Though the Old Smokey incinerator was demolished 54 years ago, West Coconut Grove residents say they’ve been dealing with its impacts their whole lives. They’re now demanding action from the City of Miami for what they refer to as a “public health crisis” caused by toxic contamination left behind by the old waste facility.
Downs Law Group presented proof of local contamination to the City of Miami in the midst of an ongoing putative class action lawsuit against the City and Schmidt Consulting Engineers. Attorneys for the city responded with a motion to “strike from this matter all testing of residential addresses,” citing a lack of proof that a medical doctor has attributed residents’ health conditions to incinerator remains, and claiming that testing soil is “delaying this matter further.”
On Wednesday, several Coconut Grove natives and their lawyers gathered at Miami City Hall to demand “full responsibility for remediating the contaminated properties, compensating the damage to property value of the historic neighborhood, and addressing the public health crisis caused by decades of negligence,” according to a press release.
Lawyers say that these detailed studies of the soil contents should be enough — multiple tests conducted by international testing facility Eurofins Scientific show that soil in the area contains high levels of dioxins. Dioxins are persistent organic pollutants that are hard to break down. They are known to be extremely toxic.
“The city has done nothing to clean up the properties that have been affected by the incinerator. That is 100 years of environmental racism towards this community,” said Downs Law Group Attorney Jason Clark.
“Dioxins are extremely harmful to human health. They are associated with numerous cancers, blood cancers, solid tumor cancers, kidney cancer, sarcoma, as well as many other non cancers, birth defects, infertility, heart disease, among many others,” he continued.
Neither the residents nor the city know the full impact of ingesting or inhaling dioxins over decades. The last cleanup ordered by the EPA was in 2011, of ashes the City dumped nearby.
When John Anderson was in elementary school living in Coconut Grove, he used to play around the incinerator grounds with his friends. Over 50 years later he stood in front of Miami City Hall chanting “polluted soil, polluted system.”
“They’re not listening, so I don’t care. I just come to show my face. If I can speak, I’m going to speak loud and proud,” he told The Miami Times.
This story was produced by The Miami Times, one of the oldest Black-owned newspapers in the country, as part of a content sharing partnership with the WLRN newsroom. Read more at miamitimesonline.com.
