It seems like so many of these cases are popping up suddenly. Is it that they’re happening more frequently, or they’re just finally coming to light?
A family named the Holts in Tennessee have lived with a well poisoned by TCE, which is known to cause cancer, reproductive problems, and birth defects like cleft palate, since 1988. Sheila Holt-Orsted, who has breast cancer, is suing the state for negligence in failing to properly test the water and notify the family of its dangers. They’ve had a whole host of problems from it:
Holt-Orsted’s father, Harry, had cancer too, and died of it in January at 67 after it grew in his prostate and his bones.
“The Lord was just ready for a good man. He wanted a good man and He took him,” Mrs. Holt [Sheila's mother] says wearily.
She has had cervical polyps. Another of her daughters, Holt-Orsted’s sister, has had colon polyps. Three of Holt-Orsted’s cousins have had cancer. Her aunt next door has had cancer. Her aunt across the street has had chemotherapy for a bone disease. Her uncle died of Hodgkin’s disease. Her daughter, 12-year-old Jasmine, has a speech defect.
They believe trichloroethylene, or TCE, is to blame for it all. The carcinogen leaked from the county landfill, just 500 feet away, and contaminated the Holts’ well water. That fact is undisputed. For years, the family drank that water, bathed in that water, cooked in that water — and had no clue that it might harm them. [Full story]
The story itself is horrible enough (and a little frightening to me, since the groundwater here in my town is contaminated with PCE and TCE). This family is falling apart and dying off because their water has been poisoned.
But that’s not the whole story, unfortunately.
The Holts also claim the state and county discriminated against them in treating them with less care than the white residents with similarly contaminated water. (The EPA was originally named in the discrimination claim but was dismissed as a defendant because of a legal error. The Holts parted ways with the attorney they had at that time.)
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Attorneys for the county and state deny the claims in the lawsuits.
“The county considers any allegations that the Holt family members were the victims of racism to be baseless and unfounded,” said county attorney Timothy V. Potter, in an e-mail.
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[Holt-Orsted] found letters and documents indicating that Tennessee environmental and water officials had concerns about the possibility of TCE appearing in the Holt’s well water as early as 1988. The Holts’ well was left untested for nine years while TCE problems in the wells of white families were tended to with haste, the records showed.
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State and federal officials agreed that the Holt well should be tested further. But for nine years, no tests were conducted.
Meanwhile, the toxin also showed up at high levels in a spring and several wells in 1993 and 1994. The white families at those sites were immediately told to stop using the water. And tests were conducted repeatedly all around the landfill — but not at the Holt well.
And the racism doesn’t even just lie in the treatment of the Holt family. The landfill itself was created in what was at the time a primarily black community, on a field used for baseball. It’s a 74 acre landfill where people have dumped just about everything, according to the article.
There are so many things wrong with this story that I just don’t know where to start.
The only reason that the Holts’ well was not tested regularly and that they were not informed of the dangers of TCE, as their white neighbors were, is because their lives were considered less valuable for some reason. Considering the history of the area and the racial tensions even Holt-Orsted’s husband (who is white) has seen (he was called a n*****-lover in the ’90s, for crying out loud), I don’t think it’s jumping to conclusions or “playing the race card” for the Holts to assume that that reason is because of their skin color.
And yet the agencies they are accusing have the gaul to claim that no racism was involved. One even said that there was no proof that the Holts’ troubles were connected to TCE.
This reminds me of the case that came to light back in November, of the Dine people who found that their medical problems were linked to hogan floors made from refuse from uranium mines. In that case, too, the federal government failed to warn people about uranium mine waste, and when miners left open holes and piles of radioactive dust, picked up and carried by the wind, the government failed to enforce safety. Several people used the refuse to build floors for their homes, unaware of the danger.
Navajo families occupied radioactive dwellings for decades, unaware of the risks.
Over the years, federal and tribal officials stumbled across at least 70 such homes, records show. The total number is unknown because authorities made no serious effort to learn the full extent of the problem or to warn all those potentially affected.
After years of delay, they fixed or replaced about 20 radioactive houses and then walked away from the problem. Navajos continued to use mine waste as construction material, and the homes were passed down from one generation to the next.
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Just 200 miles from the reservation, in Grand Junction, Colo., residents faced the same situation. But there, the government was moving with urgency to eliminate the health risk posed by homes, schools and churches made with tailings from the Climax Uranium Co. [Full story]
What connects the two cases? In both, the actions of the government and private industry put people’s health in grave danger, and in both, people who were considered unimportant were never warned of that danger, nor was their safety considered in cleanup. In both cases, the same dangers were dealt with quickly and efficiently when it was the health of white people that was at stake.
In both cases, skin color determined who the government deemed was worth saving, and who was insignificant. And because of it, people are dead.
EDIT: The Holts’ story is also being followed at The Anti-Essentialist Conundrum.
