11/13: It's not a coincidence

"Everybody here has cancer. Cancer, she died of cancer, cancer, cancer, deformity, cancer, epileptic seizures... lost her baby at six years old. Cancer, cancer, epilepsy - dying at eighteen, respiratory problems, mental retardation, c'mon... It's not a coincidence. It's a cluster."

Ester and I are on the tail-end of another tour. We've just passed the chemical plant and the post office, and we're on our way to Ester's home. The post office should never have been built, Ester says, because it's located directly over a site of high contamination. The partial remittances executed because of the chemical plant have failed. People are still getting sick.

Ester is perhaps the most tenacious woman I have ever met. In a former life, she earned three degrees and a national certification, was a world-class athlete and worked as a coach on the international level. Now, Ester is a one-woman wrecking crew. Her establishments to demolish, take your pick: the Helena Chemical Company, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), the city governing board, her own lawyers. Ester has a lot of work to do.

Between 1948 and 1986, the Helena Chemical Company was one of the companies that produced and shipped eight of the twelve most dangerous chemicals known to humankind--not-so-affectionately called the "dirty dozen.” These chemicals "accidentally" diffused throughout the town of Mission, Texas, and people began dying by the dozens. Laborers were exposed to the chemicals in the workplace, pipes burst and contaminated the groundwater, trains derailed and released tons--literally tons--of waste, and manufacturing plants circulated toxic dust through huge fans pointing directly at neighboring communities. This is the short list of oversights.

The longer list is equally atrocious. Within the last few years, the Environmental Protection Agency ordered the mass cleanup of the now abandoned shipping facility. Thus came about the official entitlement of the site as a superfund--a place where "super" funding is allocated so as to make an untenable site livable once again.

In 1998, people in white suits started to show up in the neighborhood. They didn't say from where they had come or for what reason. Many people in the town thought that they were filming a movie,a movie, as another had been filmed in the area just months before. They didn't tell the Missionaries that they had begun the long process of remittance, or cleanup. On the chemical site, they dug sixteen feet underneath the soil to remove any biological waste. In surrounding houses, they surveyed yards at the expense of the taxpayer--$120,000--and carted away any pollutants that they could find at the same rate.

Missionaries aren't sure that it helped. If you spray a tree in Ester's yard with water, the tree gives off an acrid-smelling poison. If you shift through her dirt, you'll smell the same. If you go into her house, that's another story.

Ester lives in a humble three-bedroom house, but her home, so to speak, is located across town. She had to move out. The chemical concentrations were so high that an environmental inspector deemed it inhabitable. This house was Ester's dream house--a home that she refers to as her "mansion"--and she can't even live in it. She can't sell it either. Were she to do so, she'd invite another family to share in her misery.

You might shake your head at me with that last word--"misery". You might say that, despite of it all, it's not so bad. Ester and her co-plaintiffs are receiving settlement checks, and the community is on the path to recovery.

Ester and many of her co-plaintiffs are currently receiving settlement checks for twenty-two or twenty-six dollars for past, present and future injuries. Twenty-two dollars buys a tank of gas. Twenty-six dollars does nothing for the fact that Ester has a cyst in her brain and a balance disorder. No amount of money will bring her father back (he died of cancer) or help Ester's grandson, Zoe, walk. Zoe was born with spina bifida. At nine year's old, Zoe has never taken a step.

Still, Ester continues her fight, almost alone. Most people are tired of fighting, she says, and she doesn't even remember what a "normal" life was like. She talks about moving away but never will. She's in this fight for life--against the chemical company that crippled her community and denied all the cancers and deformities as "coincidence", against the TCEQ and EPA that show little immediacy and concern in restoring public health, and against her own lawyers who intend to claim two-thirds of any potential settlement. Two-thirds, and they go back to healthy communities and healthy lives. Missionaries remain in their contaminated homes with their contaminated bodies. They aren't going anywhere. They can't afford to, and their contaminated bodies won't let them.

The people of Mission were never informed about the potential health risks posed by the chemical plant. That was then. They need few reminders now.

"Everybody here has cancer. Cancer, she died of cancer, cancer, cancer, deformity, cancer, epileptic seizures... lost her baby at six years old. Cancer, cancer, epilepsy- dying at eighteen, respiratory problems, mental retardation, c'mon... It's not a coincidence. It's a cluster."

For more information, check out the Killing Fields. Take a look at Texas Congressman Lloyd Doggett's letter to the EPA as well. The community is also going to the Texas Supreme Court this Wednesday to see if and when the court will hear their case. Ester's not done fighting.