I-Team Extras: Secrets in the Soil
Oct 1, 2009 6:24 pm US/Eastern
Secrets In The Soil: Govt. Report Confirms Fears
FORT LAUDERDALE (CBS4 I-TEAM) ―
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Soil was dug up and tested for toxins in this Ft. Lauderdale neighborhood.
CBS
Imagine being told of dangerous levels arsenic in your front yard and dioxin in your backyard. That is the word going out to residents of a Fort Lauderdale neighborhood, the epicenter of
I-Team investigation Secrets in the Soil, as their worst fears realized.
It was chilling the first time
I-Team cameras rolled, capturing children playing in front and back yard soil of private homes in the Durrs section of Fort Lauderdale. It is a community nestled amid contaminated city owned property that had to be excavated. Yet those who live steps from that contamination were repeatedly assured they need not worry about their land.
"They told us it was okay; they assured us that everything was okay, that everything was fine," long time resident Libby Gallan told
Chief I-Team Investigator Michele Gillen.
The
I-Team has been visiting and researching the neighborhood for more than a year.
Fast forward some 14 months later, and the suspicions of many of the residents there and the hypothesis behind the I-Team investigation is now born out in a six inch thick report that documents what toxins were in the soil those children were playing in.
"Behind this house there is dioxin," exclaims Louise Caro, an environmental lawyer representing families suing the city of Fort Lauderdale for not warning residents there was danger in the soil. She describes the preliminary Florida Department of Environmental Protection report as a bombshell.
"We are talking about dioxin at 77, you have to clean up at 7," says Caro, who continued that "they found it where we filmed little kids before when they were playing in the dirt."
The
I-Team brought the report to show to residents. Some had just received notices from the state warning that chemicals had been identified in the soil
Now 43-years-old, Patrick Jackson grew up in the neighborhood and said his fear of the contamination left him "Scared that I am not going to wake up."
For years state and local government representatives kept telling Micky Hinton that he was wrong in his suspicious that something was amiss with the soil. In looking over this report that documents contamination on private property he says, "They knew all about it, they did."
It was Hinton who first sounded the alarm that something was wrong in the soil here, that neighbors were suspiciously getting sick. Ultimately his own daughter is in a battle against cancer and in a fight for her life.
"What are we doing to do? Try to sell it (our house). Our life is shattered. Then there is the sickness and everything. We are just confused soldiers, we don't really know what to do," Hinton told Gillen.
And the message for those who told these residents not to worry?
What do you want to tell them?
"You are wrong. Something is wrong. You come live here. Come everyday, and then you can say it's alright you inhale what we inhale. We want fresh air, not air contaminated with filth."
If you live in the Durrs neighborhood, two state hotlines have been set up to answer your questions about your health and your property. Experts from the Department of Health can be reached at
1-877-798-2772. For questions and comments to the Department of Environmental Protection call
1-866-282-0787.
The report will not be finalized until the completion of a two week comment period and residents can call those hotlines with their feedback.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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