A Cleanup Coverup

Residents of Hattiesburg, Mississippi are deeply concerned about serious health problems, including what they believe are a high numbers of various types of cancers, that may be related to their exposure to water contaminated with creosote.

Tronox, formerly Kerr-McGee, and formerly Gulf States Creosote- purchased and operated a creosote plant in Hattiesburg until 1962, when the plant was closed. It was soon discovered that creosote had contaminated the ground and water around the former plant, eventually draining into and contaminating several blocks near the plant, including the local river that flows through this mostly African American neighborhood, just downstream.

Even though more than 13,000 tons of contaminated soil has been removed from the affected areas by the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality and some businesses and residents have received compensation, some 1,000-2,000 community residents have not been included in such remedial measures and are still at peril.

In fact, in May 2008, the largely African American community learned that a supposed “drainage ditch project” was actually an attempt to remediate lingering serious creosote contamination, about which only the adjoining, mostly White, neighborhood was told.

Enter River Network. Steve Dickens, who directs our Healthy Waters-Healthy Communities project, provided the group (now known as the Forrest County Environmental Support Team or FCEST) with a web-based training based on our Cancer Downstream manual, which helps ordinary citizens identify and understand the health impacts of contaminants in their community.

We also helped them access other important resources, such as the Toxics Release Inventory, the National Library of Medicine’s ToxMap and ToxNet, and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry Public Health Statements. FCEST’s leader was so impressed that he asked us to repeat the training over a Saturday community radio program where we explained to the many listeners from throughout the affected community how and where to find such information.

We also helped FCEST secure the services of a local environmental health monitoring professional who reviewed the methods and data collected by the City’s consultant, who had told residents that their exposure to creosote did not likely pose a health risk. Through this review, we discovered that the City’s consultant did not follow basic methodological monitoring requirements set forth by EPA. Our monitoring expert testified about this at an important meeting of the City Council.

Thanks to successful lobbying and meetings initiated by FCEST, the Mayor of Hattiesburg, Johnny DuPree, has now switched positions and is supporting the calls of the community for further remedial action. Mayor DuPree now says he does not think residents were compensated "fairly" by the company. He recently sent a letter to the CEO of Tronox, inviting the company to contact him so that "we may once and for all put this issue to rest."

Meanwhile, River Network has encouraged the community in its efforts to employ the volunteer help of some law school students who have agreed to review legal options now available for the community. FCEST is also now asking River Network to assist them with their own analysis of the neighborhood’s drinking water. This request is a high priority for us, and will depend on our project’s continued funding, but in the meantime, a decades-long deception has finally been brought to light.