View of ABC Coke's coal storage area. (EPA photo)
Jonece Starr Dunigan
As a federal bribery trial comes to a close, the quality of life continues to deteriorate for those living in northern Birmingham.
Just take a drive down 35th Avenue North in the Harriman Park neighborhood early in the morning and late at night, where resident Keisha Brown said a chemical smell hangs in the air. She describes the scent as smoke mixed with sewage and it’s one of the aspects of living on a Superfund site, the name given to areas that are being investigated and cleaned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency due to high levels of pollution. Along with Harriman Park, parts of the Collegeville and Fairmont neighborhoods make up the site.
Brown cites the smell to the two coke plants near her home. The closest one to her, ERP Compliant Coke (often called by its former name Walter Coke) is one of the oldest industries in the city. Heavy rail lines separate ERP from another plant, ABC Coke, in the neighboring town of Tarrant. Other industrial facilities are scattered across northern Birmingham.
The legacy of the city’s coal and steel history touches nearly every aspect of northern Birmingham life – on land, in the air and, according to Brown, in their bodies. EPA testing showed the soil was laced with arsenic, lead and benzo(a)pyrene, which is classified as a carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. The EPA listed ABC Coke, owned by Drummond Company, as one of the five industries deemed potentially responsible to pay for the estimated $23 million pollution cleanup.
Keisha Brown, resident of Birmingham's Harriman Park neighborhood, poses for a photo on Tuesday, July 17, 2018. She believes the chemical smell that drifts through the neighborhood every morning and late at night is coming from the coke plants nearby.
Jonece Starr Dunigan
Brown said she hasn’t paid much attention to the trial in which prosecutors were trying to convince a jury that Balch & Bingham attorney Joel Gilbert, who represents Drummond, and a Drummond executive David Roberson gave former state representative Oliver Robinson $360,000 to push back against the EPA’s requests to add the superfund site to the National Priorities List and to expand the site into the neighboring Inglenook neighborhood and Tarrant. Roberson and Gilbert deny the allegations.
A second Balch lawyer was also facing six felony charges along with Roberson and Gilbert, but the judge dismissed the lawyer from the case on Monday because an FBI agent said she may have misled the grand jury about the lawyer's involvement.
No matter the outcome, Brown said the people will still be hurting in the end.
“I am hurt and my community is hurt. We are the ones suffering every day,” Brown said. “That was the main thing before that situation happened. Even when the trial is over, we will still have the same issues.”
Many of the neighborhood residents are elderly and ill, Brown said. Those who cannot afford to move away are dying out, she added. She said many of her neighbors are experiencing lung and skin diseases and cancer.
Vegetation covers an abandoned home in Harriman Park.
Jonece Starr Dunigan | jdunigan@al.com
But taking the brunt of the environmental issues is just part of the problem. Brown feels the residents are cut off from the rest of the city. About a decade after the closing of Carraway Methodist Medical Center, family members, friends or neighbors have been shuttling the elderly to their doctor’s appointments in south Birmingham. Overgrown lawns are consuming dilapidated homes. Last month, Brown said residents contacted the city about a possible sinkhole, but nothing has been done.
“We are a forgotten community,” Brown said. “I feel like I am in a third-world country. I don’t know what it’s going to take. (We) are nonexistent community until it benefits other people...It’s like they are blind folded. They know it’s a problem, but they say, ‘I don’t live in it. I don’t care. That’s their problem.’”
(Photo from U. S. Environmental Protection Agency)
Jonece Starr Dunigan | jdunigan@al.com
Brown isn’t sure how EPA’s effort will help the community. During the cleanup, the agency replaces the old, contaminated dirt with new sod, but Brown says the pollution coming from the plants is still falling onto the neighborhood and coming into the homes through the windows, the air conditioner and the attic.
“Why replace it with grass when the same chemicals still coming down? The problems are inside my body not out in the grass,” Brown said, “You live in your house. You don’t live outdoors.”
Jonece Starr Dunigan | jdunigan@al.com
After the trial is over, Brown hopes to see new infrastructure and care for her neighborhood. She wants renovated streets, a clinic for those who are sick, an effort to transport people to and from their doctor’s appointments. But none of that can be done if they can’t get an honest official, Brown said.
“I pray that God will touch somebody heart to come in and make things better for the people who are left here,” Brown said. “Eventually, people who are going to do a little bit better are going to leave and it’s going to be a ghost town.”
Charlie Powell stands at the emergency room entrance of the abandoned Carraway Methodist Medical Center on Tuesday, July 17, 2018. Powell said he was born here in 1953.
Jonece Starr Dunigan | jdunigan@al.com
Charlie Powell stared in shock into the mouth of what used to be the entrance of Carraway hospital’s emergency room entrance on Tuesday afternoon.
What used to be a trauma center and the place where Powell was born in 1953, is now a shell of shattered windows and graffiti-laced hallways. Hospital beds and other equipment, blanketed with dirt and dust, still occupy many of the rooms.
The hospital is an example of the deteriorating state of his home community, Powell said. He is the president of People Against Neighborhood Industrial Contamination, or PANIC, a grassroots group that believes the industrial companies should assist northern Birmingham residents in relocating to cleaner neighborhoods by buying their homes. Then industries can turn the area into an industrial park, Powell said.
“The hospital, businesses, clinics are gone,” Powell said. “They wrecked the community. The only things that are doing well now are the funeral homes and the police department.”
Front entrance of the abandoned Carraway hospital in Birmingham's Fairmont neighborhood.
Jonece Starr Dunigan | jdunigan@al.com
Powell, 65, believes both sides would win if the residents were relocated. The EPA is financing the estimated $20 million cleanup through a trust fund and will seek reimbursement through negotiations with the parties deemed responsible for the pollution. About two years ago, PANIC counted the number of houses in each community. Powell said Collegeville had the most with 1,600, although some of the properties were abandoned. Harriman Park had 280 and Fairmont had about 300. The median home values in all three areas range between $49,800 to $66,300.
“Wouldn’t it be more economical just to relocate the people?” Powell asked.
Charlie Powell, president of People Against Neighborhood Industrial Contamination (PANIC), sits outside one of his rental properties in Birmingham's Fairmont neighborhood on Tuesday, July, 17, 2018.
Jonece Starr Dunigan | jdunigan@al.com
There won't be justice unless people are removed from polluted areas, Powell said. Robinson pleaded guilty to federal bribery, conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion last year and testified in court that Drummond wanted to use his role as a legislator and the trust he gained from his city to convince the people of north Birmingham to oppose EPA's efforts. As part of the plea deal, Robinson had to testify against Gilbert and Roberson. "Oliver Robinson, he defrauded us. He's trying to get his time broken down and admitted to this," Powell said. "What is there next step? Their next step should be, as I said, get my people out of there. Buy this worthless property up." Powell tried to stay in Fairmont, where he spent 42 years of his life drinking milk from cows that were eating contaminated grass and drew water from possibly contaminated wells and springs. He once owned seven rental properties in the area. He was planning to turn one of the residences into a split-level home for him and his wife. But when that property burned down, Powell and his wife moved to Center Point in 2000. "The bank told me not to rebuild the house because this is a declining neighborhood," Powell said.
Charlie Powell, president of People Against Neighborhood Industrial Contamination (PANIC), stands outside one of his rental properties in Birmingham's Fairmont neighborhood on Tuesday, July, 17, 2018.
Jonece Starr Dunigan | jdunigan@al.com
Now he only has two rental properties in Fairmont. The others were either burned or torn down, but Powell still heads to the neighborhood to mow the lot where the homes used to be and take care of the homes he has left.
Since the move, Powell says he no longer has to sleep with a CPAP machine, which is commonly used for sleep apnea. His wife, who is from Collegeville, had surgery for colon cancer nine years ago. Six months ago, she had surgery again for cancer in her liver.
“I blame it on the pollution. Our city council member died of cancer. Our neighborhood president and secretary? Cancer,” Powell said. “It’s bad to even talk about. We were having 2 funerals a week.”
Powell doesn’t see enough life coming in to keep up with the deaths. The adults who want to stay are leaving their homes for their children who don’t want to live on contaminated soil, he said. Although the EPA is cleaning the soil, the plants are still releasing smoke into the air.
“How can you clean the air is the plants are still doing it?” Powell said. “I don’t think justice has been served. People are going to jail for doing wrong, but Walter Coke is still doing wrong.”
Powell stressed that by moving the people away from the neighborhoods, the people can become healthier and the plants can continue their business.
“Walter Coke has been there for more than 130 years. It’s not going anywhere,” he said. “We are not asking them to move. We are asking them to buy our properties and continue doing what they are doing.”
Photo from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Jonece Starr Dunigan | jdunigan@al.com
EPA spokesman James Pinkney told AL.com on Wednesday that the trial hasn’t affected the cleanup, which is expected to take two more years. So far, 50,168 tons of contaminated soil has been removed from 389 properties. There are 138 properties left to go.
Bruce Woods examines his brother's car outside his Fairmont home for soot and particles that he believes are coming from the coke plant down the street on Tuesday, July 17, 2018.
Jonece Starr Dunigan | jdunigan@al.com
Fairmont resident Bruce Woods said he was told his yard wasn’t contaminated despite being down the street from Walter Coke and finding toxins in his neighbor’s yard across the street.
The report didn’t make sense to Woods, who can stand on his front lawn and see the grey smoke streaming out from one ERP’s smokestacks. Woods rinses the dust off his black Chrysler 300 and house windows every day. If he skips this morning routine he says the fine particles will scratch up the paint job on the car and the soot will accumulate on the window sill.
“I’ve been breathing this in since I was a kid,” Woods said. “If my mom knew about it, she wouldn’t of never stayed here.”
Bruce Woods lives down the street from ERP Compliant Coke, also known as Walter Coke.
Jonece Starr Dunigan | jdunigan@al.com
Woods, 56, was raised in the Fairmont area after his family moved from Collegeville in 1975. He lives in the same home where his mother raised six children on her own. It was also the place where she died of lung and breast cancer in 1994.
Woods said his mother never smoked and neither did he. But in 2011, large tumors were found in his leg, hand and arm. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer the same year. He has been in remission since 2012, but cysts and tumors have formed on his liver.
Betty Collins
Jonece Starr Dunigan | jdunigan@al.com
Betty Collins has not given up on her community of Collegeville.
She grew up in the neighborhood until she got married in the early 70s. But Collins, 62, still takes the 45 minute drive every Sunday from her Trussville home to Saints Tabernacle AFM Church in Collegeville where she has made brothers and sisters through her faith.
While Collins takes blood pressure medication, she has had to watch her church family go through emphysema and cancer. So Collins takes it upon herself to take care of the ill.
“Just because moved to another place, I look at it as if I’m still there,” Collins said. “I don’t look at it like, ‘Well, I’m gone. So I don’t have nothing to do with it.’ That’s not in my character.”
But being a caretaker comes at an emotional price. Throat cancer took her father-in-law – a struggle she witnessed as she took him to his doctor appointments. The same situations were happening at the church.
“A lot of them have died off from being infected because they live in Collegeville, Harrison Park and Tarrant,” Collins said. “It was a lot.”
Seeing her loved one suffer is one of the reasons she’s upset about Robinson pleading to accepting a bribe. She believes the money could have been used to help the elderly get to and from their doctor visits or helped them with medical expenses.
If she could see Robinson, Collins said she has a few questions for him.
“Do you feel any remorse about what you did to us? What drove you to have to deceive people,” Collins said. “You had a choice to say yes or no. What frame of mind were you in when you decided because you chose to say yes to something that you shouldn’t have done.”
Marva Ingram stands outside of her Fairmont home on Tuesday, July 17, 2018.
Jonece Starr Dunigan | jdunigan@al.com
Marva Ingram warns visitors that they are about to go back in time before welcoming people into her Fairmont home.
Black soot has seeped into the ceiling of her living room. With the ERP plant about a mile away, she sometimes wakes up to a booming sound early in the morning. The noise is loud enough to rattle the house, causing mirrors to fall off the wall, she said. A patchwork of tile and plywood make up the floor of her home because she had to remove the carpet this summer. The dust in the fibers was messing with her COPD, a chronic lung disease that makes it hard for Ingram to breath.
Ingram believes her dream home was taken from her. She was a couple of months in to her nursing career at Northway Health and Rehabilitation when she first moved into the residence in 0ctober 1986. The $17,500, beige and brown home was Ingram’s proof that she was becoming a self-sufficient woman. She painted the outside blue, added on a carport and a porch. The plan was to use money from her 401k to renovate the house when she retired.
But that never happened due to medical reasons.
“I didn’t know I would be living in a death trap,” Ingram said, now 67.
Marva Ingram standing in the living room of her home located in Birmingham's Fairmont neighborhood on Monday, July 17, 2017.
Jonece Starr Dunigan | jdunigan@al.com
After experiencing shortness of breath and weight loss for an extended period of time, a coworker pushed her to take time off work and go to the doctor in September 2014. Her oxygen levels were below 70 when her doctor diagnosed her with bronchitis, which is a type of COPD, anemia and asthma.
“The person who looked at my X-ray asked me if I worked at a plant. I looked at him and laughed because I was ignorant to the issue,” Ingram said. “My doctor hospitalized me from right there. He personally pushed me in the wheelchair and was wondering how I was breathing. “
She was hospitalized in Preston for two weeks. But Ingram said the COPD made her an annual visitor. In 2015, she stayed in the hospital for a week. After being hospitalized the third time in 2016, she retired from nursing. The money she wanted to use for the renovation was used to pay off her home and medical bills.
“Money I worked so hard and saved for 30 years gone,” Ingram said.
Ingram is trying to manage the life she has now. Her weight dropped from 185 in 2014 to 128 due to her illness. To keep her weight up, she has to drink nutritional drinks every day, which is an expensive purchase for someone who is on the fixed income of social security. With no money to move, Ingram tries her best to keep the home up as best as she can. A new water heater took most of the money she had for the month. So she had to wait until next month to be able to fund the items need to paint her house.
Jonece Starr Dunigan | jdunigan@al.com
She tries to keep a pulse on the Balch & Bingham case whenever the newspaper hits her porch. The situation leaves her hesitant to vote as she read about how other politicians tried to push away the EPA. During the third week of trial, an advisor to the former Alabama Department of Environmental Management director testified that former governor Robert Bentley sent a letter to ADEM to oppose the Birmingham Superfund site listing. Multiple Republicans have accused former Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange of taking two $25,000 campaign donations from Drummond. Strange's campaign manager called the allegations "fake news" at the time.
That trusting bond between Ingram and politicians is gone now, she said.
“I don’t listen to what they say because they are lying. They are not for us. They are for themselves,” Ingram explained. “I know there are some people out there you can trust, but as of right now, I don’t trust any of them, male or female alike, when it comes down to politics.”
Robison’s deed leaves a bad taste in her mouth because he was willing to put a price tag on the community’s trust.
“Chump change to sell our people,” she said. “He didn’t get a quarter of a million dollars. He didn’t even get a million dollars. He sold us out for $365,000. Now, is it worth it?”
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