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Electronic Solvents Poison Florida Aquifer Residents of Riviera Beach, a predominantly African-American working class community in Palm Beach County, Florida, are threatened with toxic pollution from an abandoned industrial facility in their community, as well as a Superfund site in the neighboring town of Lake Park. But promised EPA funding for cleanup has not materialized, and a state of Florida investigation into the health impacts of these two contaminated sites on the local population has stalled. In the face of state and federal inaction, the city of Riviera Beach has invested $3 million of its own tax money to rid residents' water of contaminants from the polluted sites.(1) To date the city has received no help from the cash-strapped Superfund cleanup program, which Congress designed to solve just the sorts of problems Riviera Beach is facing. "By cutting money for cleanups in minority neighborhoods, the EPA is practicing the same environmental racism that taints the corporations that polluted the sites," charged a recent Palm Beach Post editorial. "Making local citizens pay for private business' pollution is unfair and wrong."(2) Riviera Beach has struggled to reinvent itself as a resort community through a series of redevelopment efforts. An aquarium, hotel and conference center, shops, apartments, and a transit center are all intended for Harbor Village, a downtown revitalization project.(3) However, revitalizing Riviera Beach must also include securing the city's supply of drinking water. The 36,000 residents of Riviera Beach may face increased risks of liver cancer because of exposure to chemicals in their water from the Trans Circuit Superfund site in neighboring Lake Park and the abandoned Honeywell/Solitron Devices plant in Riviera Beach itself.(4) While other waste dumps in Palm Beach County receive funding and attention from the EPA and the state, Riviera Beach and Lake Park remain forgotten. "The city of Riviera Beach is poor and black, [with] many homeless people," explains local Sierra Club activist Barbara Curtis.(5) "Riviera Beach seems to have no political clout whatsoever. Palm Beach [County] has totally ignored this area."(6) The former Trans Circuit electronics manufacturing facility sits on the edge of Lake Park, and toxins from the site have polluted the drinking water of Riviera Beach. The 1.2-acre property consists of a building and a buried pond situated next to a working industrial plant and several residential streets. Trans Circuit operated in the late 1970s and early 1980s, using solvents and solutions that contained lead, copper, nickel fluoride, tin, and cyanide to perform stripping, etching, and plating. A pond installed by Trans Circuit that was intended to return treated wastewater to groundwater overflowed and contaminated the aquifer with polluted water. Wastes from the pond contaminated 7 of the 18 wells the city used for drinking water, forcing the city to close those wells; an eighth well closed in 1985.(7) Problems at the second site, owned by Honeywell from 1959 to 1965 and subsequently sold to Solitron Devices, further complicate the problem for the people of Riviera Beach. The EPA named Solitron Devices a "Superfund caliber" site because it contaminated groundwater with various cancer-causing chemicals during the manufacturing of electronic parts.(8) The site sits less than a mile from both the Riviera Beach water plant and the homes of 14,000 people. More than 90 percent of nearby residents are African-American, and more than one-third are children.(9) The EPA has refused to add Solitron Devices to the Superfund list, denying Riviera Beach the opportunity to have the site cleaned up with federal help. Although Trans Circuit remains eligible for funding, the EPA has stalled in proposing a cleanup plan. Instead of drinking chemical-laced water while the EPA decided on a proposal, the city of Riviera Beach stepped forward to construct an air stripping facility that has cost the community more than $3 million since 1985.(10) The EPA now plans to renege on the long-awaited and promised reimbursement. The EPA had originally planned to spend $10 million on the Trans Circuit site to clean up the groundwater and help the city find a new water source. But the agency's stalling and backpedaling have prompted Riviera Beach's mayor, Michael Brown, to characterize the EPA's treatment of the city as "lying and delaying."(11) The chemicals that have contaminated the groundwater pose serious potential health risks to some 67,000 people who use water from the polluted aquifer. Trichloroethylene (TCE), which can cause liver and nervous system damage and lead to liver and lung cancer, has been found in Riviera Beach wells. The EPA conducted studies of soil surrounding Trans Circuit, and discovered that lead and TCE had polluted the soil.(12) Although the contamination from Trans Circuit and Solitron Devices occurred in the 1980s, these pollutants do not break down easily in soil or groundwater. TCE, lead, and other chemicals still threaten public health in Palm Beach County. The Centers for Disease Control recommend that residents of Riviera Beach and Lake Park limit their contact with both sites to avoid inhaling TCE or lead particles.(13) The state of Florida has recognized the potential health threats to the people of Riviera Beach from both Trans Circuit and Solitron Devices pollution. The state initiated a study to determine if residents had higher-than-normal incidences of liver cancer that could be linked to the contaminated sites. Unfortunately, delays in the study's progress have left citizens wondering about the state's commitment to helping them. Mayor Brown has accused officials at Florida's Health Department of sitting on their hands. "They knew about the contaminated water," he alleges, "and they didn't start this study until we asked them to."(14) Lake Park and Riviera Beach have worked hard to foster the historic nature of their towns to attract tourism.(15) Unfortunately, their recent history contains an unfair share of neglect from the EPA. Due to the cash shortage in the Superfund program, the communities of Lake Park and Riviera Beach will not receive funding that had been promised to begin cleanup of the Trans Circuit site. The air stripping plant will continue to suck the chemicals from residents' tap water, and the cost of running the plant will continue to suck dollars from the town's tax base.(16) The people of Lake Park and Riviera Beach have a long wait ahead of them before their communities are free of these cancer-causing toxic dumps, and the EPA expects cleanup of Trans Circuit to take decades.(17) Up to Top HOME | Email Signup | About Us | Contact Us | Terms of Use | © 2008 Sierra Club |
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