.
The Canadian Government’s reports confirmed major DIOXIN air pollution in Port Alberni, contrary to AMEC’s air quality report. Investigation into AMEC’s actions in Port Alberni proved that AMEC never collected any air quality data in the Alberni Airshed- their report was composed of false test results invented to meet the needs of their client.
AMEC’s fraudulent report included a map illustrating the locations of monitoring towers they claimed to have used for several years to collect their Alberni Airshed data. Upon investigation it was established that these monitoring stations never existed.
It is said that one can tell a lot about a person’s character by the company they keep. AMEC is criminally fraudulent. Why does Beazer East keep using them in Gainesville? And why has Beazer East repeatedly lied to residents about rehiring AMEC under another name? Why is EPA allowing use of AMEC-derived data when the lives of Gainesville’s children are at risk?
This farce is costing lives in Gainesville! We reject AMEC’s sham test results and all aspects of the Beazer East/EPA coverup! Our families want out of our dioxin-contaminated homes while we’re still alive!
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Stephen Foster Resident Martha Miller On AMEC’s Fraudulent History
14 JunCity of Gainesville Commission Meeting
June 6, 2013
AMEC (Beazer East’s environmental consultant for Gainesville’s Koppers Superfund Site) is a huge British-owned corporation like BP that is notoriously corrupt and has faced indictments from countries all over the world. For example:
1. In 2008 Great Britain’s Serious Fraud Office fined AMEC five million pounds for falsifying records and other related ethics violations.
2. In South Africa, AMEC was named in a bribery/kickback scandal involving contracts on the Lesotho Dam Project.
3. AMEC carried out the Environmental Impact Assessment for the proposed Chalillo Dam in Belize, and has been accused of burying the scientific analysis of the dam’s impact on wildlife that concluded the project would cause significant and irreversible loss of biological diversity.
Geologists characterize AMEC’s Environmental Impact Assessment as “gravely flawed and so filled with errors so as to render it useless as a document for engineers to use in the design and the construction of the proposed dam.” They go on to state “The mistakes made by AMEC in the geological mapping of the Chalillo site would get a failing mark in an introductory geology class”.
4. Likewise, University of Florida scientists found AMEC’s assumptions and models regarding health risks associated with Koppers Superfund Site to be so flawed that they recommended to Florida DEP that AMEC’s data should not be used at all.
Given AMEC’s worldwide reputation for unethical conduct and unreliable work, continuing to use their falsified data to drive our remedial action is a major mistake that will forever impact the reputation of our city. More importantly, Gainesville families will continue to sicken and die in toxic homes. We want out of this toxic city. We don’t want to die in beautiful but toxic homes- We reject this RAW DEAL!
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- Categories Beazer East, Death, EPA Corruption, Florida, Gainesville, Koppers, Uncategorized
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