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Firestone Dump Zone
When it comes to making money, burning rubber, and living in la la land,
Firestone takes the cake. Here is a company that has never heard of
conscience in their entire legacy of byproduct blindness. Combined with
the big auto makers, they have contrived to provide vehicles where no
thought was ever conceived about whether or not the mass production was
matched to survival or revival. Embracing the later has been the
playbook from day one, a religious self servicing disease.
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TOXIC LEGACY
7 May 2007 -
By Virginia Hennessey
-montereyhearld.com
It was a landmark case that changed the legal landscape.
Some believe the chemicals that triggered it continue to percolate,
too.
More than a decade ago, Firestone Tire and Rubber Co.
settled a multimillion-dollar lawsuit
by two couples whose well water was contaminated with cancer-causing
chemicals. A judge found that the toxic brew was illegally
dumped into the Crazy Horse Landfill with the
blessing of Firestone officials trying
to cut costs at their Salinas plant.
Firestone has long since left Salinas. The lawsuit has slipped from
local memory. But the chemicals, according to a new complaint, did
not go away. They leached along a downward path, percolating through
the aquifer to new wells and new victims, according to the
complaint. |
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Comment: Off
to find new dumping ground.
At least two have died, including a mother of five, the lawsuit claims.
Others fought cancer or fear they will.
In all, four families who lived along Pesante Road in Prunedale, a
mile or so below Crazy Horse Landfill, are seeking damages from
Firestone's successor, Bridgestone Firestone North American Tire
LLC.
The families claim their wells and the very air they breathed were
poisoned by the same carcinogenic chemicals Firestone dumped in
Crazy Horse decades ago. Their lawyers say the claims have been
confirmed by "one of the most preeminent scientists in the field"
and are backed up by testimony from former Firestone employees
who confirmed they regularly dumped or buried 55-gallon drums of
toxic waste in the landfill as far back as 1963.
A Bridgestone spokesman said the claims
are "unfounded" and "without merit." In cross-complaints filed in
U.S. District Court in San Jose, Bridgestone's attorneys maintain
the plaintiffs contaminated their own properties. |
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Comment:
Psychopath pushing psychopathy!
The company also asserts the toxins found in the Pesante Road wells
have a different "chemical fingerprint"????
than those previously identified in the Crazy Horse Landfill
contamination. And it is pointing a finger at the plaintiffs'
neighbor, Waldo Simons, who operated a bulldozing operation out of
his Pesante Road property. |
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Comment: see
picture below with bulldozer in dump yard also. How can a neighbor
who operates a bulldozer dump and bury toxic waste when there is no
production, which comes directly from FIRESTONE????
Trash is hauled at Crazy Horse Landfill. (©ORVILLE
MYERS/The Herald)
"The groundwater contaminants identified in the shallow aquifer
beneath the Pesante Road properties are dominated by fuel
constituents consistent with contamination of the soil by activities
on the Simons' property and at the Pesante Road properties
themselves," Bridgestone asserts in a cross-complaint against
Simons. "This 'chemical footprint' is entirely different from the
known contaminants in the Crazy Horse landfill."
Simons' attorney, Sharon Glenn Pratt of Campbell, said Simons and
his wife, Helen, are innocent bystanders whom Bridgestone targeted
"to kind of deflect the attention off of them as the main culprits."
She said Bridgestone has not tested Simons' ground and identified
him as a scapegoat only after flying over his property and
seeing that he stockpiles a lot of old equipment.
The Simonses, who have not claimed contamination on their property,
countersued Bridgestone for involving them in the lawsuit.
"It's really expensive for them and really bad because Bridgestone
Firestone has huge amounts of money to
spend on litigation, and they don't," Pratt said of the Simonses,
who are now retired. |
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Comment: Huge
amounts of money and NO CONSCIENCE VISIBLE!
The saga begins
The Firestone saga in Monterey County goes back to 1967, four years
after the tire manufacturer opened its plant in South Salinas. That
year, according to findings by Monterey County Superior Court Judge
Robert O'Farrell, Firestone hired Salinas Disposal Service to
deliver its industrial waste to Crazy Horse Landfill.
The disposal company told Firestone that Crazy Horse was a Class II
landfill, which prohibits dumping of toxic or liquid waste.
Firestone agreed not to place those wastes in its Dumpsters,
according to O'Farrell's ruling in the original lawsuit against the
company. Despite its assurances, however, the company sent large
amounts of toxic and liquid waste to the landfill, O'Farrell found. |
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Comment: Huge
amounts of money and NO CONSCIENCE VISIBLE!
In 1977, Firestone's plant engineer sent a memo to the plant manager
and department heads detailing official policy on disposal of toxic
waste, which included using a Class I landfill that was lined with
plastic and qualified to receive toxics. The company initially made
efforts to comply, but became overwhelmed with the amount of
industrial waste it was generating and again began dumping at
Crazy Horse, according to court records. |
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COMMENT: Huge
amounts of money and no common sense at all!
During the same time, a production manager had been sent to the
Salinas plant from the company's Ohio headquarters with orders to
make the plant more profitable. Angered at the costs of the disposal
program, O'Farrell found, the manager discontinued it and the
plant returned to dumping at Crazy Horse. |
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COMMENT: Huge
amounts of money and the need for lots more!
In 1984, neighbors Frank and Shirley Potter and Joe and Linda
Plescia, who lived adjacent to the landfill, discovered that toxic
chemicals had contaminated their wells. They sued. O'Farrell ruled
in their favor after a three-month nonjury trial, awarding them
nearly $4 million in damages.
The case eventually wound its way to the state Supreme Court, which
upheld some of O'Farrell's ruling and referred it back for retrial
on others.
In its landmark ruling, however, the high court established a tough
standard for proving financial damages in "fear-of-cancer" lawsuits.
And it said the plaintiffs' attorneys in Potter v. Firestone had met
that standard.
Firestone settled with the plaintiffs for an undisclosed sum before
the case was retried.
Professor Dan Selmi said he uses the case to teach his students at
the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles about fear-of-cancer
litigation. Selmi said Potter v. Firestone is included in the
textbook he uses and helped establish national law on the issue.
Families fall ill
While the Potter case was creating groundbreaking case law in the
state's courts, residents along Pesante Road, south of Crazy Horse
Landfill, were unaware of the chemicals allegedly creeping toward
their wells.
The properties in the "Pesante Triangle" are a little more than a
mile from Crazy Horse Landfill. Their wells are fed by
aquifers that are charged under and at
the western base of the landfill, according to the suit, which lists
a history of medical problems suffered by residents of the area.
Vernon and Constance Dower bought their property at 19646 Pesante
Road in 1982, two years after Firestone closed its doors in Salinas.
They lived there with their five children until 1989.
Two years after they left the area, Constance Dower, 44, was
diagnosed with breast cancer. She died in 1995. The oldest of her
five children was 18.
"You can imagine," Vernon Dower said recently, his voice still
cracking at the memory. "We were married for 25 years, the last four
of which were basically going through the dying process with five
kids. It still shakes me just to recount it."
Three years ago, one of his daughters found two growths in her
breasts, according to his lawsuit. Doctors are watching
approximately 20 growths that have been found in her sister's lymph
tissue, lumps ranging in size "from a pea to a clenched fist."
Their brother was recently diagnosed with a tumor in his pituitary
gland. All of the family suffers with chronic, unexplained rashes.
Other families in the area have had similar problems:
· John and Margaret Simmons lived on the same property as the Dower
family from 1959 to 1976. Margaret Simmons contracted colon cancer
in 1994, the same year her husband died of a series of strokes. She
beat the colon cancer, only to be diagnosed with liver cancer that
took her life in 2003.
· In 1959, Ralph and Earline Rothermich moved onto their 10 acres of
heaven, just down the road from the Simmonses. Earline Rothermich
contracted breast cancer about 10 years ago, and it is in remission.
Her husband died of leukemia and lymphatic cancer in 2006.
· Lawrence Phillips moved his family into a mobile home on Pesante
Road in 1970. He stayed there until 1988, when he died of pancreatic
cancer. Doctors removed a 9-pound tumor from his wife's ovary before
she died of a massive heart attack in 1987 at the age of 45. Her
daughter died of a heart attack at the age of 36 in 1999.
· Lois Hija moved into the mobile home after Lawrence Phillips'
death. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, underwent a
mastectomy and may require 60 radiation treatments, according to the
lawsuit.
Vernon Dower was the first of the plaintiffs to suspect that toxic
contamination from the landfill was causing cancer. After finding
Crazy Horse Landfill listed No. 5 on the Environmental Protection
Agency's Superfund List in 2004, further research led him to news
reports of the Potter lawsuit.
Until then, he said, he was unaware of the contamination. He told
his children of his suspicions and contacted the attorneys who
brought the case against Firestone.
More than 10 years after they settled the Potter case, those lawyers
returned to the Salinas Valley, this time to test the water in
Pesante Canyon. They sank a monitoring well on Dower's old property
and took air samples from his old house.
They found 32 "volatile organic compounds" in water and air
samples, according to the suit. Thirty of those are chemicals
"used in the rubber industry and have been found among the
contaminants at Crazy Horse."
They got similar results, according to the suit, when they tested
the air in Earline Rothermich's and Troy and Tina Graham's houses —
multiple compounds common to tire production. Firestone
was the only tire company in the area in the past four decades.
Cleanup effort
The lawsuit asserts that the chemicals Firestone dumped not only
leached into the water, but escaped into the air with rising methane
gases. On low-wind nights, the suit says, the escaped gases would
"hug the contours of the terrain, bringing them down the ravine
between Crazy Horse and the Triangle."
According to the lawsuit, there was some effort to clean up the
contamination. Under the supervision of the state Regional Water
Quality Control Board, a "pump and treat" program was put in place
in 1988 and 42 monitoring wells were installed to monitor the
groundwater.
Ten years later, the suit claims, officials realized that eight of
those wells had essentially punctured holes to a deeper aquifer,
allowing the contamination to further spread. An attempt to stem
the flow failed, according to the lawsuit.
Dean Thomas, an engineering geologist with the water quality control
board, confirmed that some of the wells were later sealed off so
they would "no longer be a conduit between the two zones." He
remembers, however, that the wells were extraction wells, which
would not provide the same opportunity for cross contamination as
monitoring wells.
In the event it is found liable for the contamination, Bridgestone
has also filed governmental claims???
against the city of Salinas, which formerly owned the landfill, and
the Salinas Valley Solid Waste Authority. Both entities have
denied??? the claims.
Calls to Bridgestone's attorneys were returned by the company's
media relations director. In a prepared
statement, he said the lawsuit's assertions are false.
"What the plaintiffs' lawyers are alleging simply isn't plausible,"
said Dan MacDonald. "The chemical fingerprint the plaintiffs'
lawyers claim to have found does not match the fingerprint that
would be found if chemicals had come from the landfill.
"Furthermore," he said, "the chemicals that were allegedly found in
the air in the Pesante Road homes are exactly the same chemicals
commonly found in indoor air in houses anywhere in the United
States." |
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Comment:
Psychopaths love distractions!
Assistance refused
On the other hand, MacDonald said, the contamination claimed by the
homeowners is consistent with gasoline or diesel fuel, "which can be
found in places such as a junkyard."
MacDonald said Bridgestone offered technical assistance to the
homeowners to confirm the source of the contamination, but their
lawyers refused it.
"The suit is without merit," MacDonald said. "We will vigorously
defend ourselves against these unfounded allegations." |
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Comment: Huge
amounts of money and ZERO CONSCIENCE!
The plaintiffs' attorneys say they intend to hold Bridgestone
accountable for the havoc wreaked on the lives of those who lived or
still live near Crazy Horse Landfill.
"From our perspective, any time you are dumping toxic chemicals in
an area where people live and people are not told of the dumping,
the conduct cannot be justified under any circumstances," said Niall
McCarthy of the Burlingame law firm of Cotchett Pitre & McCarthy.
The lawsuit is winding its way through the federal courts. In late
March, U.S. District Court Judge James Ware granted the plaintiffs'
motion to dismiss Bridgestone's cross-complaint. Ware agreed that
Bridgestone had not shown it had been damaged and therefore had no
standing.
Bridgestone refiled an amended
cross-complaint??? on Monday, essentially leveling the same
charges that the plaintiffs contaminated their own properties. This
time the company excluded the plaintiffs who were children at the
times in question.
The youngest of the plaintiffs, Andrew Dower, was born while his
parents lived on Pesante Road. He was 6 when they left.
'Extraordinarily close'
Bridgestone used the same defense against the Plescias in their earlier
lawsuit, arguing they contaminated their own property. Judge
O'Farrell said the argument was not "convincing."
The plaintiffs' attorneys also dismiss the claims.
"It's standard playbook for polluters
to try to blame someone else," said McCarthy.
Another attorney on the case, Steve Williams, said Bridgestone has
done some "basic preliminary tests" but nothing that would allow
them to claim the plaintiffs' properties were contaminated by
themselves or Simons, or that the "chemical fingerprint" doesn't
match Bridgestone's industrial waste.
"From what we've seen, it is extraordinarily close," Williams said.
"I don't think they did any testing that would allow them to make
those claims."
Vernon Dower now lives in Meadow Vista but remembers Monterey County
fondly.
"The whole reason for pursuing any of this is so it doesn't happen
again," he said.
The lawyers anticipate more litigation as property owners learn of
the alleged contamination. Whether they seek legal help or not,
McCarthy said, he hopes they will protect themselves.
"There are a lot of people in the Crazy Horse area who should be
aware of the history of the dumping so they make sure to take
whatever steps are appropriate to protect the health of themselves
or their family," he said. "People need to know what the hell went
on out there."
Virginia Hennessey can be reached at 753-6751 or vhennessey@montereyherald.com.
Go to:
montereyherald.com
to view the lawsuit.
Dower
et al v. Bridgestone Firestone Ten plaintiffs are suing Bridgestone
Firestone North American Tire LLC alleging negligence and wrongful
death caused by toxic waste that Firestone intentionally and
illegally dumped at the Crazy Horse Landfill in the 1960s and 1970s.
Plaintiffs · Vernon Dower and children Gabriel, Lucas, Leilani,
Miriam and Andrew: Wife and mother, Constance Dower, died of cancer
in 1995. Lived on Pesante Road from 1982-89. Both previous occupants
of the property also died of cancer. · Earline Rothermich: Husband,
Ralph Rothermich, died of cancer last May. The couple had lived on
Pesante Road since 1959. · Troy and Tina Graham: Tests showed
airborne chemicals allegedly consistent with tire manufacturing in
the living room, bedroom and crawl space of their cement-foundation
home on Pesante Road. · Lois Hija: Contracted breast cancer,
requiring a mastectomy and ongoing chemotherapy. Has lived on
Pesante Road since 1988. Previous resident died of cancer.
Defendants · Bridgestone Firestone North American Tire LLC and
Bridgestone Americas Holding Inc.: Maintain plaintiffs and one of
their neighbors contaminated the land. |
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Living on the Lost Planet 
