Garbage Heights

When one decides to buy a house, there are many elements to consider and questions that must be asked. Is the house in good condition? How much is the asking price. Is it in a good school district? Is there a lot of crime in the surrounding area and so on?

One question that is often overlooked but is probably the most important is whether or not the house was built on or near a landfill – toxic waste dump – superfund site or any of the above.

Strange isn’t it? Why would anyone build a house near the site of garbage dumps? There is the obvious problem of how much they smell and can ruin the air quality of a neighborhood that should drive away potential residents. Less known however is how said sites are filled with carcinogens and are the likely culprit of wide swaths of cancer in homeowners throughout the United States.

I could have written this story at a number of different times throughout the history of industry and homeownership in the United States as it has been a problem that has plagued us for a very long time. As a matter of fact, this sort of thing was the impetus of the movie about a woman who pursued legal claims against the industry that caused residents in California to develop cancer. You may have seen it; I’m referring to Erin Brockovich.

Although that movie had a relatively happy ending, the problem is far from solved and as a matter fact, it continues to haunt us to this day. My wife, whom I’ve written about before, recently came across an article written in the Cleveland Scene about how her old neighborhoods of Garfield Heights and Valley View (both suburbs of Cleveland, OH) were split and made barely hospitable by a man made land fill, swimming in the mother of all cancer causing products, vinyl chloride, and a healthy dose of gaseous methane.

My wife states that she has had various immune deficiency and reproductive problems beginning at the tender age of 12 and the most likely cause of medical woes is the very place she grew up in. Even her puppy Pomeranian, aka (Austin) was diagnosed with rare lymphoma at the age of two. One might wonder which is a less humane way to live; in a violent neighborhood with the ever-looming threat of a stray or even targeted bullet aimed at your noodle or the more ominous and hidden danger of dying slowly of a dreaded but preventable disease because your backyard (unbeknownst to you) is a toxic dump unfit for humanity.

According to the author of the above piece, “In 1988, the U.S. EPA descended on Garfield Heights after explosive methane gas produced by the landfill crept into nearby apartments. Residents were hopeful the feds, considered real regulators, would be shocked to see the filth running into their backyards. But at a public meeting, the EPA's Joe Fredle offered the same line they'd always heard: "At present it is not an [imminent] danger to the public."”

Things did not get any better as the years went on. A modern day robber baron named Pete Boyas who was described in the article as, “a high-rolling excavator with a penchant for peach-colored leisure suits and patent-leather shoes,” had plans for much wickedness disguised as business sense in my wife’s old stomping grounds. Boyas is the man that built the dump that is partially responsible for my wife’s as well as others uphill battle with their own health and the possibly worse battle with the American medical system and insurance companies.

The dump however is not this man’s only legacy.

Boyas had partnered with developers Bart Wolstein and John McGill, who envisioned building a massive big-box complex on top of the dump, along the lines of Steelyard Commons. After Boyas died, the two developers bought the land for $13 million. Then Wolstein died, and McGill was left to handle the project himself.

In March 2005, with still no sufficient tests to see what toxins permeated the ground, the Ohio EPA granted McGill approval to start construction on the City View shopping center.

It wasn't until tens of millions of cubic feet of garbage had been dug up, countless steel pilings had been drilled down to bedrock, and foundations were being laid down, that the EPA decided it might be wise to conduct water tests -- five years after it approved the project.

Construction had been messier than expected. McGill set up tanks to pump out the orange funk draining from the cupcake-like mound, but he couldn't catch it all. The ooze was running off the site. The Ohio EPA turned up the heat on McGill by fining him, but it's hard to plug a million holes at once.

On November 8, 2005, EPA inspector Frank Zingales filled up jars with the red, bubbling muck. Co-worker Steve Tuckerman, who analyzed the results, was shocked.

The levels of toxins were "among the highest in my experience of more than 20 years of evaluating water quality," Tuckerman wrote in a memo. "They indicate grossly polluted conditions."

And, sure enough, tucked among the list of 10-syllable offenders was the monster of brain cancer, vinyl chloride.

The results by themselves are damning. But Molholt suspects the levels are even higher under the surface, because vinyl chloride quickly evaporates when exposed to air. He says the residents of Murray and Fosdick were likely exposed to even greater amounts from breathing noxious fumes all those years.

Just as scary was the fact that the neighborhood was still using well water while the dump was going full-swing. When the water started tasting funny, people would haul in jugs of tap water from outside the city, but they still showered, brushed their teeth, did laundry.

According to my wife and mother-in-law, on top of this toxic disaster lies a Wal-Mart and a Petco. In a strange way, that’s rather fitting, don’t you think?

In response to this article, my wife, in a episode of literary interest and vigor wrote this letter to the editor:

I was born and raised in Garfield Heights, my mother still lives on Hathaway Rd. in Valley View. I grew up next to the High school (now the middle school) in Garfield, on a hot day, the smell would be so horrible that you wanted to throw up. In the mid 90's we formed an environmental group in school and ventured down the hill behind Kmart and took pictures of the orange rivers and of various wastes seeping into our environment. My parents always knew, they just didn't think it would matter. My mother had thyroid cancer, I now have a thyroid disease and have been treated for fertility issues since I was 13. In 2000 we sold our house on Thraves, I now live in Tampa, FL. Since moving, I look back at the corruption and palm greasing back home in disgust. The governments in Cuyahoga County and much of the great lakes region cannot handle honesty and the changing infrastructure in America. We are an environmentally aware country, and until Garfield Heights realizes this, nobody will purchase a house in the city and the residents left will die out. Thank you for a wonderful and insightful story, hopefully there will be strides made on this issue. If you have any updates please contact me. My family is eager to help.

Ohio is not the only place in the United States that has this problem unfortunately. Last April (2006) many homeowners and their neighbors whom lived in DuPage County near Carol Stream, IL. filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court against DuPage County Forest Preserve, and BFI Waste Systems of North America, owners and managers of the Mallard Lake landfill. That's because cancer-causing vinyl chloride had turned up in the Cannatas' well and more than 30 private wells in part of Wayne Township had tested positive for unsafe levels of vinyl chloride and a related chemical.

They claimed that the chemicals dumped at the site years ago had broken down into vinyl chloride, which had seeped into the groundwater, flowing into their wells and out of their faucets.

This story is more than just a personal interest issue or even a sad story about or degraded environment. In both of the above cases the EPA was complicit in exposes US citizens to conditions you would expect in the Third World. My wife and many others, as I said before, will never experience a life without pain not just because robber barons cheat us of our livelihoods (that’s par for the course) but also because those charged with our protection are greased to the point of being completely ineffectual. I’ve written this article to put you all on notice; no where you are living, what you are breathing and what you are drinking before you join my wife and millions of others in the waiting room of lost hope and dashed dreams.

This story and more will be discussed this Sunday at 12:30 PM on Progressive Conservatism Live!