Anna Wolfe

Clarion Ledger

GRENADA - In a small community tucked at the intersection of the railroad and Riverdale creek in Grenada, it seems like everyone is getting sick.

Hang around, residents of the Eastern Heights subdivision say, and you’ll notice a lack of life. The bugs are sparse, the trees die and though the homes themselves exude a '70s small-town charm, a gigantic, dingy manufacturing plant just across the tracks adds a certain post-apocalyptic feel as it engulfs half the skyline.

Of 225 longtime residents in the neighborhood, there have been 68 cases of cancer. The Environmental Protection Agency is researching how toxic chemicals from the former Grenada Manufacturing site are affecting the community while several lawsuits are pending.

Resident Johnnie Williams’ face sinks and her voice cracks as she describes the horror of finding blood-filled towels in various corners of her home in the late 1980s.

Her son Christopher became ill in 1985 when he was 13 years old — so ill that for four years he lived with tubes protruding from his stomach and a drainage bag containing bile at his side.

“His liver was just diseased,” Williams said. “They couldn’t come up with a name for it.”

The pain caused him to scratch the skin on his thigh raw, but he would hide any evidence after cleaning up the blood to avoid returning to the doctors, where he spent much of his teen years.

When he was 17, just two weeks after receiving a liver transplant, Christopher died in his father’s arms.

“What happened?” Williams said. “That stayed in the back of my mind until this came up.”

Hearse in the neighborhood

Last year, members of the tiny community came together to launch their own investigation into the cleanup at Grenada Manufacturing, mandated by the EPA beginning 25 years ago, after it was discovered that various companies that operated the plant contributed to contamination of the area.

“You start to question: What’s going on that the hearse is always in your neighborhood?” said resident Shay Harris.

The plant operators had been using and dumping a known carcinogen, trichloroethylene, or TCE, which is used as a cleaning agent and degreaser, and hexavalent chromium, the carcinogenic chemical Erin Brockovich is famous for exposing in Hinkley, California.

While several companies have operated at the plant over the years, a company called Meritor has acquired the liability for the contamination and is responsible for monitoring and cleaning the site.

Williams’ husband worked at the plant, when it was operated by Rockwell International, from 1970 to 1975. Jerry Williams even transported chemicals from the plant to the dumping sites north of the plant and on Moose Lodge road.

“When I found out that my husband was the one dumping that stuff, he disposed of it,” Williams said, then paused. “It’s a hurting thing.”

Williams' husband is alive and on dialysis. Their daughter had tumors and was forced to have a hysterectomy at a young age. Williams herself suffers from respiratory infections.

TCE can cause toxic effects to the liver, kidneys, central nervous system, immune system, male reproductive system, and developing fetuses and is linked to many cancers, most strongly liver cancer. Hexavalent chromium targets the respiratory tract, and inhalation can increase a person’s risk of lung cancer.

According to a toxicologist retained by the attorneys for Eastern Heights residents, the community is affected by cancer at a rate three times the national average, including rare cancers.

The percentage of long-term residents of the subdivision who have developed cancer is 30 percent. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 8.5 percent of adults in the United States have been diagnosed with cancer.

"The toxicological conclusion is that there must be a mitigating factor," writes toxicologist Michael Nicar. "What these residents have in common is the exposure to these carcinogenic chemicals because of where they live."

Despite community concern, the EPA maintains that while TCE exists in both the groundwater and as vapor in the outside air, indoor air, and soil under homes in the Eastern Heights neighborhood, it does not exist at levels that should be considered unsafe.

The EPA has, however, indicated additional testing and investigation are needed.

RELATED: ANOTHER MISSISSIPPI TOWN DEALS WITH SAME CHEMICAL CONTAMINATION

In a letter to EPA headquarters, 2nd District U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson criticizes the EPA’s actions, or lack thereof, in response to contamination from the Grenada Manufacturing plant.

“The problem would have never come to light if the residents would have not grown tired and weary of watching loved ones die, without any explanation,” Thompson writes.

Grenada City Councilman Lewis Johnson helped write the city resolution that brought the issue in Eastern Heights to the forefront and prompted Thompson to write his letter.

"I said, 'You know what? I never thought about it, but there's a high number of people that have come out of that small area who have developed cancer.'" Johnson said. "The fact is that undeniable, there was some contamination."

Harris, who suffered with tumors from the time she was 11, acts as a community spokeswoman for Eastern Heights, where her parents have lived since she was 9.

She finds it hard to believe the EPA is proactive in ensuring the safety of her family and her neighbors, “knowing that they didn't help us for 25 years.”

“Being told to trust them now to do the right thing — I can't fathom that,” Harris said.

'Monsters in the ground'

As a girl, Harris played in the ditches. She played with Christopher Williams, her cousin, in the backyard, which she remembers being covered in an odd, green substance she believes was runoff from the plant. Like Christopher, another one of her childhood friends and neighbors growing up died of leukemia.

Her own sickness kept her at the doctor continually. “It started off just painful moments, but it just got worse and worse and worse as I grew up,” Harris said. “I missed my senior prom because I was in the hospital.”

Finally, when she was in her 20s, a doctor discovered a tumor growing from a nerve in her spine.

“It was so massive. It was the size of a cantaloupe,” Harris said. “The muscles on the left side of my back collapsed.”

Harris, who moved away from Grenada for several years, is in good health now, having also had cysts removed from her ovaries when she was younger. Last year, she returned to Eastern Heights to address the mystery that stumped her community for so long and to speak for those they lost.

“It's like a predator,” Harris said of the toxic chemicals within the subdivision’s groundwater. “When you're sleeping, it's coming to get you. We've got monsters in the ground.”

Years ago, a large yellow sign reading “DANGER” and depicting the classic skull and crossbones image marked the railroad track that crosses Old Mississippi 7, just as you’d turn into Eastern Heights.

“It was scary,” Harris said.

The city has since taken it down, but attorney Reid Stanford said he won’t forget passing the sign in his mom’s car as a little boy, ducking his head down in an attempt to avoid whatever risk to which it referred.

“Sure enough, it wasn't the railroad we should have been worried about,” he said.

One large plume

Stanford is representing several residents in civil suits filed in mid-March against three manufacturing companies, Meritor, Rockwell and Textron, which he says are responsible for contaminating the plant site as well as the site at Moose Lodge Road. The lawsuits filed thus far claim the actions of the companies have cause damage to the property of 50 homeowners.

Meritor released a statement, saying, "Meritor has not been served with a complaint. We will continue our investigation and work at the site under the direction of the EPA and Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality.”

Representatives from Rockwell and Textron could not be reached Friday.

At this point, there is evidence to suggest both contamination sites have commingled, creating one large plume. The EPA is responsible for overseeing remediation at the manufacturing plant while the Moose Lodge Road site is under DEQ's watch.

“As we look at this commingled idea, which suggests that the impacted areas are tied together, we know we’re going to be at the table with EPA,” said Willie McKurcher, DEQ’s groundwater assessment and remediation branch chief.

In May, the EPA sent a report to Meritor regarding a specific monitoring well, used since 1992 to test the chemical concentrations of the area, that sits next to the road just outside Eastern Heights. It was the closest installed well to the subdivision until recently.

Referencing a sampling by Meritor, EPA's report states: "The sampling report for the MW-20 area concluded that, based on site-specific conditions and modeling results, there is no inhalation risk to human health from TCE in the groundwater beneath the residences north of the facility on Lyon Drive. The EPA disagrees with this conclusion."

Thus, the EPA concluded the groundwater samples had a high enough TCE concentration to warrant vapor intrusion testing.

Over the years, TCE concentrations in that well have increased from roughly 18 parts per billion in 1992 to over 400 parts per billion in 2012. EPA has a drinking water limit for TCE of 5 parts per billion.

In 2014, the well tested just under 400 ppb. Additionally, Meritor didn't sample from that well for 10 years between 1993 and 2003, nor did they install any monitoring wells within Eastern Heights to determine the contaminated groundwater had not migrated toward the subdivision.

Residents say they were never notified of the contamination until 2015.

It wasn’t until the past decade that environmental officials became aware TCE can travel up from groundwater, becoming a vapor and polluting the air, and it took even longer for officials to come up with a framework for how to address the issue.

“(It was) mid-2000's until people were really researching this and trying to put together some facts and find out what’s an acceptable level of exposure,” McKercher said. “Even when it’s diluted in groundwater you can have phenomenon where TCE will evaporate out of groundwater and emit vapor.”

In September, the EPA oversaw sampling taken from outside air, inside air and under residents' homes. The results show that the concentration of TCE in vapor is above cancer-screening levels, at which prolonged exposure has a small chance of causing cancer, but below "action levels."

The MW-20 well sits just feet beyond Belinda Kincaid’s fence.

Kincaid, who lives on the street closest to the plant, has been battling breast cancer since 2004. Kincaid was 24 years old and had been living in Eastern Heights with her family for four years in 1985 when she was first diagnosed with uterine cancer.

Her mother died in 1998 after being diagnosed with kidney disease. With nonstop treatments, causing Kincaid to travel to Jackson every other week, she doesn’t have time to focus on investigations, test results or the lawsuit.

“It's so much I'm going through with this illness, I haven't had much time to think about what's going on with that. I've been through so much within the last couple years, my main focus has been trying to survive,” she said.

Kincaid said she’s had eight dogs in her lifetime, but, horrifically, each died after what Kincaid described as their “skin falling off.”

“You could smell the flesh,” she said.

Kincaid looks out on the manufacturing plant in her backyard with different eyes than she used to.

For so many years in Eastern Heights, community members just didn’t fit the pieces together. Some suffered in silence while others shared dismay.

“Before, you just looked at it for what it was. As I look back, it's alarming the things that happened,” Kincaid said. “It's upsetting. It's heart breaking. I just have to deal with the card that I have. The way I see it, the damage is done. I could give in to it, but that's not going to help.”

Contact Anna Wolfe at (601) 961-7326 or awolfe@gannett.com. Follow @ayewolfe on Twitter.