potrero view

April 2008

Midway Village Residents Wait for Justice

By Deia de Brito

Jennifer Advance moved to Midway Village with her mother and then eight month-old daughter Lois almost 30 years ago.  With its on-site daycare, playground, and nearby schools, the newly built Daly City public housing project — the largest in San Mateo County— seemed too good to be true to the then 23 year-old. The 150 unit project, which currently houses 500 residents, sits on a San Bruno mountain slope, a few blocks from the Cow Palace.  

Before moving to the complex Advance’s health had been fine.  But three years after becoming a Midway Village resident, Advance developed diabetes, and become afflicted with migraines, asthma and blurred vision.  When she was seven years old, Lois suffered from chronic vomiting spells, skin rashes, and nosebleeds.  Lois, who continues to live with her mother, has had multiple miscarriages and bled through all three of her ultimately successful pregnancies. Her children now face similar problems to the ones she experienced as a child growing up at Midway Village; one runs to the bathroom to vomit at least twice a week. Another has high fevers, seizures, and Kawasaki, a disease that affects the organs and heart.

Advance says she first learned that Midway Village was built on soil that had been contaminated by a former Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) manufactured gas plant in 1999, almost two decades after she first moved in.  That year, the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ADSTR) released a document that pointed to high levels of chromosome aberrations in 32 out of 34 children, and health irregularities in 19 out of 24 adults, who lived at the complex.  “My daughter liked to walk outside barefoot on the ground and play in the dirt,” Advance said. “We never knew the soil was toxic.”

From 1905 to 1916, PG&E’s plant produced gas from coal, with the toxic coal byproduct known as lampblack dumped into an area that’s now adjacent to Midway Village on Cypress Lane, near Bayshore Street.  In 1944, when the Navy temporarily confiscated PG&E’s land to build military barracks, its contractors bulldozed and spread contaminated soil over the uneven formerly marshy area where the housing complex now stands. In 1955, the federal government returned the plant to PG&E and gave the former military barracks to San Mateo County to be used for public housing and schools.  In 1976, San Mateo County removed the barracks and built Midway Village, while Daly City built Bayshore Park next door.

In 1980, while building the Martin Service Station – a critical electricity transmission node that protects San Francisco and the peninsula against blackouts – next to Midway Village, PG&E discovered high levels of carcinogenic PAHs – polycyclic aromatic carbons – in the soil, including benzopyrene.  PAHs are a group of chemical compounds found in incompletely burned carbon-containing materials, such as wood, tar, and coal.  Exposure to benzopyrene can cause a host of symptoms, including asthma, vomiting, stomach pain, nosebleeds, headaches, lung inflammation, eye infections, and miscarriages.  The utility, working with the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), a state agency charged with protecting public health and the environment against toxic harm, removed the surface soil.  Four years later the federal government placed the site on its Superfund list, identifying it as one of the most contaminated locations in the nation.  Village residents — even those living close by the station – insist that during this period no one notified them that their homes were adjacent to a toxic site.

In 1989, PG&E again found high PAH levels, this time closer to Midway Village and Bayshore Park, where young residents played.  The DTSC capped some areas with concrete, but had insufficient funding to remediate all of the contaminated ground.  Some Village residents talked about organizing a fundraising drive to pay for a lawn to re-vegetate the capped area; others, who’d eaten produce from their gardens for years, expressed concerns. “The risk of exposure would depend on how thoroughly the vegetables were washed before they were eaten,” DTSC explained, and advised residents that “If your children play in the public areas that may have PAH contamination; make certain they have baths so that the soils don’t collect on the skin.”

In the early-1990s, the California Environmental Protection Agency (Cal-EPA) named PG&E, the Navy, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), San Mateo Housing Authority, and Daly City responsible for contamination at Midway Village, and ordered the utility and San Mateo County to pay for the necessary clean-up.  In 2001 DTSC began the first significant cleanup of Midway Village, though the department maintained that the complex was safe to live in.

 The San Mateo Housing Authority says Midway Village residents were first told about the existence of carcinogenic PAHs in 1991 at a meeting held at the complex’s small meeting room.  Since then residents have sought compensation for the damages they say they’ve suffered as a result of the toxic contamination.  In three different cases, residents sued the San Mateo Housing Authority, PG&E, Daly City, and the federal government; all three suits were dismissed on the grounds that the plaintiffs’ health ailments could not be demonstrably linked to soil contamination.

When 32 year resident Maria Downing and her four children moved from another Midway Village apartment into Cypress Lane in the early 1990s she didn’t know about the contaminated soil, much less that she was moving right on top of a former marsh, and the heart of the Navy’s toxic spread.   “During one of the cleanups, my kids were jumping in the ditches, playing with the dirt, even eating it,” Downing said. “They didn’t tell us. When we saw the workers in bubble suits, that’s when we took our kids inside.”  Downing remembers being told by DTSC that it was okay for her children to play in the dirt as long as they took three baths a day. “They told us the chemicals in our soil were like the chemicals in barbecue,” she said. “They were very nonchalant.”

Downing remembers when a buried oil drum leaked onto a grassy area where her kids played, next to her house. “They told us to put duct-tape and plastic over our windows,” she said. “I didn’t bother to do it because to me that was ridiculous. The soil underneath my house is toxic.”

According to Duane Bay, San Mateo Housing Authority Director, before the 2001 cleanup, all Midway Village residents were notified that they could be placed at the top of the waiting list for Section 8 vouchers, which would enable them to obtain subsidized housing elsewhere, but only one accepted the offer. “I felt that people were generally aware of what their offers were,” Bay said.  But Downing says she only heard about the relocation offer informally from other residents, and that in any case she believes that she and other community members deserve more than just another apartment somewhere else, such as financial support to purchase a home and a guarantee of lifetime health care coverage. “We’re not asking for handouts. We’re damaged. We’re so sick that we can’t find work. One day we’re fine, the next day we’re not. They knowingly allowed us to stay here,” Downing said.
Downing says her three children, who range in age from 20 to 35, are like old people.  Her 20-year-old daughter has arthritis, breathing problems, skin rashes, and fainting spells.  Her 24-year-old daughter had uterine cancer. “My children have many of the problems I have now,” Downing said of her insomnia, digestive problems, corneal ulcers, and chronic eye infections. “I have all the symptoms of an AIDS patient. My immune system is non-existent.”

Last year the San Mateo Housing Authority made another relocation offer to Village residents.  They could choose among four options:  families living in one of the 46 apartments in the ‘capped’ area can be placed on the top of the waiting list to move into a same-sized apartment in the uncapped areas of Midway Village; residents can be placed on the top of the waiting list to move to a same-sized apartment in another San Mateo public housing complex; residents can apply to move to a same-sized apartment operated by other affordable housing organizations using Section 8 vouchers; or they can place their names on the list for Section 8 rental assistance vouchers, in which case they may have to wait another three years before receiving a voucher.

The idea of moving to another part of Midway Village, even if it’s considered safe by government officials, is problematic to Gail Smith, a 12 year resident. “All of Midway Village is toxic. DTSC never tested up here to find out,” she said of her Martin Court apartment, located on the Village’s southern side.  Smith claims she knew nothing about the contamination at Midway Village until 2006, when she heard about it from other residents, though Bay insists that the Housing Authority began distributing formal disclosure notices to residents in 1994.   

Smith, who for the past year has helped organize Midway Village Residents for Relocation — a group of about thirty residents — is also not satisfied with the other options being offered by the Housing Authority.  “I don’t want to go to a crime area, or some place far away, and I don’t want to live in a room in a big house full of people,” said Smith of shared home public housing. She says the term “same-sized” is inaccurate:  homes in newer housing projects are much smaller than her current unit.

“As with any public resource, there’s a limited amount of funding. For somebody to get noticed, they need to demonstrate that the health problems they have are due to the toxins,” said the Housing Authority’s Bay.  Bay believes Midway Village is safe to live in. “The DTSC stand by their work,” he said.  “The challenge is it’s already been through the courts. There are tens of thousands who think they deserve a claim but it needs to have a basis.”

Two months ago, DTSC held a public meeting at the Village’s living room-sized common space to review the current status of toxic mitigation efforts.  According to the department, previous cleanup efforts have successfully protected human health and the environment.  However, community activists questioned the validity of DTSC’s findings based on their list of common health problems and statements made by members of the California Environmental Justice Advisory Committee (CEJAC) — a citizen body tasked with making recommendations to Cal-EPA — and independent toxicologist and MacArthur Fellow Wilma Subra.

CEJAC points to a 1999 health evaluation authored by Rosemarie Bowler, PhD, which compared the results from Midway Village to a socio-economically matched community in the East Bay.  The Midway Village residents had significantly more health problems than their East Bay counterparts. “It is a matter of concern that, without any data to show that the study is an error, the conclusion of DTSC and OEHHA [Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment] remains that the health of the residents has been adequately protected,” CEJAC commented. The study also found that almost half of the residents who responded to Bowler’s survey reported growing gardens, with one-third reporting eating from them.

CEJAC notes that not only are clean-up standards for benzopyrene higher in many jurisdictions across the United States, but air monitoring and mitigation didn’t take place at Midway Village.  In three toxic contamination cases similar to Midway Village, residents were not allowed to use the sites during cleanup, and community advisory committees were established, actions which were not taken at Midway Village.  According to CEJAC, at Alhambra — a southern California single-family neighborhood built on soil similarly contaminated by a manufactured gas plant — all plantings, walkways, and patios were removed and replaced with new ones, and the soil was dug down to five feet.  Soil was also removed from the crawlspaces under homes.  In contrast at Midway the DTSC only cleaned-up exposed soil, and didn’t remove old patios, walkways, and plantings. “The second remediation effort [at Midway Village], occurring four years after the Alhambra effort, did not include the same degree of safety,” CEJAC stated.

Michael Dorsey, a CEJAC member and San Diego County’s Chief of the Hazardous Materials Division, suggests that air monitoring should be conducted inside occupied homes at Midway Village. “If this was a wealthy community or a community that had strong political influence I think we all know that these people would be relocated and adequately compensated,” he wrote to DTSC.

Subra says DTSC’s latest review failed to evaluate whether the “remedy” at Midway Village adequately protected human health.  “...the review merely looked for cracks,” Subra stated.  When there are cracks in cement, concrete, or homes plants can transport toxins through the soil to the surface. Last year, Mary Tanner, a 32 year resident, photographed weeds that had grown through cracks in her floor.  Subra believes more needs to be done, including a soil gas investigation, as recommended by OEHHA in 2006, and additional soil sampling. Subra says DTSC’s review only evaluated “capped” areas, while “approximately 100 percent of the soils and subsoils in the area between Midway Drive and PG&E are contaminated with PAHs. Less than 10 percent of the surface areas...have been remediated, with the subsurface soils in these areas still being contaminated with PAHs.” Out of 150 housing units at Midway Village only 40 were recently inspected by DTSC, and 22 of those units had soil and plants coming through cracks.

“We don’t trust DTSC,” Downing said. “They are just following somebody with more authority over them. Wilma Subra is an independent scientist with nothing to lose or gain. She’s not protecting her job or position.”

Some residents compare the situation at Midway Village to Hinkley, California, where a carcinogenic chemical, Chromium 6, leaked into the groundwater from PG&E’s nearby compressor station. That case was taken up by Erin Brockovich, a working class single mother whose part was played by Julia Roberts in the blockbuster movie Erin Brockovich. In the Hinkley case 600 residents won $333 million in damages from PG&E.

Anderson remembers looking out of her window one day in the early 1990s and seeing men walking around in protective suits, fully covered. “I asked them about it and they told me nothing was wrong,” she said.   Since she’s been at Midway Village, Anderson has had seven tumors removed, one of which weighed five pounds. A few years after moving in, she began suffering from bloody noses, rashes, headaches, respiratory problems, and muscle weakness; her three children have had similar symptoms. Anderson has been trying to receive proper compensation for her aliments for almost two decades, in recent years making trips to Sacramento with several other residents to meet with state environmental policy leaders.  “Since HUD funds Midway Village, the least they could do is give me what I’m asking for which is a voucher for first-time home ownership,” Anderson said.  

“We want Section 8 vouchers with home ownership. I’ve been damaged. They owe me a home,” resident Gail Smith said. “Clause X of the lease saying if our health and safety have been harmed in any way we will receive all the rent ever paid,” Smith added. “So the Housing Authority will find anything to evict residents. We have to be very careful.”  Smith and other residents also want help from a relocation specialist to find new homes that accept Section 8 vouchers, full payment of moving expenses, and that no new tenants move into Midway Village.  Many residents have placed their hope in Linda Adams, Cal-EPA, who met with the community two years ago.  Last year Adams encouraged Bay to effectively relocate Village residents.

“Sometimes I get so depressed I can’t sleep at night, knowing we’re being exposed and that I’ve raised my children here,” Downing said. But despite the psychological effects of living at Midway Village, residents work to keep each other’s spirits up. “We want to get to the root of what’s going on. I can’t deal with confusion. When there’s unity and togetherness, I can look for hope,” Advance said. “There’s been some positive things. They’re slow in progress but patience is a virtue”

Last month PG&E began a 24-month construction project at its Martin Service Station, next to Midway Village. The work will include the removal and replacement of electrical equipment and foundations, installation of electrical control buildings, underground cables, as well as the demolition of a building and its foundations. Almost 6,000 cubic yards of soil will be removed.  Midway Village residents are concerned about the health effects of digging in toxic soil over a two-year period, despite PG&E’s promises to remove any contamination and implement dust control measures and monitoring.

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