The Acreage Cancer Study

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Below are a few articles of interest for you to review. Please feel free to share your comments on the Forum.

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TV's 'Dr. Oz' set to air program with Acreage cancer cluster families

By Mitra MalekPalm Beach Post Staff Writer

Updated: 9:13 p.m. Tuesday, March 2, 2010

THE ACREAGE — A nationally syndicated television program plans to feature The Acreage's ongoing cancer cluster investigation during an episode airing March 9.

The Dr.Oz Show is expected to devote half of its one-hour program to discussing the childhood brain cancer cluster, said Jennifer Dunsford, who prompted Florida's Department of Health to launch the cluster study last summer.

Dunsford and her husband, Greg, flew to New York to film the segment early last week, and a film crew shot footage near the couple's home on Friday, Dunsford said.

The Dunsords' son, Garrett, had a brain tumor removed in 2008 as a 5-year-old.

"They're going to show footage of Garrett," Dunsford said. "It just gives you tiny glimpse of what our battle has been."

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Santamaria blames scaled-back Crist meeting for skipping Tallahassee lobbying trip

By Andy Reid 

March 2, 2010 

PalmBeach County Commissioner Jess Santamaria blamed a perceived slight  by Gov. Charlie Crist for keeping him away from the county’s lobbying trip to Tallahassee this week.

Santamaria has been a past critic of county commissioners spending taxpayers’ money to travel to Tallahassee for meetings and receptions with lawmakers, especially since the county already invests in a team of lobbyists.

Santamaria, however, was going to make an exception and join in on this year’s trip to get a meeting with the governor to discuss The Acreage cancer cluster.

Santamaria’s western district includes The Acreage and he thought he had arranged to meet with the governor to discuss getting more state money to help pay for the response to the cluster.

Santamaria wants the state to help pay for residents to switch from well water to county water lines.

But after planning to travel to Tallahassee, Santamaria said he was told that Crist was busy and the county contingent would instead meet with representatives of the governor’s office. The possibility that Crist would “drop in” on the meeting for a few minutes was not worth the trip, considering other county representatives would already be there, Santamaria said.

“It was basically an insult,” Santamaria said about not getting a full-fledged sit-down with the governor.

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Crestwood outrage

5:21 p.m. CST, February 24, 2010

It was astonishing enough that village officials in Crestwood mixed carcinogen-contaminated well water with lake water and supplied it to their citizens for nearly two decades … and didn't tell them.

Now the town's leaders are making the citizens foot the bill for high-priced lawyers who have been hired to shield those leaders from lawsuits.

Tribune reporter Michael Hawthorne found that Crestwood paid more than $1million last year to lawyers who represent former Mayor Chester Stranczek; his son, Mayor Robert Stranczek; Crestwood's chief water official; and the village. Nine lawsuits have been filed over the tainted water.

There are about 11,000 residents of Crestwood. Soevery adult and child got to fork over close to 100 bucks last year toprotect officials who gave them bad water.

Make that 100-bucks-a-person-and-counting. The lawyers are collecting up to $500 an hour, more than double the $180-an-hour standard discount rate for attorneys handling municipal work.

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EPA posts Web page to track contamination at Lake and Lathrop

Official federal response now detailed online

By BILL DWYER

As the village of River Forest begins to solicit bids for redevelopment of a corner at Lake Street and Lathrop Avenue, the U.S. EPA is reporting that measured chemical contamination from a dry cleaner there has increased by more than 3,200 percent in the past eight years.

The report, which is posted on a new informational Web page for the U.S. EPA, also suggests the contamination may have migrated north across Lake Street onto St.Luke's Parish School property.

The Web page is at www.epaosc.org/RiverForestCleaners.

It was posted by Brad Benning, the clean-up coordinator the U.S. EPA's regional office has assigned to this case. Benning, who is with the Chicago office's Emergency Response Branch, will be updating this page as federal attention to the work continues.

In a Jan. 13 letter to Benning, Mark D. Johnson, a scientist with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said that sub-slab samples (those taken from below basement levels) suggest that site contaminants have migrated from River Forest Drycleaners to areas under the buildings housing MyGym Children's Fitness Center and St. Luke's school. According to U.S. EPA conclusions, that migration has likely occurred northward through sand formations and eastward along utility pipes.

Johnson, a senior environmental health scientist for the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which is a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, writes that "groundwater monitoring wells show perc concentrations increasing from 340 ppb to 11,000 ppb from 2001 to 2009. Some soil saturation for perc is at 940,000 ppb."

The abbreviation "ppb" stands for parts per billion.

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Raytheon estimates 78 years for pollution cleanup

By MARK  DOUGLAS | News Channel 8

Published: March 1, 2010

ST. PETERSBURG - Homeowners surrounding the now-shuttered Raytheon defense plant may not live long enough to see their neighborhood rid of the industrial pollution that's been creeping under parks, playgrounds and homes for decades.

In a new report, Raytheon's environmental consultant Arcadis says it will take as long as 78 years to cleanup the last of an underground mess that the Florida Department of Environmental Protection has known about since 1991.

Neighbors were already angry when the company said last year it would take more than 25 years to clean up the toxic waste plume that has polluted dozes of irrigation wells in their neighborhood.

"Some people are so frightened and disgusted they've literally walked away from their homes and their mortgages," said Dominic Griesi, president of the Azalea Homeowners Association.

Griesi is one of the litigants in a federal class action lawsuit filed against Raytheon.

"I don't think any of us are going to be around in 78 years," he said.

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EPA revisits planned cleanup zone near Glenwood Middle School

Finds school stands next to storage area for contaminated soil

By Mark Wilson Posted March 1, 2010

Officials are rethinking plans to use a vacant lot next to Glenwood Middle School to temporarily store contaminated soil that will be removed from Evansville's Jacobsville Superfund Site.

The soil is contaminated with lead and arsenic to the extent that they warrant a $5 million federally funded cleanup effort over seen by the Environmental Protection Agency. Limiting exposure of children to the lead-contaminated soils has been cited as a primary reason for the cleanup.

About 350 properties are being targeted for the cleanup, which begins this month. An emergency cleanup of 83 of the highest contaminated yards in 2007-2008 produced about 4,000 tons of soil.

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