Lois Gibbs, the suburban housewife who turned activist in the 1970s over Love Canal wastes that poisoned her family”s home in New York, told a Caspar Community Center crowd on Sunday that she was amazed that areas of the Georgia Pacific mill site found to contain dioxin are not covered.
“It is just unbelievable that somebody isn”t over there covering that site up,” she said.
Just a few weeks ago she appeared at a dioxin contaminated site in Opportunity, Mont.. The result of that community”s action was for the U.S. EPA to demand the site be covered by Dec. 1, she asserted. In that location, dust from old mining tailings was blowing onto homes, according to published reports.
Locally, the piles of material dredged from ponds that had the highest dioxin levels were removed to a landfill over the summer. G-P spokeswoman Melodie Ruse asserts that the remaining exposed areas are not at levels that could cause concern.
“The few remaining exposed areas where dioxin has been detected are below background levels with the highest measurement being 29.3 [parts per trillion.] To put this in perspective, one part per trillion is equal to one second in 32,000 years,” Ruse said.
Nationally, the EPA is completing a scientific reassessment of the health risks of exposure to dioxin. This is not likely to have good news, according to the EPA Website.
“EPA began reassessing the health risks of exposure to dioxin ? in light of significant advances in our scientific understanding of mechanisms of dioxin toxicity, new studies of dioxin”s carcinogenic potential in humans, and increased evidence of other adverse health effects,” the Website states.
Since her historic battle, Gibbs has made a career of fighting pollution and polluters, particularly the carcinogen dioxin. She visits and speaks in about 50 communities per year, she said.
She demonstrated extensive knowledge of dioxin and the political and scientific hurdles that come with reuse of an old industrial site. She got her specific information from local leaders of groups like North Coast Action and the Sierra Club, who were hosts of the Sunday presentation at Caspar Community Center. Gibbs works by combining her general knowledge with specific knowledge from local groups, brewed with what arises at forums to often produce change, she said.
A standing room only crowd of some 75 people was on hand for the event early Sunday afternoon. The crowd was a mixture of residents of Fort Bragg and the rest of the Mendocino Coast. Fort Bragg City Manager Linda Ruffing attended but no councilmembers or candidates were on hand. They were invited to a private meeting with Gibbs on Sunday evening at the home of Alis Valencia.
Valencia said City Council candidates Judy Williams and Meg Courtney showed to hear from Gibbs, along with City Councilman Doug Hammerstrom. The other candidates and councilmen were invited but didn”t come, she said. Gibbs agreed to act as an advisor to locals during that meeting, Valencia said. Leaders of North Coast Action are hoping for new people to step forward to give input and help monitor state agencies.
Embolded by winning battles over the years with inscrutable scientists and stodgy government agencies, Gibbs clearly has distrust for official lines. For example, science and government were once firmly convinced that dioxin didn”t move once it adhered to soil although she and her neighbors insisted it had. Later, it was found, when combined with solvents, dioxin becomes water soluble and can move, as the neighbors had been convinced of from the beginning, Gibbs told the crowd.
Perhaps more onerously, New York State agencies concluded that the fact that 56 percent of the children born in her town had birth defects like extra fingers was simply a statistical anomaly due to genetic defects in the parents. Despite this rebuffal by the state, Gibbs and her followers prevailed in getting President Jimmy Carter to rescue them all from the contaminated housing. Federal, state and local agencies had known about the Love Canal problem two years before Gibbs but didn”t tell, she said.
She used her experiences with government agencies over the years to suggest what might be true in Fort Bragg;
“I would be willing to bet at that old plant site and with the [location of] fly ash in this community, somebody in this community already knows, ” she told the Sunday crowd.
She said talk of reusing the mill site makes a lot of sense but with potentially millions of dollars in cleanup costs the city is faced with a real challenge in getting the job done.
“There is talk about economic development here and that is a really good idea but only if they clean it up right. Love Canal is an example of institutional control. They didn”t clean it up, they just paved it over. It didn”t work there and it isn”t going to work here either,” she said.
She said routines that corporations use to get out of cleanup include placing wind and groundwater samples in places they know nothing will be found, or measuring in the wrong decimal system, such as parts per million for dioxin, which is measured in parts per billion or trillion. She said community members and groups had to be sharp enough to spot these tactics and head them off. She didn”t say that G-P had pulled any of those tricks. Anna Marie Stenberg, one of the organizers of the event, said those very things had happened after an incident in the late 1980s, but she put the blame on government of that time.
Gibbs told of other harsh realities she had learned.
“It is not illegal to poison people, if you do it a little bit at a time,” she said.
Two local Indians, whose family members live in modular and trailer homes on lands on the southern end of the site near the Noyo River Bridge spoke at the event. Wally Clark, a member of the Noyo Indian community was hired, along with his mother-in-law as Native American monitors by the contractor doing cleanup.
“We had to be haz mat certified,” Clark said.
He said when they dug in one area where “they buried lots of stuff” the crews found areas that were “inundated with chemicals” just a meter below ground.
“Once I started telling people I was working out there [I started to hear the stories]. Somebody would say I was an electrician out there in 85, they dug a big hole and buried a big truck inside that hole.”
Clark said the community needs to continue to investigate the mill site and that the anonymous reports gathered by North Coast Action are only a tiny piece of the story.
“Each and every one of you should be writing to the editor at least. Why worry about the White property? Let”s worry about everybody”s health here,” Clark said.
“You have to stand up and be heard — to the city council too,” he said, getting applause.
Ruse said Clark was hired to ensure that cultural sites were properly assessed and remediated. “If materials were buried and/or anything was found, it has been documented and will be addressed in accordance with the approved work plans filed and all applicable regulations,” she said.
“G-P has heard numerous allegations of buried material on site and we have investigated each of those allegations, with agency oversight. To date, none have been substantiated, but we continue to welcome input from Mr. Clark and other interested citizens.”
Gibbs event organizer Thais Mazur of North Coast Action said those who want to tell stories can do so either by name or anonymously to the new state agency in charge.
Department of Toxics Substances Control Project Manager Ryan Miya will accept anonymous or open information about the mill site at 510-540-3775 or RMiya@dtsc.ca.gov. The DTSC took over for the state water board, an event activists said was good news for ongoing investigations. Ruse said G-P”s reaction to the change was also positive.
There were two persistent claims by organizers and Gibbs. One was that fly ash from the mill site had been dumped in different locations over the years and that many of the locations had not been located and could pose a hazard. The other was that onsite contamination presents a current hazard.
Onsite, dioxin was found in subsoil, 2 to 9 feet underground and on the bottom of ponds and in the strata below the ponds. The above ground dioxin found consisted of contamination of 3,000 cubic yards of ash in uneven piles. Keller Canyon Landfill in Pittsburg, Calif., in July accepted 3,000 tons of soil with fly ash and the soil was hauled there, Ruse said.
The ash came from burning of bark and wood in G-P”s old electrical co-generating plant. The ash was removed from the power plant, dumped into the pond then dredged out and piled up. Stenberg told the crowd that used hydraulic oil was put on the bark before it was put into the “hog,” the name for the grinder that prepared material for burning in the generator. Local activists have pieced together information about the mill site from interviews with former workers, most of them anonymous.
Stenberg, Gibbs and Mazur said that the location of dumped ash off site should be a priority. G-P agreed to a state plan last summer to investigate the location of off site ash dumping.
“G-P allowed some fly ash to be used as a soil amendment on a few specific areas, as permitted by the county air board and Water Quality Control Board,” Ruse said.
“Although the ash was tested before application, we are doing some additional testing to see if any chemicals above background levels are present now.”
Gibbs said empty fields were often used for dumping. Those fields often became youth sports fields later. She urged the community to investigate that possibility locally. Gibbs also called for full “characterization” of the site.
“What we are talking about is a full site characterization has not been completed. Certain areas of the site haven”t been looked at yet. You need a full site characterization, to really understand what is on the site so you know how to clean it up,” Mazur explained.
Ruse said the company has worked under state supervision and done extensive testing.
“To date, more than 3,100 samples have been taken from more than 500 locations on the site. We have developed a good understanding of conditions at the site and are confident we can develop a sound, comprehensive and safe remediating plan based on those conditions ? Where contamination is found, it is cleaned up out from the sample area until non-contaminated soil is reached,” Ruse said.
Local activists say they plan to continue to push for full characterization and grid sampling.
Ruse said most of the dioxin found at the mill site was the kind that comes from burning of wood. But one of the most toxic types was also found.
Ruse said about 2 ounces of the 2,3,7,8-TCDD form of dioxin were found on the site.
“Test results of fly ash on the mill site overwhelmingly indicated a dioxin profile or fingerprint to be expected from burning wood. All forms of dioxin, including are 2,3,7,8-TCDD, are naturally-occurring as well as unintentionally produced.”
While dioxin can result from natural burning, such as forest fires, the toxin was mostly created unintentionally by the fires of industry, such as paper manufacturing and other chlorine-related burning.
Humans can handle some dioxin, which comes mostly from eating animal fats. Dioxin stores itself in fat and stays with the body for life, with a few exceptions. EPA studies show that most Americans have as much dioxin in their system as they can handle. Further exposure events make health problems more likely, Gibbs said. She said Fort Bragg residents are likely to have higher levels than most people, making the danger more acute. There has been no evidence presented to substantiate higher dioxin levels in local people.
The Love Canal situation turned out to be one of the most bizarre in history. A contractor in the 1940s created an “impermeable concrete” canal where he dumped a toxic brew of acids, pesticides and 130 pounds of dioxin, then sealed it up “forever,” according to historical accounts. Forever only lasted a few decades before leaks from the canal occurred and housing built nearby became contaminated. The entire area where the direct leaks occurred is now entombed and sealed off, although this does not include Gibbs” former home.
Dioxin was the poison that came from Agent Orange that sickened many Vietnam veterans and which the United States is currently dealing with the government of Vietnam over.
Ruse said all local plans have been done under state scrutiny and in cooperation with what the city wants for the property.
“G-P”s objective is to get the property ready so that the coastal trail and parkland can be opened, and then to prepare it for redevelopment. We know these are the top priorities of the city, and we”re doing everything we can to help them reach that goal,” Ruse said.
When Gibbs speaks in a community she can usually can see pollution sites close up, but the G-P site is not open to the public or easily viewed. So what does the company say is going on right now?
“Per California laws, any work that requires major scraping or digging on the site has ceased until April 2007 because of the rainy season. In the meantime, documentation, sampling and other work continues with DTSC and other regulatory direction and oversight,” Ruse said.
