Toxic area leaving workers, residents sick

Old wood-treatment plant set to be demolished

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Hundreds of people in northwest Jacksonville are living near one of the most polluted sites in America, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

And Thursday people living near Fairfax Street are finally seeing some progress on the site that has been sitting for years.

It started back in 1980 at a wood-treating site called Fairfax Street Wood Treaters. It used arsenic to treat wood for more than 30 years. The site has been closed since 2011. Since then, the EPA began cleanup and talked with people in the community, but that cleanup has been slow.

The city has been working with residents for years, updating them on the results of studies that are conducted, but Thursday residents said not enough is being done.

At the end of January a meeting was held to tell residents about the progress that's being made in the area. An even larger meeting was supposed to happen but never did.

Read: EPA's report on the Fairfax Street toxic site cleanup

So when residents saw some action happening on that land this week they wanted to know what was happening.

"Nobody seems to care about this area and the people that live here," Ed Griggs, a resident of the area for 20 years, said.

Griggs said the voice of the mostly older community is not being heard. For years residents have asked the city what it plans to do about the former treatment plant that has turned into an eyesore, and was deemed one of the most toxic sites in America.

"They were dealing with asbestos, they were dealing with arsenic, and that stuff is still around. As you can see they're down there trying to clean now, they're wearing mask and stuff. Nobody told the neighborhood, nobody's told the neighborhood anything," Griggs said.

One of the last pieces of information given to residents was a newsletter stating that the EPA found arsenic in the on-site soil and people should not live or work on the property.

The city of Jacksonville said that workers began asbestos removal and demolition of the structure that once housed dozens of employees working under hazardous conditions.

Lorenzo Davis and Ernest Lundy worked at the facility for eight years stacking lumber that was coated with chemicals, unaware those chemicals were toxic.

"I was 24-years-old when I started working there. I'm 51 now," Davis said. "We wore uniforms but then the uniform people wouldn't take the uniforms anymore and we didn't know why but they wouldn't pick them up anymore so we had to take them home and wash them in our clothes."

After wearing those contaminated clothes Davis and Lundy said they have now been left with life-long health problems like premature heart attacks, high blood pressure and other physical effects.

"When I went home at night, I took off my shoes and my feet (were) green," Lundy said. "I thought it was a skin problem like a rash or something and then they asked me about going around chemicals. That's what I had to tell my doctor so we could find out what's actually going on because we were going out of the wrong way."

Workers at the plant said they knew nothing about the toxicity of their workplace until they received the public health assessment in February. Now they want the city to acknowledge their medical issues and the health of the residents, some who have lived in the areas for years.

"I would like for these men to get the help that they need because they have very bad medical issues. Secondly I would like for the EPA to come in and tell us the truth. What is really down there? What are you going to do about it? If anything, stop lying to us because that's basically all they've done," Griggs said.

The Department of Health has begun referring questions about the sites cleanup to the city who is now overseeing this demolition project. The city does not have a date for when they will speak to workers but they did say that weather permitting it will be cleared by Aug. 17.