Highway Hijackers Video Extra
Apr 1, 2009 11:50 pm US/Eastern
I-Team: What To Do With Sector II?
MIAMI (CBS4 I-TEAM) ―
From outward appearances, it looks like the site of any other day care center.
"So we are currently on Sector II and this is where the contamination is and this is where the children were playing," said Hashim Benford, a community organizer with the Miami Workers Center.
Children, thousands of them over the years, played in a sandbox and back yard of a day care center in the heart of Liberty City. It's located steps from the now demolished Scott Carver public housing project that's long been mired in financial scandal and public corruption. But what never made headlines is what's in the soil in this neighborhood known as Sector II.
"When you hear Sector 2 what do you think?"
CBS4 Chief I-Team Investigator Michele Gillen asked Benford as they walked the property. "Contamination. Lead, Arsenic," Benford tells Gillen. "I think people are terrified."
Many of them are coming to terms with the fact that their daycare center, housing project and park and lake were developed around what was a 1940's dump site, a burial ground of toxic junk and solid waste.
Miami-Dade Commissioner Audrey Edmonson says she didn't know anything about Sector II contamination – and children attending a day care center there, until a visit from the Miami Workers Center. "They informed me that there was contamination on that property." Her reaction was to get the children "out of there," she explained." It could be anyone's children, and yet no one seemed to care here."
Gillen asked her if she thought many people who lived in sector two for many years knew that they were sitting on top of chemicals.
"I doubt it seriously. I doubt it seriously" she recalled.
Edmonson called for a meeting with officials from DERM and HUD.
"Well, they said 'Commissioner, it's only one hotspot' and I was shocked when I heard that," said Edmonson.
In December, Edmonson publicly shared her concerns with colleagues on the committee that would oversee re-development of Sector II, where she expressed outrage that "The children have been left on this property for nine months."
That very morning, she says, the County (which had recently taken over the day care center and was running it) got the kids out and moved out.
Why were the children evacuated from the day care? Gillen recently asked the Director of the Miami-Dade Department of Environmental Resource Management, Carlos Espinosa "That was done in an abundance of caution."
Espinosa, who had met with Edmonson says, "We spotted some places that might be a problem."
But Espinosa says extensive soil samples from the day care property and across sector two have been handed over to the Florida Department of Health. "The health department has decided there is not a problem."
Espinosa stressing that while potentially toxic chemicals like lead and arsenic have been found. "They are not at the levels that are cancer causing."
Gillen asked, "Has anybody told you that in writing?"
Espinosa explained "Not in writing. The Health Department did explain that and make that position known to the citizens at the public meeting on February 19th."
"We have no reason not to believe what the health department has told us," Espinosa told Gillen.
The Health Department report is currently in draft form . Under Conclusions, it reads, "The Florida Department of Health categorizes surface soil at the Scott Homes Sector II site as "no apparent" public health hazard. Past exposure to surface soil (0-6 inches deep) is not likely to cause illness.
Commissioner Edmonson awaits the official release of the report.
"I think we need to worry. I worry. These are children. What they can be exposed to today, may not even come to the forefront until years later," said Edmonson.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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