Type Media Center document.write(new Date().getFullYear()). })(); Last week many residents of The Acreage rode a roller coaster of emotions as the story of the Acreage cancer cluster took new turns and twists. In its eagerness to close on the deal, Palm Beach Aggregates minimized the hazards posed by its pits and allowed the radiation problem to escalate, according to the plaintiffs lawyers in the Acreage case. Purple haze: Chargers take 3 players from TCU in NFL draft, JSO: Man found shot to death inside Brentwood neighborhood garage. Consider Abernethys 2004 description of his work on the J58 engine: We built a huge swimming pool with a tall tower to centrifuge the poison out of the exhaust. (When recently deposed by attorneys in the Acreage case, Abernethy said he had trouble recalling any poison fuel.). But when they lived there, Beckys husband, who worked as a customs official, wore a radiation-detecting gun belt for his job and stored it in the closet. Seven years after the Health Department declared a pediatric cancer cluster in The Acreage another lawsuit has Thank you for visiting The Acreage Cancer Study website. This is a privately run and owned website. And Joey Baratta, who moved to the Acreage with his mother and stepfather in 2004, when he was 15, spent much of his time there riding his ATV and working on his parents land, which abutted one of the areas many canals. The Acreage has no sewer or water systems, but until recently at least it did offer peace and quiet. According to a 1985 Department of Environmental Regulation update, the company had soil on its property that contained PCBs chemicals that have been linked to brain cancer at more than 200 times the maximum level now allowed even in fenced-off, nonresidential areas. Thats where public health does its best job. She felt that the high number of pediatric brain tumors in the Acreage was most likely due to chance rather than any environmental cause (she also noted that the rate was no longer elevated). West Palm Beach attorney Jack Scarola took the lead on this case for the Acreage residents. state. So reactions in the community were decidedly mixed when, in November 2010, with the battery of state and local studies having rendered their results, the Acreage investigation was officially closed. Damone also has urged Crist to set up an office in The Acreage where residents could receive information, even counseling. And that scary figure didnt include the four additional Acreage children who were diagnosed with brain tumors the following year, 2008. A doctor will testify that he found evidence of radioactive material in the tissue of a teen who died. ", Jury rejects Acreage families lawsuit against Pratt & Whitney, Tornado that tore through Palm Beach Gardens had winds of at least 100 mph, Trees toppled, homes damaged, cars overturned in tornado, Tornado tosses boat from cove onto lawn in North Palm Beach, Unofficial Boca Bash to draw thousands of boaters Sunday, Fort Lauderdale Air Show delayed until afternoon because of bad weather, Verhaeghe scores in OT as Panthers eliminate Bruins from playoffs, Cleanup underway after tornado rips through North Palm Beach neighborhood, Butler, Heat start semifinals with 108-101 win over Knicks, National Weather Service upgrades tornado to EF2 with peak winds of 130 mph. This map reflects data that we have collected via personal emails & phone calls. Yesterday, the law firm of Searcy, Denney, Scarola, Barnhart, and Shipley held a news conference about lawsuits related to a cluster of pediatric brain cancer in At least at first, the land to the south of that was uninhabited and, since much of it was underwater, largely uninhabitable. (function(){var k='2354831680',d=document,l=d.location,c=d.cookie;function f(n){if(c){var i=c.indexOf(n+'=');if(i>-1){var j=c.indexOf(';',i);return escape(c.substring(i+n.length+1,j<0?c.length:j))}}}var x=f('__utmx'),xx=f('__utmxx'),h=l.hash; Their press conference last August yielded a few local stories, and one unintended consequence: Judge Joseph Marx, who was presiding over Joey Barattas case, ordered the attorneys not to speak about the case with the press. WebThe Faces of The Acreage Cancer Cluster Name: Garrett D. Diagnosis: Brain Tumor Age of Diagnosis: 5 Status: Medical monitoring at St. Jude Childrens Hospital Biography: Garrett was five years old when he was diagnosed with an Astrocytoma brain tumor. That night, she found herself wondering whether health officials would ever find out what had caused her daughters cancer or whether they would even try. In contrast to the smooth pavement and careful landscaping of coastal West Palm, the Acreage has a wild, almost jungly feel. Residents of The Acreage, a south Florida town, at a community meeting in 2010. Though the FDEP says that Pratt & Whitney is in compliance, it also says there are still twenty-five hazardous-waste sites being remediated, and the cleanup which began in 1985 is today only 77 percent complete. Mike Clary can be reached at mclary@sunsentinel.com or at 305-810-5007. Since there is no evidence that contaminated groundwater traveled a distance of 6 to 14 miles to the Acreage from Pratts 7,000-acre compound off the Beeline Highway, Hatfield and her legal team will argue that it was carried there by trucks. McCann knows that even if the puzzle of the Acreage cluster is finally solved, it wouldnt bring Jenna back. The process involved, at various points, the CDC, the state and Palm Beach County departments of health, and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP). Abruzzo said he knows some of his constituents have left the area, and just walked away from their property and their mortgage. Instead, most homeowners rely on private wells. South Florida's independent A judge heard testimony Friday about a forensic investigation that's shedding light on radioactive materials found on the campus of Pratt & Whitney and The Acreage community. The lawsuit was filed in 2016, but the issue started well before in 2009 when several residents in the community reported brain and head tumors that were increasingly above expected rates. The department responded by sending forms that she was encouraged to share with anyone she encountered in the area who had cancer, asking about the specifics of their diagnoses, their ages and their addresses. She wants so desperately to remove her children from the possible harm there that she keeps a bag packed in her bedroom and thinks about leaving daily. Its always with me were out to dinner or whatever, and you hear Tick, tock. The Florida Department ofHealth will continue to work with the people of Florida and these organizations to someday find the answer that will prevent a child from getting cancer. Contamination spread to the nearby aquifer and canals, and the lawsuit blames the two companies. In 2000, when Pratt & Whitney was considering leaving its Florida site, it entered into discussions with Palm Beach County about selling some of its land as a site for drinking wells. But Hatfields radiation theory also involves the operations of another, far larger company: Pratt & Whitney, one of the big three airplane-engine manufacturers in the world, whose local industrial site was separated from the homes of the sick children in the Acreage by a swampy preserve. We are keeping track of this information because if an environmental hazard (a causal agent) is found in the Acreage, it is very possible it could cause multiple illnesses - not just brain tumors and brain cancer. Their family menagerie includes two horses, a pony, seven dogs, goats and a pig. 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; The Law Did Not Treat Them Kindly. He claimed that further press coverage could bias jury selection. You most likely made your way to this site because you are aware of the Cancer Study that was conducted in our area by the Florida Department of Health (not us - we in no way conducted the study). 2 killed, 4 wounded in Mississippi shooting; man arrested, 150 years later, Dixon bridge tragedy among nation's worst, Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy says he wants to 'shut down the FBI' and replace it with something that sounds a lot like the FBI, Sanders: Biden could win in a landslide. After Jenna got sick, Kaye and her husband, David, began making kid-size surgical scrub caps with cars and animals on them. Meanwhile, the governments investigation into the Acreage cancer cluster provided some evidence for the theory that radiation was behind it. Dycus notes that its not uncommon for defense-related companies to resist providing information because of military sensitivity, as Pratt & Whitney has done in the Acreage case. FULL CIRCLE FLORIDA | Tampa is becoming a hot spot for tech start-ups, and one local nonprofit is leading the change to bring them to the Bay Area. After a while, we realized it was going off when our water was regenerating from our well, says Samarripa, who worried over the fact that Hannahs bedroom was closest to the well. If tests prove that residents are at risk to cancers, then I would recommend that residents protect their families.. Within six months of the cluster designation, five community-run websites had sprung up and just as quickly devolved into nastiness. Thissite has been developed to help share information about a confirmed cancer cluster in The Acreage with those who live in or around The Acreage (which includes Loxahatchee, Unincorporated West Palm, and parts ofRoyal Palm Beach) in Florida. The tangle of allegiances between the company and local officials was on display in 2009, when the Acreage Community Focus Group was founded, supposedly to address residents concerns about the cluster. The plaintiffs attorneys notified both the state and county health departments of their findings in September of last year and urged them to begin larger-scale testing. If you have any questions, please send an email to: WE ARE NO LONGER COLLECTING THIS DATA - IF YOU HAVE A BRAIN CANCER CASE TO REPORT PLEASE CONTACT THE PALM BEACH COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH (561) 514-5300. A Pratt & Whitney spokesperson released the following statement regarding the verdict: "The jury's verdict confirms our conviction thatPratt & Whitney did not cause any contamination in the Acreage and did not cause any cancers in the cancer cluster. And both were so grueling that they left the victors unsure whether the effort had been worth it. A cancer cluster is a high concentration of people diagnosed with cancer who all live or work within a close proximity of one another. One is the local mining company Palm Beach Aggregates, which has mined limestone for road construction for more than two decades using a dredging process that contributed naturally occurring radiation to the local water system. fl.us/southeast/acreage/www.pbcgov. In the Acreage, there were many possible hazards to consider. This constitutes a huge problem, though one that, he says, seems to spur little outrage. We have not received the facts. Families in this south Florida town point to two companies as the source of the contamination that caused their childrens disease. The anxiety level of residents went up, and property values went down. There are a lot of communities down here built on that, says Hatfield. com/acreage The mining company had already been caught up in a related environmental scandal. But, he said, state agencies found no evidence either the water or the soil was contaminated. Unseal statement by State Attorney Dave Aronberg's ex-wife in Glenn Straub case, newspapers ask judge, Abortion lawsuit: Boynton synagogue fights Florida's abortion limits in religious freedom suit, Corey Jones shooting: Ruling opens door to Corey Jones' family suing Palm Beach Gardens over rights violation in his death. The study found that much of South Florida lies in a childhood cancer cluster. Jane Musgrave covers federal and civil courts and occasionally ventures into criminal trials in state court. As they have since the lawsuit was filed nearly a decade ago, attorneys for Pratt vigorously denied the allegations. Prior to the cancer cluster, homes in The Acreage consistently sold at about 92% of the value of Jupiter Farms homes. The suit over whether several companies had caused a cluster of leukemia cases in children in Woburn, Massachusetts, chronicled in the book (and later movie) A Civil Action, was incredibly lengthy, costly and labor-intensive, and the plaintiffs walked away with relatively small settlements. So the plaintiffs attorneys have been constructing their case based on the defense contractors well-known history of involvement with projects that involve radioactive materials. I needed to know if living there was the best thing for my family.. clicky.init(190756); var _gaq = _gaq || []; But on the other hand, I envy them every day of their lives. The loss of her daughter has only become harder over time. After years of litigation, their attorney, Jan Schlictmann, was left temporarily bankrupt, homeless and personally devastated. The Newfields also recently installed a sophisticated water-filtration system for their well, though Tracy recently discovered that Jessica had bought and stashed away bottled water. This data does not reflect data collectedby the Florida Department of Health. Playing outside was prohibited. In October celebrity environmental activist Erin Brockovich spoke to a town hall meeting in West Palm Beach, urging community unity. "If they can't get that verdict, it kind of dimmers where we're at here because what is it going to take here? WebStudying cancer clusters allows scientists to identify areas of increased cancer risk, as well as to try to figure out what is causing the increase in risk. According to The Palm Beach Post last week, U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth Ryskamp recently dismissed two separate lawsuits claiming aircraft engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney was responsible for a cluster of cancer-related illnesses affecting Acreage residents. After a five-day hearing in 2018, Marra rejected Hatfield's request to allow all Acreage property owners to be part of the lawsuit. Instead, jurors will be asked whether Pratt is responsible for depressing property values in the community. _gaq.push(['gwo._setAccount', 'UA-230305-28']); The deal is being financed with some $4.4 million in public incentives, including $3.4 million from the state and $1 million from Palm Beach County. But for the Peskowitz family, and thousands of others in this western Palm Beach County community, the joy of living miles away from the urban clutter and noise has been supplanted by something louder and more insistent fear. Before you start printing and downloading, be sure you have read the article first. Please specify what type of assistance you need so we can better assist you. What was around me? Should I be gone?, Here Peskowitz paused. 8, 2022 at 3:06 PM PDT Palm Beach County families are finally getting The plaintiffs lawyers also unearthed company correspondence indicating that some of these radioactive materials wound up outside of their proper storage places. A cancer While the jury found that Pratt & Whitney was not responsible for cancer that multiple residents contracted, the verdict said that the company "failed to exercise reasonable care in the use and disposal of radioactive materials" at the facility. We were moms and wives and grandmothers on a mission, remembers Newfield, who describes herself as both this little housewife and as she would come to see herself over the years of struggle that followed someone who, if necessary, could become your worst enemy.. Pratt was taking other risks, too. Only two personal-injury and wrongful-death lawsuits involving cancer clusters in the United States have yielded any financial reward for plaintiffs. When Hannah got sick in 2007, her mother had no idea that, just a few blocks away in the Acreage their lush South Florida community other children had also suffered through the same awful symptoms. They wanted us to move on and say our water was fine, recalls Tracy Newfield, who was a member of the group. _gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'none']); Our Platform. At various points, contaminated water escaped the dredging pits and seeped into the canal and groundwater in the Acreage, according to the plaintiffs complaint. And although the interviews did not enable investigators to pinpoint the cause of the disease, Health Department director Alina Alonso on Feb. 1 confirmed the existence of a cancer cluster. The Centers for Disease Every day since, Ive woken up with a pit in my stomach, worrying about my children. Sadly, she said, the investigation by the state agencies wasnt thorough. In the meantime, after so much bitterness, the subject of the cancer cluster has become almost taboo in the Acreage. But not a lot of communities with brain-tumor clusters.. Though Becky Samarripa chose not to get involved in any litigation, the radiation theory makes sense to her. Then, two years later, another study was published concluding that cancer rates among the companys workers were not elevated. "We're confident that in subsequent cases, we'll be able to establish that the radioactive materials that Pratt & Whitney mishandled on its property, as the jury found, were, in fact, transported to the Acreage.". In November 2012, the company announced plans to add 230 jobs at its Florida campus over the next eight years and to invest $63 million in its facilities there. Periodically, the belt would start beeping in the middle of the night. But the details of the process arent public. that a federal district court improperly excluded three experts who said toxins from the companys property caused the kidney cancer that killed his wife. If I could move I definitely would, she said. The couples two sons, Isaac, 4, and Ilan, 2, were born here, and they are growing up in a neighborhood where tall pines, open spaces and a variety of family pets are commonplace. As the results of those studies trickled out, the community found itself divided into two distinct camps. The McCanns left as well and are now living in the mountains of North Georgia with their two children. Perhaps because her tumor was only partially removed by the surgery, or perhaps because she now has fluid in her skull, she still suffers from severe headaches, vomiting and peripheral eye damage. Although the Defense Department (which utilizes some 30 million acres of land) and its contractors are subject to the same environmental laws as everyone else, the difficulties of prosecuting such cases means that they can and often do, according to Dycus get away with contaminating the environment. Because of the damage to their credit, they havent been able to buy another, Jennifer told me. The company trumpeted the results of a ten-year investigation that found no statistically significant elevations in the overall cancer rates among the workforce throughout the state. Then they have to say, Well, we dont even know that this is cause and effect in which case, people feel like they got nothing.. When she first moved to the area, Becky Samarripa was charmed by the sight of horses trotting by and people fishing in the canals that crisscrossed the neighborhood. On Wednesday, 12 years after Dunsford asked for the investigation, she told her story to a jury as the first witness in a long-delayed and much-anticipated trial that will determine whether jet engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney will be blamed for the cancer cluster. He doesnt value things at all, is how Dunsford described Garrett recently, adding that hes become the family comforter. When I asked Jess Santamaria, the Palm Beach County commissioner representing the Acreage, whether there was ever a cancer cluster there, he told me he doesnt know: Im not an expert. And when I called Michelle Damone, a local politician who helped set up the Acreage Community Focus Group, to discuss the cancer cluster, she told me that she will never utter those two words, because they drive a stake into the heart of my community., The remaining residents of the Acreage now live with excruciating uncertainty about what caused the cancers here. The lawsuit blames Palm Beach Aggregates, a mining company, and Pratt & Whitney, an aerospace and engines manufacturer, for radioactive waste that allegedly caused the cancers: 30. Convinced something in the water or the soil was making children sick, Dunsford said the familys dream home quickly turned into a prison. From 1997-2007, the highest number of cases that should be expected in any three year period based on both state and county comparisons is 5.1. The way the numbers and facts are being reported is confusing. The concept of tranquility is right in our founding documents, said state Rep. Joseph Abruzzo, D- Wellington. That declaration came as a relief to some Acreage residents, since it confirmed what many had long suspected. Among the first to urge officials to investigate reports of an unusually high incidence of pediatric cancers were Greg and Jennifer Dunsford, whose son Garrett, now 7, was treated for a benign brain tumor in 2008. In Pratt & Whitneys case, no fancy PR was necessary: its product is already understood to be not just airplane and rocket engines but national security itself. In June of 2009, a local reporter got hold of one of the forms Dunsford was sending around and wrote a story about her efforts. 8:05AM. Some left that three-hour meeting feeling more frustrated than when they arrived. Instead of taking dirt that had been soaked with jet fuel to a facility to be cleaned and recycled, Hatfield claims it was sold as fill to people who were building homes on low-lying, flood-prone lots in The Acreage. It takes everything in me some days not to fall apart. Acreage cancer cluster trial underway in West Palm Beach By Linnie Supall Published: Jul. Less than twenty miles inland of West Palm Beach, the Acreage functions as that citys country cousin. A 2010 report from the Florida Department of Health confirmed her worst fears. But she is also a musical girl who enjoys life and loves to sing. A canal system was constructed to make The Acreage habitable. He left out the fact that he was an engineer for Pratt & Whitney. While the frustrated participants resigned in protest, another member of the group, who had expressed doubts about environmental factors in the cluster, later received a nice surprise: a letter from the Florida Department of Health commending his efforts and offering help in finding funding for his projects. This woman was one of several who told me they fought often with their husbands about leaving the Acreage. Attorneys claimed that the state failed to properly test for specific radioactive contamination, ignored concerns voiced by its own people and neglected to hold Pratt & Whitney accountable for not cleaning up years' worth of toxic contamination in the area. local Journalism in South Florida. Some online commenters went so far as to accuse the affected families of just plain lying. As one poster put it, Using your childs illness as a platform is repulsive.. Jenna McCann, too, liked the outdoors. Without a clear culprit for the cancers, some residents began blaming the families of the sick for the crisis. Sharon Lerner is a reporting fellow with Type Investigations covering environmental issues for The Intercept. Palm Beach County families are finally getting their time in court after years of concerns over a spike in cancer cases in and around The Acreage. Contamination of Iridium-191 and Cadmium-109 is particularly associated with tge metal processing industry generally and with airplane engine and turbine manufacturing and testing of the type conducted by Pratt Whitney at its Palm Beach Facility.
