WHERE IS HELL ON EARTH? KETTLEMAN CITY, IF YOU'RE A CHILD

 

photo: MOJO

There is something wrong with a part of California that  was once a bucolic farming community.  

Years of chemical dumping, pesticides used in farming, diesel fumes from machine operators and arsenic in the groundwater have contributed to make Kettleman town one of the worst polluted areas in the world.  And the children are proof of it. 

One of the children most affected, among many others, by the incredible levels of pollution in the town, was America.  A baby born in 2007, she was afflicted by Down syndrom, cleft palate so bad half of her upper lip was missing, and heart murmurs.  

America was fed through a tube, because she couldn't suckle.  Medical prognosis was that her life expectancy would less than one year, although her mother tried everything to keep her alive. Then, at 5 months old, America turned blue, and died after a few days in the hospital.  

The statistics of Kettleman city speak of a horror that has to be eradicated.  There are between 30 and 64 births each year in the small town.  For 15 our of 22 years the city kept track of such things, babies were born without a trace of birth defects.  For the next five years only one birth defect was noted.  

Then something happened.  In the following two years, the statistics show that there 11 babies born with serious and sometimes multiple birth defects.  4 of the 11 did not survive, the others have cleft palate and other much more serious problems. 

The town of Kettleman, which is so small it has no school, pharmacy or a supermarket has only about 2,000 inhabitants.  They all live below the poverty line. There is also no drinking water supply, although almost as an insult, the great California aqueduct borders the town itself. Most have to trek 32 miles each way to do their basic shopping.

The majority of the people living in Kettleman are Mexicans from the same town, La Piedad.  

What the denizens of Kettleman did not bargain for, when they moved north to California, is the incredible array of toxic chemicals they are exposed to.  Diesel fuel trucks constantly roll down highway 41.  The farmworkers, who make up the population of the town are doused with pesticides as they work the fields.  Chemicals that spew from nearby fields coat the town from three sides.  The only two wells, which are owned by the city, are contaminated with arsenic and benzene.  

If that were not enough plans have already been submitted for construction of a plant for natural gas.  Oh, and we did not mention yet that about half a million tons of sewage sludge from Los Angeles will be dumped on the farmland a few miles from the town come next year, or when the plan is approved. 

But the biggest problem might be the existing Waste Management dump.  It operates a very large hazardous waste disposal site nearby, and the landfill is considered the worst toxic dump west of Alabama, where there is another similar facility that dumps such waste on an equally poor farming community inhabited mostly by latino farmworkers.  

Among the waste accepted at the dump were : asbestos, pesticides, caustic acids, petroleum waste products and more than 11,000 tons of PCB contaminated material. 

The company who operates the dump seeks to expand it by another 50%.  

Greenpeace has stepped in in 2007 to try to defend the position of the town's citizens.  They even initiated surveys to document the types of cluster illness expected from chemical exposure.  They expected the usual findings: cancer, asthma and diseases associated with this kind of pollution.  

But when they had gone through at least 200 of the residents, they realized that in little more than a year, five babies were born with serious birth defects, of 25 total births.  

A fight to involve authorities was met with the usual stonewalling by the company operators and of shrugging of shoulders by the local health authorities.  Pitted in this battle are a handful of rich, white ranchers who own the farms, and the poor mexican workers who are subjected to the chemicals.  And the city allowed employees of the toxic dump to attend a grievance meeting, the town hall guarded by menacing police and k-9 units.  

As the fight continued, the Greenpeace surveyors had logged 11 birth defects, almost double what they were when first documented, in little more than a year.  

Then things started to move. Obama's appointee to the EPA took notice.  Soon Gov. Schwarzenegger was visiting the town and ordered an investigation.  The application for expansion of the Waste dump was stopped.  

The problem however, is that scientifically, there is not enough information to know which chemicals act on what part of the human body, let alone in conjunction with other ones.  There simply is not enough for the researchers to draw inferences from the small pool of people in Kettleman for them to say exactly which chemicals caused what.  

What some scientists are proposing then, is to enact studies that look at environmentally compromised areas, called 'cumulative impact studies'.  In other words, instead of trying to connect each chemical with each defect, they will try to connect all the chemicals in combination and see what the effects of the combinations are.  

Either way, the Kettleman study will become what Rachel Morello-Frosch, an environmental researcher at UC at Berkeley, calls a 'poster child for cumulative impacts'.  She asserts that Waste Management must take responsibility for their part in the pollution of a community that is under a veritable chemical assault.  They cannot think that the dump is somehow isolated from contact.

If however the studies do not draw a direct or even indirect connection with the toxic chemicals in the dump, this could not only allow Waste Management to enlarge their facility, but it will send a message to all the other waste sites in the country that no matter what chemicals are accepted in their facilities, they do not have to concern themselves with the consequences.  

In the meantime, children in Kettleman continue to be delivered with serious birth defects.

And in 2011, a 600 mega-watt power plant has been added to the town, even with all the investigations ordered by the governor and other efforts.  The power plant is exempt from current federal pollution regulations.  And this, even as the EPA has hit Waste Management with a 300,000$ fine for improperly storing chemicals and other violations.  And the EPA's California branch has released a statement that says that  'it does not believe there is anything unique about the environment that poses a risk to the community.'   


Source: MOJO 3.29.13