Florida Communities Decide to Root Out Uncertainty

By: Duane Craig

Government officials and property owners in Alachua County, Florida have decided the uncertainty of contamination at brownfield sites isn’t worth the lost business opportunities. So, four communities, Alachua, Hawthorne, Newberry and Waldo, have banded together seeking a federal grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to investigate rumors of contamination.

By combining their efforts and going for one grant, the county and four communities can leverage $1 million from the EPA’s coffers and avoid costs and time associated with each one doing its own grant application. The county also already has experience with brownfield grants. The entities have agreed there will be at least one brownfield investigated from each area, according to this report.

Of prime concern, and the most likely types of places to be investigated, are former dry-cleaning establishments and former gas stations. City managers and county environmental officials say the uncertainty about contamination at the sites makes investors unlikely to redevelop them.
Counties and municipalities in Florida are very familiar with the process of gathering federal money to deal with contamination issues. Since 2000, governments in Florida have applied for and received 44 assessment grants.

Mold Contamination Figures into Long Running Construction Defect Issues

By: Duane Craig
Approximately 70 residents in a housing development in Manatee County, Fla., want their homebuilder to buy back their homes because of structural defects, water intrusion, mold and sinking floors, according to this article.

Two former employees of the builder, KB Home, claim they advised management of the problems and recommended that home sales be stopped until the causes of the defects were discovered and corrected. Those employees were subsequently fired and they each brought lawsuits against the company in 2007 and 2009. A local, licensed contractor who inspected one of the residences said architectural plans had not been followed and the lumber used to build the home was contaminated with mold before it was ever installed. The mold contamination then spread throughout the structure. One homeowner had to move out of his house on more than one occasion so that repairs could be made. He is especially angry at the builder, now believing the company knew about the problems all along.

These cases at Willowbrook townhome community have prompted the Manatee County Board of Commissioners to support legislation at the state’s level that would remove mandatory arbitration clauses from contracts dealing with home sales and construction. The clauses effectively remove the option for homeowners to pursue civil lawsuits and often tie them up in mediation proceedings that exhaust their resources, according to this editorial

Pesticide Becomes Florida Community's Pest

By: Duane Craig

As DeLand, Fla. recently learned, there is no escaping the consequences of trying to control the environment, and the living things within it. Comfortable residents, some with golf course views and many with country club memberships in the Country Club Estates community now know one of the true costs of striving for a bug-free environment.

The pesticide, dieldrin, has been found in nearly 50 percent of the wells tested, driving 118 homeowners to ask to be connected to city water. Meanwhile, 80 homes are in the process of being connected, and the property values in the community have dropped 50 percent, according to this report.

The pesticide is widely used to control termites and other pests at the residences, is used at the nearby golf course and was stored and mixed at a pest control business at U.S. 17-92 and Orange Camp Road. To be on the safe side, residents have been encouraged to have wells tested regularly, garden in above-ground containers, use masks for mowing lawns that have sandy spots, and limit children playing in the yards.

EPA Flags 2 Contaminated Sites in Seminole County, FL

September 28, 2010 - Two business properties in Central Florida, both in Seminole County, were placed Monday on the federal government's list of the nation's most dangerously polluted sites.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it added to its Superfund cleanup program a longtime dry cleaners in a historic part of downtown Sanford and an industrial property near Longwood once used by General Dynamics Corp. and other companies. Toxic industrial chemicals have found their way underground at both locations, though they pose no immediate health risks, officials in the EPA's Atlanta office said.

Central Florida has relatively few properties listed as Superfund sites, a designation many communities seek to avoid because it tends to lower nearby property values or harm a neighborhood's reputation.

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Tiny Toxic Florida Town Takes On a Corporate Goliath

August 15, 2010 - The main drag in this tiny blue collar hamlet is nearly hidden west of U.S. 301, a world away from the bustle of nearby Carrabba's, The Fresh Market and Starbucks. Tallevast Road lacks sidewalks, so if you're walking through town, tread gingerly to avoid the work trucks rumbling through. A long-closed plant anchors one end of town, hovering like the ghost of dead industry.

Yet Tallevast retains a small town richness, where news spreads word of mouth, neighbors are often kin, and many, though not all, of the 80 homes maintain the well-kept look of the working class.

Environmental contamination threatens to destroy this historic black town and its heritage. In one of the nation's most emotional environmental divides, the residents find themselves pitted against giant defense contractor Lockheed Martin, Manatee County, and the state of Florida.

The divide takes root at the former American Beryllium Company plant, anchoring five acres at 1600 Tallevast Road across from a community church. Opened in 1961 and shuttered in 1996, the plant manufactured machine parts for nuclear weapons using beryllium-containing metals. Workers inhaled hazardous dust and handled a toxic degreaser that cleaned machine parts.

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Arsenic, Pesticides Found at Phipps Ocean Park, FL

August 10, 2010 - Arsenic and pesticides have been found in two areas at Phipps Ocean Park, and the cost to remove it could range from $500,000 to $600,000, Public Works Director Paul Brazil told the Town Council Tuesday.

More areas may need decontamination as well, he said.

"It isn’t the Love Canal, but we have a contamination issue that we need to deal with," Brazil said. "We don't know the extent of it right now."

He said high concentrations of arsenic and dieldrin, a chlorinated pesticide, were discovered in soil and groundwater samples taken during the removal of a diesel fuel tank and underground waste-oil storage tanks at the town's waste-water pump station at Phipps.

The fuel tank, used to operate an emergency generator, and the storage tanks were replaced as part of an improvement project.

A contractor placed temporary fencing around the main contaminated area — the grounds immediately surrounding the pump station — after the contamination was detected, Brazil said.

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Acreage Cancer Cluster: One Year Later and Very Few Answers

June 18, 2010 - Acreage residents Bill and Joyce Featherstone find comfort playing with their two dogs.

The pups remind them of the special, but limited time they had with their son, who loved the animals.

The beloved Joey died last September of a brain tumor.

"Instead of me sitting here and being confident, I'm sitting here thinking everyone is asleep at the wheel," Bill Featherstone said. "No one is paying attention."

13 Acreage families with children who had a pediatric brain tumor from 1994-2008 were studied. 11 of those tumors were malignant. There are also countless more reports of adult tumors.

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Study Finds Childhood Cancer Clusters All Over South Florida

March 3, 2010 - A new study shows the problem may be much bigger and cover a larger area than just the Acreage. This is the study dealing with childhood cancer clusters in Florida. One of the researchers who did this study says his findings were just released in January.

State workers this week are taking soil samples in the Acreage, digging soil, digging for answers to what's causing the pediatric cancer cluster. Now a new study reveals that the problem isn't just in the Acreage. The study found that much of south Florida lies in a childhood cancer cluster.

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Cancer Cluster Frightens Palm Beach County Community

February 16, 2010 - When Stephanie Peskowitz and her husband Ira bought a home in The Acreage five years ago, they figured they had found a woodsy paradise large enough for their dreams. But for the Peskowitz family, and thousands of others in this western Palm Beach County community, the joy of living miles away from the urban clutter and noise has been supplanted by something louder and more insistent -- fear.

This month the county's Health Department confirmed that The Acreage is home to a cancer cluster, defined as an area with rates of brain tumors and brain cancers higher than normal.Evidence suggests the incidence of such cancers may be especially elevated among children.

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Could suspected cancer cluster in the Acreage Florida be killing pets?

October 18, 2009 - Owners of Acreage pets that have developed tumors or cancer in recent years wonder if their animals' illnesses could be related to the community's suspected cluster of cancer in humans. The Florida Department of Health has been investigating the human cases since June but has not released firm conclusions on whether a cluster exists.

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Acreage Florida residents try to connect dots in cancer cases

October 3, 2009 - The Acreage, a corner of unincorporated western Palm Beach County, is a rustic patch of dirt roads, canals and horse trails -- and, among some residents, the simmering fear of cancer.

For months, state and county officials have pored over this sprawling community of farms, groves and suburban homes located 15 miles northwest of West Palm Beach to determine whether a cancer cluster -- a greater-than-expected rate of the same cancer -- can be confirmed. The state Department of Health is in the second phase of the study. And, on Thursday, environmental activist Erin Brockovich is expected to come to West Palm Beach to meet with Acreage residents.

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Secrets In The Soil in Fort Lauderdale Florida

October 1, 2009 - Imagine being told of dangerous levels arsenic in your front yard and dioxin in your backyard. That is the word going out to residents of a Fort Lauderdale neighborhood, the epicenter of I-Team investigation Secrets in the Soil, as their worst fears realized.

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Gainesville, Florida Residents Frustated With Superfund Cleanup Progress

September 1, 2009 - Residents in Gainesville, Florida who live wet of the Cabot-Koppers Superfund Site remain concerned after environmental officials updated the status of remediation efforts and plans. They were informed in May that soil samples in the neighborhood exceeded the state standards for the cancer-causing compound dioxin.

"I also would never have purchased my home if it had been disclosed to me that my home was in a Superfund area," said one resident.

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Potential Cancer Cluster Investigated Near Pratt In Florida

August 8, 2009 - Public health officials in Florida are investigating a potential brain cancer cluster in a residential community near a Pratt & Whitney facility in West Palm Beach and expect to release early findings later this month.

A vast Pratt-sponsored study of brain cancers among its Connecticut employees, begun in response to concerns about workers at a former plant in North Haven, is now in its eighth year.

The Florida Department of Health began its inquiry in May, after a request from a single household in The Acreage, a community of 50,000 residents in Palm Beach County, according to Michelle Dahnke, a department spokeswoman. The Acreage is about 6 miles from Pratt's space propulsion and jet engine test facility.

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State to Test Well Water in Florida Community Where Residents Complain of 'Unusually' High Brain Cancer Rate

July 31, 2009 - The state Department of Environmental Protection says it will begin next week testing well water in a western Palm Beach County community where residents have complained about an unusually high number of brain cancer cases.

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South Florida May Have More Than One Cancer Cluster

July 31, 2009 - The CBS4 I-Team has brought you the story of a Palm Beach County neighborhood with a disproportionately high number of children with brain tumors and cancers, but apparently they're not alone.

Gail Martin continues to fight the odds, battling the recurring grip of cancers her doctors believe are linked to the type of contaminants that poisoned ash-laden soil of Durrs, an African-American neighborhood in Ft. Lauderdale. Generations in this community grew up in the shadow of a trash incinerator.

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Residents in Florida fear brain cancer cluster caused by toxic leaks from company

July 28, 2009 - Many acreage residents are worried that contaminant spills at Pratt & Whitney may be causing a brain tumor cluster in their community in Western Palm Beach County.

Pratt & Whitney has accumulated a long list of toxic leaks and spills on its 7000 acre property dating back to at least 1979. Residents are urging the state Department of Health to investigate the possible brain cancer cluster.

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Residents in Tallevast, FL will have to live with contaminated ground water for almost 50 years

July 17, 2009 - Residents in Tallevast will have to live with contaminated ground water for almost 50 years, according to a revised cleanup plan submitted to the state by Lockheed Martin.

But the aerospace giant, which is responsible for cleaning up the pollution in this small southern Manatee County community, hopes that the majority of the contaminants will be cleaned up in five years. A previous plan estimated the cleanup could take 100 years.

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Florida State Department of Health reviewing cancer data for Vero Beach area

July 17, 2009 - The state Department of Health is reviewing cancer data for the Vero Beach area prompted by concerns raised by a local activist about chemical contamination.

The report is projected to be completed by mid-August, according to state Department of Health spokeswoman Susan Smith.

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Senator Nelson meets with South Florida brain cancer victims, families

July 2, 2009 - Residents worried that a brain cancer cluster has cropped up in The Acreage met with Sen. Bill Nelson Wednesday looking for answers.

The Democratic senator organized the meeting, at Wellington Regional Medical Center, to hear firsthand accounts from adults and the parents of children who have had brain tumors.
About 20 families told of their experiences - nearly all saying they live or lived within about 4 miles of 85th Road North and Avocado Boulevard, toward the community's north.

"There certainly appears to be a problem in a specific geography," Nelson said.

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