Paying for the Past
by Laurel Eddy
Sue DenAdel said she developed asthma and adrenal and liver tumors after she moved to Bellingham’s Birchwood neighborhood in 1975.
"The Birchwood neighborhood had a good reputation for being a safe, family-oriented neighborhood," she said. "We did not know what chemicals were being used at Oeser (Cedar Co.)."
DenAdel said she watched as one of her daughters suffered unexplained rashes and her other daughter developed a central nervous tic. She said that daughter moved out eight years ago and still has nervous system problems.
DenAdel’s house is less than 100 feet from the Oeser Cedar Co. The company treats utility poles with pentachlorophenol (PCP) to resist insects and rot. The site is contaminated with byproducts of creosote, which was once used to treat the poles. According to the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the byproducts include at least nine possible carcinogens including PCP. DenAdel said she believes Oeser’s air and water pollution are responsible for the ailments affecting her family and possibly the residents of her neighborhood.
According to the ATSDR, PCP and other toxins on the site can cause serious health problems, including damage to the immune and nervous systems, reproductive and developmental problems, harmful effects to the lungs and liver, and can result in unconsciousness and death.
the site and the superfund
Oeser, a 26-acre facility on the northwest edge of Bellingham, became a Superfund site in 1997. The EPA chooses Superfund sites based on levels of dangerous contaminants. Currently, Oeser is the only active Superfund site in Whatcom County. Oeser is still operating while the EPA performs an emergency cleanup. But, the EPA is only responsible for cleaning up contamination that occurred on the site before 1997.
In the Superfund program, the EPA supervises the study and cleanup of sites with money from the Superfund tax and other taxes.
President George W. Bush said in a 2000 campaign speech that he believes the complicated nature of the Superfund law hinders its effectiveness.
"Not only has Superfund been slow and costly," he said, "but also the complexity of the law itself has been an obstacle to state and local efforts to clean up (contaminated sites)."
White House Media Affairs employee Taylor Griffin said Bush has requested a $150 million increase to the long-term cleanup section of Superfund in his 2004 budget — a 75 percent increase from the 2002 budget, according to the White House Web site.
This funding will come from taxpayers, not oil and chemical companies, contrary to the Superfund slogan: 'the polluter pays.' The tax on the companies ended in 1995 and Congress has not reinstated it.
All oil and chemical companies had to pay the tax including those companies that produce few pollutants.
In a 2002 Congressional testimony, EPA Administrator Christie Whitman said the tax applied to "everyone in the industry, so that even those that have the best of environmental records are also paying."
If a site requires an emergency cleanup, the EPA pays for it and then bills the owners, said EPA’s Oeser Project Manager Loren McPhillips.
"In order to get things going and moving forward, we decided we had to do (an emergency clean up)," McPhillips said. "In Superfund, you end up with usually coming in after a facility goes away. Usually we don’t (clean up) operating facilities."
The EPA’s emergency cleanup of Oeser, along with the study of the site, included excavating soil and liquid waste and the installation of an asphalt cap over four acres. Oeser also removed 23,000 gallons of creosote.
EPA Unit Manager Sylvia Kawabata said cleanup has cost the EPA $5.8 million, the equivalent of nearly half the state agency’s yearly cleanup budget. She said, as of 2003, the EPA has spent $12 million on research and cleanup of the site.
"That’s an awful lot of money to spend on a small site," McPhillips said. "I’m sort of mystified as to why we’re being criticized for being cost-effective. My management wants us to move forward on the site."
Kawabata said the EPA struggles with a lack of money since the Superfund tax ended.
She said if Oeser refuses to pay the EPA’s costs, the agency will begin litigation.
"EPA has paid for all of the investigation so far as well as the removal and we’re hoping that they’ll pay it back," she said.
The EPA has finished its study on the Oeser site and is considering a final cleanup plan to excavate contaminated soil, cap more of the damaged areas and improve the caps. The plan is estimated to cost another $4 million.
the neighbors
Some residents, however, said the EPA is not doing a thorough enough job. They said they believe the EPA is not addressing air quality, a contaminated stream near the site or illnesses common in the neighborhood. Several residents, consultants and activists said the Bush administration is responsible for the changed attitude of the EPA toward Superfund cleanups.
"I think they are the Industrial Protection Agency," said resident Doug Tolchin after a Jan. 15, 2003 hearing about the Oeser site. "Staff people do what their boss tells them to do and the boss is appointed by the Bush administration."
He said EPA staff members often feel powerless to change the agency’s practices.
"They know that if they ring the bell, they lose their job," Tolchin said. "(But) they’re very sick of what goes down."
Birchwood neighborhood residents said they believe Oeser’s pollution is responsible for a variety of ailments.
Oeser President Christopher Secrist said the site is not to blame for residents’ illnesses.
"It's human nature to try and identify and allocate blame for one’s physical condition," Secrist said. "Not only can you say the contamination is not getting offsite, it is not detected in our perimeter wells."
He said, however, a city-utility pipe running under the site is old and in poor condition. Residents said they worry toxins are leaking into the pipe, which could carry them offsite and into the local stream.
"We don’t worry about it unless it’s caved in and water’s not running through it," Secrist said.
Barbara Trejo, the Washington Department of Health public health adviser who is in charge of evaluating the health effects of Oeser, said the DOH has not found a link between Oeser contamination and residents’ health. She said she plans to conduct a public health assessment. The assessment would include air pollution from the site, which residents believe is making them sick.
"We’re going to be looking at the air data collected by the EPA," she said.
Trejo said the department will only look at the EPA’s data, and will not survey the residents to find out how many are sick. She said the residents are too small a group to survey properly, and that it is more effective to examine toxins on the site that could affect the residents.
"As part of EPA’s evaluation, they also look at health effects," Trejo said. "I have no reason to suspect that EPA is doing anything wrong."
McPhillips said health effects are not in the EPA’s jurisdiction but the EPA has collected air data anyway. The EPA is working to clean up contaminated soil, but not water or air, he said.
"We don’t gather health information ourselves," McPhillips said. "We’ve actually gone the extra step and collected some air data."
Bellingham resident John Dutton said he suspected the EPA and the State Department of Health did not want to know the extent of residents’ illnesses. Dutton’s wife Janille said there are seven residents in the Birchwood neighborhood with breast cancer. She said the EPA should notify people that they live near a Superfund site.
"I’m just dumfounded how many people are unaware," she said.
Birchwood resident Tara Felder said there were at least fourteen people in two city blocks with serious ailments.
"Something hit my adrenal system and wiped it off the face of the earth," she said.
Without a health survey, these numbers cannot be confirmed and the residents have no way to prove a correlation exists.
waiting
Senator Patty Murray and 26 other senators sent a letter to Bush on Sept. 23, 2002, asking him to reinstate the Superfund tax. According to the letter, taxpayers will pay for all of Superfund studies and cleanups by 2004 if the Superfund tax is not restored.
Murray said she supported the concept of 'the polluter paying,' but had no plans to do anything to help pass a new tax in the near future.
"Given that Republicans control both the White House and both houses of Congress, (restoring Superfund) will be very difficult," Murray said. "There is a real challenge because of inadequate funds to clean up the Superfund sites across the country. There’s been a lot of problems with the EPA (since Bush took office.) That’s why the Superfund budget is so important."
Frank James, a former Whatcom County health officer, agreed.
"I believe there are substantial health risks to the Oeser Cedar site," James said. "I believe those are cumulative."
He said health risks are hard to prove but that the government should take more precautions, instead of waiting for proof.
"There’s a principle of prudence and that’s a principle that’s not being followed by our current administration," James said. "People thought Reagan was bad. They have no idea what’s going on (with the administration). This administration has very masterfully redefined problems out of existence. Redefining doesn’t make it go away. Those compounds are still in the ground."
He said the Bush administration allows people in economic power to avoid responsibility and defers environmental problems for future generations to deal with.
"There’s been a change in the executive personnel, who have a different philosophy towards environmental protection," said Mark Herrenkohl, a Foster Wheeler aquatic scientist who was hired by the citizen committee to study Oeser. "There’s been a big difference for funding in enforcement and cleanup."
Birchwood Neighborhood Association President Rodd Pemble said the Superfund program requires the community to prove a problem exists, assumes polluters will clean up to the fullest and fails to enforce the law.
"The EPA is kind of being hamstrung," he said. "The average person has just basically given up on the project because it’s been so many years and so little has been done. There’s too many powerful forces at work."
