Celebrity environmental activist Erin Brockovich is expected to host a town hall meeting Saturday, Sept. 29 in Satellite Beach, according to an email Tuesday from her water expert to Satellite Beach City Manager Courtney Barker.

According to the email from Bob Bowcock, an associate of Brockovich's who consults Brockovich on environmental issues, he will visit Satellite Beach next week to meet with city officials and concerned citizens and to tour the community.

Then, he said in the email, he and Brockovich will return to host an afternoon town hall in the Satellite Beach area on Saturday, September 29, but with no further details regarding a time or venue. City officials also did not have further details Thursday morning.

Brockovich plans several stops throughout Florida, Bowcock said last month, including areas hit by recent toxic algae blooms.

Brockovich, who inspired the 2000 award-winning film of her namesake, is already making her pending presence known on social media, criticizing local officials for lack of action.

People living in the Satellite Beach area have been pushing local, state and federal officials for answers as to why so many people in the Satellite Beach area have been diagnosed with cancer.

More than 800 people have called in to the state health department in recent months to document more than 300 cancer cases in the Satellite Beach area, dating back more than two decades, Florida Department of Health officials said.

The issue came to the forefront earlier this year when a Jacksonville oncologist, who is also a cancer survivor who graduated from Satellite High School, questioned whether local environmental exposures contributed to her illness and dozens of other cancers in the area.

Some residents say they are concerned that Patrick Air Force Base's long-term use of fire extinguishing foams and other chemicals, as well as military waste buried in the area decades ago, has increased cancer risk in the area.

Similar cancer concerns rose to the forefront in the late 1980s, after eight cases of Hodgkin's disease were confirmed in an 800-home subdivision in South Patrick Shores, between 1967 and 1983.

According to an October 1991 preliminary assessment by Florida Department of Environmental Regulation, local residents described disposal sites within a half-mile south of Patrick Air Force Base where they reportedly observed "hundreds of discarded machine gun belts (with ammunition in them), 55-gallon drums, scores of paint cans, Piper Cubs, a stripped 4-engine bomber, Jeeps, military ambulances, a variety of oil drums, large spools of electrical wire, and airplane parts."

But drinking water to the beachside area comes from sources on the mainland, so health officials say exposures would likely have to come from soil or elsewhere.

Biologists have been independently discovering that toxic compounds from once-widely used firefighting foams at Patrick Air Force Base, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and Kennedy Space Center are present throughout the local food chain. Apex predators — those at the top of the chain, like dolphins and gators — store them in their bodies at higher concentrations with worrying implications.

For decades, scientists found an alphabet soup of chemical suspects used to ease military and space operations: DDT, PCBs and TCE. The latest suspect — perfluoroalkyl acids, the key ingredients in fire foams, Teflon and many nonstick, waterproof coatings — has been turning up in scientific studies at and around the space center for years.

People concerned about cancer in the Satellite Beach area can call the Florida Department of Health in Brevard County at 321-454-7101.

Waymer is environment reporter at FLORIDA TODAY.

Contact Waymer at 321-242-3663

or jwaymer@floridatoday.com.

Twitter: @jwayenviro

Support local journalism: To sign up for a special summer sale offer for new subscribers, visit floridatoday.com/subscribe