On the surface, Destiny is like any other four-year-old — easily bored, energetic, and unaware that her future hangs on a thread. Cantrice, her 28-year-old mother, left Chicago last year in search of a better place to raise her kids. In Gainesville, she struggled to find an adequate place to sleep at night. Destiny’s father, who had been “missing in action” for years, wasn’t going to help. On July 10, she entered the Interfaith Hospitality Network of Greater Gainesville, a nonprofit dedicated to sheltering homeless parents and children.

For more journalism documenting homeless children in Gainesville, check out Transient Children of Alachua County, where this story was originally posted. If the topic interests you, check out their event this Friday at Plaza of the Americas.

The photos (above) were taken at Adventure Outpost and Ichetucknee Springs. To learn more, check out When the Springs Run Dry: Independent Researchers Fight to Save Florida’s Springs.

If you happen to be a small farmer, and Monsanto decides to take you to court, you can reasonably compare the result to a dragonfly (that’s you) splattered against the windshield of a truck (that’s Monsanto), and you’ll probably lose your farm. Then again, if an entire swarm of dragonflies descended on the truck at once, they may accomplish something.

In July, Florida Organic Growers, a Gainesville-based nonprofit established in 1987 to promote sustainable agriculture, joined a coalition of family farmers, seed companies, and environmental organizations representing hundreds of thousands of individuals in a lawsuit against Monsanto, led by the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association.

Shortly after the lawsuit began, Monsanto issued a statement saying they wouldn’t assert their patents against farmers who suffer “trace” amounts of transgenic contamination, but the promise wasn’t legally binding, and the plaintiffs aren’t convinced. And that’s all they want—a legally binding promise that Monsanto will end its predatory use of patent enforcement to put smaller competitors out of business.

In other news, a June 2011 ABC News poll reveals that 93 percent of Americans think genetically modified foods should be labelled and that 57 percent of Americans would use those labels strictly for the purpose of avoiding them.

Not everyone shares the same sentiment, though. The Center for Consumer Freedom prefers the term “genetically improved” and criticizes organic farmers for using “junk science” to market their products to a wealthy minority of suburban “elitists.” It should be noted that the Center for Consumer Freedom is a front group for Berman and Company, a public relations firm for tobacco companies, fast food restaurants, factory farms, and—last but not least—Monsanto.

Update (1/18/11): For an in-depth story on the topic, check out Where the GMOs Grow by Lily Wan.

Independent Researchers Fight to Save Florida’s Springs

As the sunlight fades over Adventure Outpost, a small shop along Highway 441, Lars Anderson returns his paddles, kayaks and canoes to their proper place after leading travelers down the Santa Fe River.

Anderson, who wears a brimmed hat and speaks with a Florida accent, says he spent his childhood in Gainesville and explored the springs whenever he could. These days, he leads tours along 60 different waterways in north and central Florida, and he gives three to four tours in a typical week.

“I just want people to have a great time with nature,” he says. When Anderson isn’t managing his shop, leading tours or writing travel guides, he studies conservation issues affecting the springs. “The future looks pretty grim with Rick Scott and the likes,” he says, closing his shop for the night. “There are people [in power] who want to ignore science in favor of their own short-sighted agendas.”

Anderson, who serves on the advisory board of the Florida Springs Institute, does whatever he can to educate others. Working groups throughout the state have gathered a solid collection of data, which indicates over-pumping, nitrate pollution, and irresponsible land use. They’ve also presented solutions. The next step is action, which at this point is lacking.

“With legislators standing in the way, people are sitting at these working groups, coming out with all this great research,” he says. “But the solid action is up against a brick wall. We’ve reached a low point in recent decades.”

Since 2001, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) spent up to $2.4 million each year on its Florida Springs Initiative program, which sought to identify problems facing the springs and solve them through research, education, outreach and restoration. The initiative also funded working groups, which brought together shareholders to better understand the issues associated with individual springs.

This year in July, state administrators abruptly ended funding for the Florida Springs Initiative. As a result, four of the most established working groups, which focused on Silver, Rainbow, Wakulla and Ichetucknee Springs, have been discontinued. A three-year contract to maintain the working groups and write restoration plans for each of the four springs has been prematurely terminated.

Florida’s leaders spent up to $24 million to keep the Florida Springs Initiative running throughout its ten-year existence. Comparatively, Florida has at least 900 artesian springs, known for their clarity and vibrant color, which contribute more than $300 million to the state economy each year through recreation and eco-tourism.

A small group of springs in central Florida, which includes Ginnie Springs, the most popular freshwater diving spot in the world, generates $10 million a year for surrounding communities. One local dive shop saw visitors from 46 different countries. Ichetucknee Springs, which includes a famous pool where children get baptized, generates $23 million in visitor spending each year, including $5 million in wages for local workers.

“We won’t have a strong economy if we have a weak environment, and that’s been proven throughout Florida’s history,” said Bob Knight, 63, director of the Florida Springs Institute. Knight began studying Florida’s springs more than 30 years ago. He worked under the mentorship of the late Howard T. Odum, the world’s first ecologist to document the flow of energy through aquatic ecosystems. His famous study, published in 1957, focused on Silver Springs.

Knight continued Odum’s work for decades, documenting changes over time in multiple springs throughout Florida. Silver Springs, the largest spring in the country, lost 30 percent of its output since 2001. Ichetucknee and Rainbow Springs lost 15 percent each, and countless others are close to drying out completely. Almost every spring in Florida connects to the Floridan aquifer, where the state gets 60 percent of its usable water.

“We need to reduce the amount of water we’re pumping out of the aquifer,” Knight said. “Water management districts are beginning to recognize this, but they’re still giving out permits for additional groundwater withdrawals. They’re handing them out like candy.”

Where does all the water go? Over 1,500 golf courses exist in Florida, more than in any other state, and the number is growing each year. Combine that with about 3 million suburban lawns, which soak up nearly half of the public water supply. Then there’s industrial agriculture, which the Florida DEP lists as the second most prominent force depleting the aquifer.

Laws exist limiting the amount of permits granted by water management districts based on the concept of minimum flow levels, defined as the amount of water that can be drawn from the aquifer without significantly harming springs and other natural bodies of water. Determining minimum flow levels is a scientific process, but the issue has been politicized, which opens the floodgates for reckless behavior.

“It is likely that [almost] every major artesian spring in Florida… experiences declining flows as a result of human consumptive uses,” Knight wrote in 2008. “By the time flow reductions become obvious in springs, they are often so great that significant ecological values and functions have already been lost.”

To make matters worse, the statewide use of nitrogen fertilizers causes nitrates to enter the groundwater, contaminating the aquifer and spreading outward into the springs. Knight said Ginnie Springs is an exceptional example, with a nitrate concentration 30 times higher than what should naturally occur.

Nitrate pollution triggers the growth of filamentous algae, otherwise known as “noxious algae,” which clouds the water, blocks sunlight, and decimates native plant life. As a result, all the animals higher up in the food chain — fish, turtles, birds, and otters, to name a few — begin to die off as well.

In regions of north and central Florida where artesian springs are common, groundwater nitrate concentrations have increased from natural levels of 0.02 parts per million to widespread concentrations of more than 1.0 parts per million (that’s 50 times higher), according to estimates from 2008. Knight pointed out that 50 percent of the biomass in Silver Springs has already been overtaken by noxious algae.

“The leaders of Florida are in denial that there’s a problem,” he said. “They say they’re dealing with it, but they just give out more permits. And the permits go against current laws, but nobody is challenging them. Because what you have to challenge is a very rich machine that is benefiting from these groundwater withdrawals and pollution. You have people that are benefiting at the expense of the whole public, and the public is not organized, aware, or well-funded enough to do anything about it.”

Knight wrote in 2008 that the Florida Springs Initiative had “contributed to a much better understanding of the springs and the problems they face” but that current levels of funding were “inadequate to turn the tide away from continuing degradation.” Two years later, instead of increasing efforts to protect the springs, state administrators slashed them from the budget completely.

“It sounds like the sky is falling and, you know, it actually is,” Knight said. “We really do have springs that are drying up. There are holes in the ground where there used to be flowing springs.”

In the face of recent setbacks, Knight is taking matters into his own hands. He started the Howard T. Odum Florida Springs Institute last year, which aims to expand on the work of the Florida Springs Initiative, with or without state funding. Knight is both director and founder, and he’s in the process of gathering staff. Since the 1950s, Odum imagined a research center in Silver Springs, but nothing ever came of it in his lifetime. “It’s sort of a dream Dr. Odum had. We had it together, and I’m starting it now.”

(Above) An egret swipes a fish out of the water at Ichetucknee Springs. All ecological and economic facts in this story, unless otherwise cited, are based on the most recent estimates from the Howard T. Odum Florida Springs Institute.

Above: Duane Schwingel, a neatly dressed father of two, identifies as a pro-life Christian conservative. He also writes defiant songs about the struggle to “tear down Wall Street” and restore democracy.

The “Occupy” movement, which began with general assemblies in New York, spread into a global “Day of Rage” Oct. 15, with demonstrations in more than 80 countries. Eight days before, Congressional Republicans made it clear they were feeling threatened:

“We have to be careful not to allow this to get any legitimacy,” Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said Oct. 7 on a conservative talk show. “I’m old enough to remember what happened in the 1960s when the left-wing took to the streets and somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy.”

When the “Occupy” movement spread to Gainesville, Fla., City Manager Russ Blackburn granted protesters a one-night permit to occupy downtown Wednesday night with a stipulation that the occupation would end the next day. On Oct. 13, the temporary permit expired. After the sun went down, 50 protesters lined the sidewalk surrounding Bo Diddley Plaza. Ellas Anthony McDaniel, 56, son of the late rhythm and blues musician Bo Diddley, decided to join them.

“Big business and government should not mix,” he said. “We’re making history at a place that honors my father.” To show his support, McDaniel stood on top of a stone block with an imprint of the words “Freedom of Speech” and “Freedom of Assembly.” A Gainesville Police Department officer handcuffed him, wrote a citation, and threatened to put him in jail if he tried to set foot on the plaza again. Three other protesters were detained and cited that night.

McDaniel told The Alligator he would continue to support the occupation and bail out anyone who gets arrested. The event made international headlines, picked up by The Daily Kos and The Guardian and later mentioned on MSNBC by Keith Olbermann.

Duane Schwingel, a local occupier who knew Bo Diddley personally, said McDaniel’s father would have been proud. Schwingel, 53, a neatly dressed copywriter and father of two, made it clear that he doesn’t like labels. Nonetheless, he identifies as a pro-life Christian conservative. He’s been a Republican most of his life, though now he leans toward libertarianism.

“Bo Diddley may have thought this was a silly left-wing event if he had only listened to the sound bites,” he said. “But I think he would have supported the movement, like anyone else would, if he had actually checked it out.”

At the “Occupy Gainesville” general assemblies, Schwingel made friends with atheists and socialists. “We all shared a common cause — social, economic, and environmental justice,” he said. “It may never be reached 100 percent, but a peaceful dialogue will help us get there.”

As a kid, Schwingel dabbled with guitar and harmonica. He met Bo Diddley through his son, with whom he shared a job in roofing and carpentry. Both of them stopped at Bo Diddley’s house after work on a regular basis.

“He would feed us, show me his guitars, and tell me stories of his life,” Schwingel said. “But mostly he talked about his children and the future. He was even working on rap songs for children—with a message not to do drugs. And that impressed me. He listened to my music and became a friend.”

Before “Occupy Gainesville” started, Schwingel wrote a defiant song about the “Occupy” movement’s struggle to “tear down Wall Street” and restore democracy. On Oct. 13, he attended the protest and brought his guitar, excited to share his song with others. If not for Schwingel, Bo Diddley’s son may not have shown up.

“They were standing at Bo Diddley Plaza, and I realized I had to get my friend over there. So I came with my song and my buddy,” he said.

Most people went home at some point after the arrests, but a few protesters stayed and slept on the sidewalk. Schwingel stayed awake, watched over them, and wrote a new song that night. “I wanted something to play for them when they woke up, yawned and stretched,” he said at a general assembly the next day.

“This movement seems to be driven by social interaction rather than ideology,” he added. “It’s not saying, ‘Here’s the solution.’ It’s saying, ‘Here’s the problem. Let’s talk.’ And that’s why I’m optimistic. Otherwise I would be pessimistic. I would think, ‘Oh, this is just another movement about another solution.’”

You can listen to the songs he wrote here and here. For more about the “Occupy” movement, from New York City to Gainesville, check out our story on how it all started.

Update (10/30): Scott Olsen, a U.S. Marine who completed two tours in Iraq, was hit in the head by a tear gas canister Oct. 26 at an “Occupy Oakland” protest. The canister, launched from a police projectile, left Olsen in critical condition with a fractured skull. Two days later, Egyptian protesters condemned the violence in Oakland and marched from Tahrir Square to the U.S. Embassy in support of the “Occupy” movement. Schwingel wrote a new song recently, dedicated to Scott Olsen.

Ellas Anthony McDaniel, 56, son of the legendary rhythm and blues musician Bo Diddley, was arrested Thursday night for civil disobedience on behalf of “Occupy Gainesville.”

Two days have passed since protesters set up camp at Bo Diddley Plaza, symbolically supporting the occupation of New York City’s financial sector. Organizers obtained a permit from City Manager Russ Blackburn to camp out Wednesday night, so long as the occupation would end the following day.

Last night, the occupiers decided their right to peacefully assemble overrides local ordinances. A small crowd of dedicated protesters lined the sidewalk surrounding Bo Diddley Plaza, and McDaniel decided to join them.

“We’re making history at a place that honors my father,” he said. “Big business and government should not mix. This is a movement for morality and freedom.”

To show his support, McDaniel stood on top of a stone block with an imprint of the words “Freedom of Speech” and “Freedom of Assembly.” A Gainesville Police Department (GPD) officer handcuffed McDaniel at approximately 11:45 p.m., wrote him a citation to appear in court on Nov. 17, released him, and threatened to put him in jail if he tried to set foot on the plaza again that night.

“My father is rolling in his grave right now,” McDaniel said. “They have no clue what they did when they put those handcuffs on me.”

Three other protesters were detained and cited that night, including Pat Fitzpatrick, a longtime advocate for Gainesville’s homeless population, and Ian Brandon Smith, 43, a state care provider.

For more about the “Occupy” movement, check out our story on how it all started. For updates on #OccupyGainesville, follow @thefineprintuf on Twitter.

In other news, TIME released a poll on Oct. 10, showing that 54 percent of Americans view the “Occupy” movement favorably while 23 percent view it unfavorably. Comparatively, only 27 percent of Americans view the Tea Party favorably, while 33 percent view it unfavorably.

Update (10/14): The crowd last night included about 50 protesters, according to coverage from The Alligator. McDaniel owns property in Hawthorne and Archer, and he promised to bail out each and every protester that gets arrested during “Occupy Gainesville.” The story has already been picked up by The Daily Kos.

Update (10/14): Photo added. Ellas Anthony McDaniel attends an “Occupy Gainesville” general assembly on Oct. 14, the day after his arrest. The story at this point has received international attention, picked up by The Guardian and mentioned on The Countdown by Keith Olbermann.

Update (10/23): Duane Schwingel, a neatly dressed copywriter and father of two, identifies as a pro-life Christian conservative. He also writes defiant songs about the struggle to “tear down Wall Street” and restore democracy. If not for Schwingel, this entire story may never have happened.

The Gainesville Sun reported on July 3 that anti-smoking and public health advocates—like Dr. Scott Tomar, a professor of community dentistry and behavioral sciences at UF—are not pleased with Cameron’s new position. “It’s certainly not the model of business ethics that I think UF should be promoting,” he said.

What’s really interesting about Cameron’s past, which The Gainesville Sun only mentions briefly, is the controversy over her company’s treatment of farm workers. In 2009, two-dozen protesters, including students from UF and the University of Central Florida, rallied outside the Hilton UF Conference Center during a UF Foundation board meeting. Their goal was to bring attention to the treatment of tobacco workers in the fields of North Carolina. As reported by The Alligator:

By demonstrating in front of the board meeting’s venue, the protesters said they hoped to show Ivey that farm workers’ issues are important… Although Ivey wasn’t in attendance at the meeting, the students handed out informational fliers to the board, including UF President Bernie Machen, who told them he would make sure Ivey got a flier.

Two years earlier, more than 300 farm workers, trade unionists, religious leaders, and students marched through the streets of Winston-Salem, NC. The march was led by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) to demand negotiations with R.J. Reynolds over the “oppressive conditions” suffered by North Carolina tobacco workers, which included “sub-minimum wages, corrupt crew leaders, extreme poverty, bootleg labor camps, major health risks and heat stroke deaths,” according to a statement from the FLOC. In 2007, Fight Back News reported the following:

Over the past month, CEO Susan Ivey… has refused to meet with the union or with religious leaders to discuss the issue, citing the fact that R.J. Reynolds is not the direct employer of these workers. But FLOC argues that because of the control that R.J. Reynolds has over their procurement systems, the company has the power to bring about changes involving all parties in the supply chain.

By 2010, the United Auto Workers (UAW) joined forces with the FLOC to take on JPMorgan Chase, partially due to its financial ties with Reynolds American. UAW President Bob King and several religious leaders announced their intention to withdraw hundreds of millions of dollars from the bank. Why would they do such a thing? According to the AFL-CIO Now blog:

For three years, Susan Ivey… has refused to meet with workers to discuss the conditions of thousands of tobacco farm employees in North Carolina and other states who harvest the tobacco Reynolds uses to make its products. JPMorgan Chase is one of the lead banks in a consortium of lenders that provides $498 million in credit to Reynolds American.

In May 2011, Reynolds American finally agreed to meet with the FLOC after 150 workers and community supporters rallied on May 6 at the company’s shareholder meeting. The company pledged to use an independent monitor to assess working conditions at its farms and to create a council of tobacco manufacturers, growers, labor officials, agricultural scientists, farm workers, and their representatives, including the FLOC.

By then, Ivey was no longer part of the company. She had retired three months earlier, leaving a “legacy that stretches beyond the boardroom,” according to the Winston-Salem Journal. “Stories abound about Ivey’s energetic contributions to nonprofit organizations as large as United Way of Forsyth County, the Winston-Salem YWCA and Salem College, and as small as Senior Services Inc. and the Stokes County Arts Council.” The paper gushes on about her accomplishments in business and philanthropy without mentioning her lack of concern for tobacco workers. According to an article from the Institute of Southern Studies:

FLOC President Baldemar Velasquez called Reynolds “one of the most anti-worker companies in the field,” citing its subminimum wages as well as illnesses and heat-stroke deaths among tobacco pickers. They’re brought on by a relentless work pace, pesticides, and acute nicotine poisoning caused by a lack of protective clothing and training.

Ivey’s initial response to protesters—we don’t directly employ these workers, so there’s nothing we can do—was repeated in 2011 by representatives of Publix when they refused to negotiate with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), despite similar deals struck by the CIW with companies like Taco Bell, Burger King, McDonald’s, Aramark, and Whole Foods (none of which directly employ farm workers).

Well, fair enough. That was all a few months ago. This is now. The Gainesville Sun reported in June that UF’s Board of Trustees had “gone through a major turnover” after Governor Rick Scott appointed Atlanta health care executive W. Michael Heekin, Naples health care executive Alan M. Levine, and Florida Power and Light senior attorney Juliet M. Roulhac. And now we have Susan Cameron, formerly Susan Ivey. We can rest assured to know that UF’s Board of Trustees is business-savvy, if nothing else.

Roy Hale Geiersbach, 61, has lived along the fence since 1996. “Don’t be surprised if I gotta cough,” he said, “I’ve been fighting pneumonia and cracked ribs.” There used to be a well in his yard, which he drank from until 2007, when he found out it was contaminated with industrial toxins. Geiersbach takes 27 prescription medications for a variety of ailments, including skin cancer, cardiovascular problems and diabetes. “Look outside,” he said. “See the oak trees? Do you see any squirrels? There are none because they eat the acorns and drop dead. Everything here is dying.”

For two years, Mary Ann Jones has lived along the fence with her extended family, which includes three grandchildren. “I’m scared to death,” she said. “I used to love to garden, but now my plants are dead because I’m scared to touch them. We’re pretty much stuck here.” Jones is left to wonder whether her family’s ailments, which include skin rashes, headaches and frequent nosebleeds, are just a coincidence or signs of toxic contamination.

Aaron, 4, lives with his grandmother, Mary Ann Jones, along the fence of the Superfund site. He doesn’t fully understand the situation but knows that if he plays outside and drops something on the ground, he is not to pick it up under any circumstances.

Max and Peanut, the Jones family’s pets, cling to the fence outside. Small children and pets are particularly vulnerable to the effects of chronic dioxin exposure, which can lead to immune deficiency, reproductive problems and cancer.

Farinda O’Steen, 64, has lived along the fence since 1966. In 2006, she lost her husband to seven different types of cancer. Her son, 35, had three strokes before he was six months old. O’Steen believes her husband’s chromosomal damage spread to their children and grandchildren in the form of skin rashes, bone weakness, learning disabilities and other problems. She has lost faith in the EPA, the City Commission and even the activists who claim to represent the interests of people trapped near Koppers. O’Steen’s only goal now is to save money so she can start a new life with her family elsewhere.

Across the street from O’Steen’s house, a dog chained to a fencepost runs in circles and barks at passersby, releasing contaminated dust in the air.

A few blocks away from the actual fence of the Superfund site, another wooden fence in the Stephen Foster Neighborhood displays the notorious trademark of Koppers, Inc.

Update (July 2011): In June, The Gainesville Sun reported, “There is no evidence to suggest neighbors of the Cabot-Koppers Superfund site in Gainesville are at an increased risk of developing cancer, according to a Florida Department of Health analysis released Friday… The Stephen Foster Neighborhood Cancer Review compared numbers of cancer cases in that neighborhood’s census tract with the rest of the state between 1981 and 2000.”

In the same article, Anthony Dennis of the Florida Department of Health acknowledged that the study had limitations. On July 21, Anne Lowry, a former Hospital Director of Nursing and Director of Investigational Drug studies, wrote an unpublished letter to the editors, calling the study “junk science” and criticizing the Sun for not being critical enough. “Proper and valid health studies take years,” she says. “They require thousands of people to be studied, tracking back over many generations, and must be designed and fully completed by scientists.”

To learn more, check out:
A Haunting Past, Pt. 1: How Gainesville faces decades of toxic pollution
A Haunting Past, Pt. 2
A Haunting Past, Pt. 3: The Record of Decision
Feb. 18: City Commission Analyzes the EPA’s Record of Decision
The Superfund Art Project

Gville City Commission meeting discusses ROD for Koppers Superfund site. Stay tuned for live updates from TFP starting @ about 7p

Dr. Cline to discuss reliability/accuracy of information in ROD and other public documents

Discussion of ROD begins now

Rick Hutton of GRU: Will discuss remedy as it relates to groundwater

Hutton: Top priority is containing contamination in Floridan Aquifer

Hutton: In remedy, our preference was to dig up and eliminate contamination, which is cost-prohibited

Hutton: In 2 contamination hot spots, EPA to use ISGS, not our recommendation. Will conduct monitoring to make sure this method works

Hutton: Conclusions: remedy aggressive compared to other sites we looked at. If implemented properly, our drinking water is safe

Chris Bird of ADEP: We didn’t get everything we wanted. We want to target factors we can still influence

Bird: EPA will not require responsible party to do more than they would do themselves, including hauling contaminated soil off site

Bird: Future residential use of area is a possibility for some parts of site based on EPA’s clean up standards. This is a victory

Bird: estimated cost of on site soil clean up is 89 million dollars

Bird: Beazer will screen site for buried drums and is committed to deal with problems they find. This is due to citizen concern/input

Anthony Dennis of FL Health Department: Indoor dioxin contamination is a legitimate concern. EPA will conduct further testing

Phone died. Recharging in car. Will resume live tweeting soon and gather missed info later. We apologize

Live tweeting resumed. Rick Hutton speaking

Hutton: There will be monitoring wells in all geological areas. This “good, strong” remedy will allow us to reach our goals

Hutton: We have all the information we need for protecting Murphree Wellfield. To send EPA back to drawing board would be disservice

Anthony Dennis: In ROD pg107: EPA formed work group to determine how indoor dioxin sampling will occur… “if it is warranted”

Citizen comment begins. First speaker is Ann Lowry (sp?)

Lowry: “I am a Koppers refugee… My two cancer surgeries… those who’ve died… are not considered” by the EPA or Beazer

Alicia Alonso (sp?) – Lives near Koppers. Severe health issues. Dog had cancer. “Please do your best for my family… or what’s left of it”

Robert Pearce: We did not get everything we justifiably wanted or deserved. We are disappointed. But we made progress

Maggie Wilson: Everyone who could afford to move away has moved. The rest of us are trapped. We want relocation

Maria Parsons of Protection Group: We have here the test results inside our homes, 2 mile radius of Koppers. The tests have been DONE

James Senor Senior: I was looking for a safe place here for my wife and kids. Realtor did not inform us of Superfund site

Senor: What about the schools nearby? I will not stand by and watch my kids die here

Sandra Kennedy: Why are you even considering accepting ROD? EPA is not following its protocol. Contamination is not yet defined

Kennedy: 400 -1000ppt dioxins in our houses – and the EPA will not relocate us. This is “crazy” (FL standard is 7ppt)

Kennedy: We the affected want immediate and permanent relocation

Commission meeting just ended. Phone died again. Will now tweet notes taken while phone was dead

Dr Cline, technical advisor: concerned about validity/accuracy of data used to determine ROD; documents are filled with provable mistakes

Commissioner Thomas Hawkins: Indoor dioxin contamination is a matter of serious/imminent concern

Hawkins: I live 9 blocks from Koppers. We are not just your commissioners; we are your neighbors

Commissioner Randy Wells: We may be disappointed about the outcome (of the ROD) but thank you (the affected) for your input

City Commission will resend message to Alachua Realtors Association that they MUST notify new residents of nearby pollution from Koppers

City Commission calls for more thorough communication between EPA reps and affected residents

This concludes TFP’s (mostly) live coverage of Gville city commission’s public meeting to evaluate EPA’s ROD for Koppers Superfund site

The Record of Decision

The Stephen Foster neighborhood in northwest Gainesville is no ordinary stretch of suburbia. Just before night falls, sunlight passes through a canopy of leaves, illuminating the walls of not-so-perfectly aligned houses. Backyards reveal forests and creeks, invisible to those who drive by on the street.

There’s a sense of community here, rather than socially constructed conformity. The residents can’t be defined by any specific age, race, lifestyle or socioeconomic class. One thing they all have in common is that they’re directly affected by a dirty secret, which publicly emerges every decade or so to make local headlines.

At the core of the neighborhood, there’s a 90-acre toxic wasteland, concealed by bushes and barbed-wire fences, known as the Cabot/Koppers Superfund site. “Superfund site” is a legal term used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to define areas polluted so severely that they pose an immediate threat to human health and local ecosystems.

Koppers Inc. operated a wood treatment facility in Gainesville since 1916, releasing a wide range of toxins into Gainesville’s air, water and soil. They sold their property in 1988 to Beazer East, a private developer that follows Koppers around the country, absorbing environmental liabilities and allowing them to operate behind closed doors. The area was granted Superfund status 28 years ago.

Due to conflicts of interest between the EPA, Beazer East and neighborhood residents, the site has not been cleaned up yet. The EPA finally released their Record of Decision, which details their plans to clean the site, on Feb. 2.

Will the EPA’s Record of Decision adequately address the needs of the community? Is their plan enough to heal the damage, grief and fear caused by almost a century of highly toxic pollution, or are they trying to cut corners and save money?

Local toxicology experts, such as Joe Prager and Patricia Cline, have expressed skepticism. They’ll surely analyze the Record of Decision—all 703 pages of it—and look for answers between the lines. Public officials and environmental engineers are doing the same.

Prager contends the EPA has a “cozy relationship with industry as a rule.” The tax on corporate polluters that supplied the EPA’s “Superfund” was eliminated by Congress in 1995. Now, the EPA has no choice but to rely on the cooperation of responsible parties like Beazer.

Prager served on the Alachua County Environmental Advisory Board from 2005 to 2008. His struggle with chemical treatment companies is a personal one. His wife was unknowingly exposed during her pregnancy to wood products treated with chromated copper arsenate (CCA). Soon after, their daughter was born with a cleft lip and a cleft palette.

Prager now spends his time researching the effects of industrial toxins and sifting through public documents. He works with Cline, the Stephen Foster neighborhood’s technical advisor, to hold politicians and company representatives accountable for their actions.

Cline said on Feb. 3 that she wasn’t ready to make any official comments on the Record of Decision. Based on what she’s seen so far, she’s glad the EPA is planning to remedy off-site soil contamination in accordance with state residential standards, which are more strict than national standards, despite resistance from Beazer East.

This may be a source of relief for Gainesville residents, especially families living near the site, who are often scared to let their kids play outside. What this means for residents is that Beazer East will hire contractors to remove two feet of contaminated soil from their yards via heavy machinery and replace it with clean fill. Residents must agree to let the contractors onto their property.

Prager and other critics claim the Record of Decision doesn’t account for the concentration of dioxins inside people’s houses, which may build up over time and surpass the levels outside. It certainly doesn’t account for bioaccumulation, the process in which dioxins bind to fatty tissue and build up in the human body.

Dioxin—one of the major pollutants released by Koppers—has historically been used in chemical weapons like Agent Orange. According to the World Health Organization, chronic exposure can lead to reproductive problems, immune damage and cancer.

In January 2010, a private consulting firm sampled fine dust particles from nine random houses within a two-mile radius of the Superfund site, revealing an average indoor dioxin concentration of 400 parts per trillion—over 50 times what the state considers to be safe for soil outdoors. Many families who live nearby were not warned of the contamination when they signed their leases, and now their property is worthless.

Prager suggests relocation may be the safest solution for residents living near the site. Relocation is not considered in the EPA’s Record of Decision, but they’ve done it before. In 1996, the EPA relocated 358 families in Pensacola, home to the notorious Escambia Superfund site. The relocation was a result of additional soil testing, which only occurred due to overwhelming pressure from Citizens Against Toxic Exposure (CATE), a group similar to Protect Gainesville’s Citizens.

The relocated families had been living under the shadow of what they referred to as “Mount Dioxin.” The EPA had decided to remedy the site by gathering an estimated 344,520 tons of contaminated soil and compressing it into 40 acres, resulting in a mound that was 60 feet tall. They protected the mound with a plastic seal, which was meant to last for ten years.

It only took a few years before wind and rain caused damage to the seal. Seeds got in the soil and trees began to emerge, wearing and tearing it further. Contaminated soil escaped and spread through the neighborhood. The story of Escambia is neatly spelled out in the second chapter of Sacrifice Zones, a work of investigative journalism by Steve Lerner.

The EPA’s Record of Decision calls for a similar approach in Gainesville, involving a mound of toxic soil, vertical walls and an engineered cap. Prager saw the parallelism in their proposed plan and sent an editorial to the Gainesville Sun, warning residents that Gainesville may soon be home to a new Mount Dioxin.

In their Record of Decision, the EPA analyzed Prager’s assertions and dismissed them. According to the ROD, “Many of the points raised by the commenter [Prager] related to the Escambia site are factually inaccurate. The HDPE temporary cover alluded to in the comment performed as expected and was replaced by an engineered cap.”

According to Sacrifice Zones, “Residents were first told the plastic cover would last for five years but the EPA subsequently claimed it had a ten-year lifespan. In 1996, the contractor who installed the cover reported to the EPA that it was damaged and had a two-foot hole and a two-foot tear in it along with other smaller holes.”

In a phone call, Francine Ishmael, executive director of CATE, directly testified: “It was a plastic tarp that they put on a mound of dirt. They said it would last for 10 years. It did not.”

In Gainesville, the EPA’s Record of Decision calls for an engineered cap, which they claim will have “an indefinite life expectancy with minimal maintenance.” Its dimensions and design are yet to be determined. Prager hopes, as many Gainesville residents do, that the EPA won’t repeat its alleged mistakes in Gainesville.

Cline said the Record of Decision doesn’t explicitly spell out everything. It’s the role of concerned citizens, she says, to constantly make sure the EPA is up-to-date on relevant data and community input that they might otherwise overlook.

She expressed concern that the Record of Decision doesn’t adequately address the issue of contaminants leaching downward from the soil into the groundwater. There are many polluted areas, she said, where the EPA intends to scrape up contaminated soil and replace it without conducting further investigations on what’s underneath.

The true extent of pollution from Koppers may never be fully defined. It’s underground and above ground. It’s in the air, soil, groundwater, creeks and forests. Creosote threatens to permanently damage the Floridan aquifer. Dioxins are building up in yards and houses. The Stephen Foster Neighborhood Protection Group claims that animals, pets and even people have died as a result of Koppers.

Scott Miller of the EPA dismissed their claims as “anecdotal.” The Florida Health Department concluded that yards in the Stephen Foster neighborhood were safe but warned residents not to let their kids play in a narrow easement bordering Koppers.

Any officer of Protect Gainesville’s Citizens, an organization that aims to spread awareness, would stress the idea that the Superfund process requires relentless grassroots involvement. Otherwise, residents living in the shadow of Superfund sites are likely to be overlooked.

For related stories, check out A Haunting Past, Pt. 1, A Haunting Past, Pt. 2, and The Superfund Art Project. For photos of residents living along the fence of the Superfund site, check out Fenced In.

Read the second chapter of Sacrifice Zones here.

In 2010, UF Professor Anthony Castronovo taught an interdisciplinary class called Art and Ecology. When his class discussed local issues, someone inevitably brought up the Superfund site, which began to dominate the conversation.

To make a long story short, Koppers, Inc. operated a wood treatment facility from 1916 to 2009, releasing a wide range of industrial toxins into Gainesville’s air, water and soil. The area was granted Superfund status 28 years ago. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a Record of Decision, which details their plans to clean the site, on Feb. 2. At the time, various activists, public officials, and local experts were skeptical about the plan, and many thought it was inadequate to address the situation after decades of toxic pollution.

Protect Gainesville’s Citizens, an organization that aims to spread awareness, contends that the Superfund process requires relentless grassroots involvement. Otherwise, communities living in the shadow of Superfund sites are likely to be overlooked by corporations and public officials.

Castronovo’s class collaborated and eventually organized a Koppers-themed art show last Spring, hosted by Wild Iris Books, where Protect Gainesville’s Citizens held bi-monthly meetings. Kim Popejoy, one of the organization’s founding members, noticed a lot more people were coming to their meetings after the show.

Protect Gainesville’s Citizens decided to create a task force to engage artists around town. They called it the Superfund Art Project, headed by Popejoy.

“When I went to Wild Iris and saw the first Koppers art show, I felt we were finally getting somewhere,” said Tia Ma, one of the project’s directors. “There are artists everywhere and Superfund sites everywhere. If we can connect the two, there will be more money, media and inspiration. We want to document everything we’re doing so it could be used as a template in other areas.”

Ma said the project’s mission is to use all forms of art – including video, photography, poetry, music, public speaking and theater – to express the science and emotions associated with a toxic Superfund site.

More specifically, the project aims to create and distribute educational materials, document the history and personal stories associated with the site and collaborate with other communities that struggle with similar situations.

Ma, a local massage therapist and street artist, knows what it’s like to live in the shadow of a Superfund site. She lived in the Stephen Foster neighborhood for two years. The more she learned about Koppers, the less comfortable she felt treating clients at her house, eating vegetables from her garden and letting her cat roll around in the soil.

Ma moved away in July when the lease on her house expired. Before leaving, she filled her yard with ferns and sunflowers, known for their ability to cleanse the earth by absorbing industrial toxins. Her struggle with Koppers is far from over.

She knows most people can’t just move away. Many of the residents living near Koppers, including low-income families, bought their houses without any warning of the implications. Their properties are worthless now.

“I went around with a video camera and found that not many people were willing to be interviewed about the subject,” Ma said. “That’s why we want to mobilize actors, comedians and storytellers so there can be more open talk about this.”

Recently, the Superfund Art Project has teamed up with Go Green Nation and Cinema Verde, Gainesville’s environmental film and arts festival, to spread awareness and organize creative projects, including a Hazmat fashion show at the festival in March.

In collaboration with the Thomas Center, the Superfund Art Project plans to mobilize artists for an exhibition in 2012, which will hopefully travel across the country.

“At the Downtown Arts Festival, we talked to artists about the Koppers situation,” Ma said. “A handful lived here for a long time but knew nothing about it. Others fought for thirty years but couldn’t keep it up. When we mentioned we had puppeteers, photographers and musicians that wanted to address this, they lit up.”

To learn more, check out:
A Haunting Past, Pt. 1: How Gainesville faces decades of toxic pollution
A Haunting Past, Pt. 2
A Haunting Past, Pt. 3: The Record of Decision
Fenced In: Superfund Refugees

To Hell and Back: A Veteran’s Tale from Fine Print on Vimeo.

To learn more about the politics and implications of meal limits, read the original story that inspired this video.

“We’re an alternative, um, monthly… independent… progressive, eh… nonprofit… student-run magazine… publication… newspaper… thing. And we’re progressive. Wait, did I already say that?”

Fine print literally refers to the tiny text you might overlook in an otherwise deceptive document. We’re here to take that text and put it in Futura, size 72, and shove it in your face. Following current events can be exhausting, especially at the local level. It’s easy to miss something important.

Take the Cabot-Koppers Superfund Site, a 90-acre stretch of industrial property so polluted that the EPA considers it a health hazard to the residents of Northwest Gainesville. Months ago, our reporters investigated the issue in multiple installments. We compressed thirty years of conflict between concerned neighborhood residents and company representatives into two neatly packaged stories. Our work is far from done – the issue is as volatile today as it was in March.

In the meantime, Gainesville Regional Utilities has proposed the construction of a biomass plant. Is this a cost-effective, renewable source of energy or an environmental and economic disaster waiting to happen? There’s no simple answer.

If you’re concerned about subjects like these, check our website for updates and look out for the next issue, which comes out in January. In the current issue, you’ll find photography and reporting on a wide range of topics, from Gainesville’s tattoo culture and punk scene to the ethics behind UF’s engineering research and where its funding comes from. You’ll gain a new perspective on the injustice behind the meal limits imposed on Gainesville’s homeless residents, as well as a look into the concept of green burials, a radically eco-friendly way to secure your afterlife.

Oh, and if you’re wondering about the cover, it’s because dinosaurs are freaking cool. End of story.

When Mary Ann Jones bought her house in Northwest Gainesville, the real estate agent said there might be noise every now and then, due to the nearby industrial facility. She was okay with that. She was not warned that her grandchildren could be exposed to a dangerous concentration of dioxins, which are known to cause cancer and a wide range of health problems, especially in small children.

“I felt like this man signed me a death sentence,” she said.

For slightly over a year, Jones has lived at 3118 NW 4th St. with her extended family, which includes three grandchildren. The top of her fence is wrapped in barbed wire, which separates her backyard from the 90-acre Superfund site previously owned by Koppers, Inc. She wants to move away but doesn’t have the financial means.

For 93 years, Koppers, Inc. operated a wood-treatment facility at 200 NW 23rd Ave, releasing industrial toxins—including arsenic, hexavalent chromium, creosote and dioxins—into Gainesville’s air, water and soil. The area is now ranked as one of the nation’s top-100 polluted sites. It has been designated a Superfund site—a place so heavily polluted with toxic waste that it poses a threat to human health and the environment—for 27 years.

“I’m scared to death,” she said. “I like to garden, but now my plants are dead because I’m scared to touch them. We’re pretty much stuck here.”

Her two youngest grandchildren—Carlos, 6, and Aaron, 3—play outside every day without understanding the situation.

“We’re always telling them—if you drop anything on the ground, don’t pick it up and definitely don’t put it in your mouth. And always wash your hands when you come inside.”

Jones said she feels like no one has been there for her—not the local or state government, and certainly not the EPA. Her front yard is peppered with signs, which say things like, “Governor Crist – Where Are You?” and “Gainesville’s Dirty Little Secret is Out!”

The site is currently managed by Beazer East, the company responsible for cleaning up the site. According to disclosure forms filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Beazer was previously known as Koppers Company, Inc., and has an agreement to absorb environmental liabilities from the current incarnation of Koppers.

Legal battles over contamination have followed the companies around the country. Koppers currently faces lawsuits in Texas and Mississippi, though many of the claims have been dismissed. In its latest annual report, Koppers warned investors that, “Litigation against us could be costly and time-consuming to defend, and due to the nature of our business and products, we may be liable for damages arising out of our acts or omissions.”

Years of Uncertainty

Chris Bird of the Alachua County Department of Environmental Protection said the fact that Koppers was allowed to operate its facility for so long, despite the property’s Superfund status, has hindered the clean-up process.

“You can’t make a bed while someone is still sleeping in it,” he said.

Mitchell Brourman, a representative from Beazer East, said there are many reasons the process has taken so long, from Gainesville’s unique geology to discrepancies between state and federal regulations. He acknowledged, however, that the continued operation of the Koppers facility was one of them, “to some degree.”

Local activist groups, including Protect Gainesville Citizens, Ban CCA and the Stephen Foster Neighborhood Protection Group, have documented a variety of health complications among people who live near the site, from cancer to skin problems. They also contend that an unusually high number of dogs and cats near the site have malignant tumors.

Tests performed by the city and state health departments indicate hazardous dioxin levels in an easement between NW 26 St and NW 30 Ave, which serves as a buffer between Koppers and nearby neighborhoods. In 2009, the Alachua County Health department issued a press release warning parents not to let their children play in the easement.

The press release also states, “Incidental ingestion (swallowing) of very small amounts of surface soil in the neighborhood north and west of Koppers is not likely to cause harm.”

Scott Miller, the EPA’s regional project manager, said evidence of cancer in the neighborhood residents has been “anecdotal” and that the EPA “has not observed that effect.”

“The Florida Department of Health is doing a study of cancers in the area,” Miller said. “They will probably be making a response to that specific question with respect to folks living there as well as animals.”

Local resdents say they have waited too long for answers. Protect Gainesville Citizens has received an EPA grant to hire technical advisers, but the grants cannot be used to pay for additional testing. Advisers can only help community groups make sense of existing reports.

“We need more data,” said Cheryll Krauth, one of the group’s officers. “There are reports of health problems, and we don’t know if they’re worse than the average neighborhood or not. The problem is that the entities responsible for testing aren’t telling us.”

For decades, the Stephen Foster Neighborhood Protection Group has not trusted the state, Beazer or the EPA. Last year, they sought help from the Law Offices of Robert H. Weiss, a firm that specializes in environmental justice.

In January, Xenobiotic Laboratories, Inc., an environmental consulting firm hired by the legal team, tested fine dust particles from inside nine randomly selected houses within a two-mile radius of the Superfund site.

“This is unique,” said Stephen Murakami, a Weiss attorney. “Indoor tests are rarely performed [by government agencies]. Outdoor soil testing is their standard, as opposed to indoor tests where it counts—where people live, breathe and make their beds.”

The state has determined that the maximum dioxin concentration for soil outside to be safe is seven parts per trillion. Inside the nine houses tested, the average dioxin concentration was 400 parts per trillion. In one house, they were as high as 1.2 parts per billion.

While toxins can dissipate in the environment, they can accumulate indoors. Murakami said that while outdoor levels may take this into consideration, he believes the results reveal a substantial risk to human health, and he called for additional testing. The test results have not yet been made public.

According to the World Health Organization, long-term dioxin exposure is linked to impairment of the immune system, the nervous system, the endocrine system, and reproductive functions. Chronic exposure may lead to several types of cancer. Small children face the greatest risks.

Mary Ann Jones was recently informed of the tests by Stephen Foster residents. She’s left to wonder whether her family’s ailments, from skin rashes to nosebleeds, are mere coincidences, or signs of toxic contamination. The uncertainty fuels her fears.

“The more I think about it, the angrier I get,” Jones said. “You can’t put no price on my life or my family. Why would you try to cover up something that you know is so deadly? Why do you think money is more important than the lives of my grandkids?”

Water Contamination

The Superfund site is dotted with retention lagoons—unprotected pits where toxic waste is stored, a legacy of lax environmental regulations before the 1970s.

Local agencies had warned that creosote and other compounds could reach the Floridan Aqufer, 200 feet below the surface. The EPA contended until 2001 that the underground Hawthorne clay layer would provide a protective seal.

“We and some citizens had been telling them we didn’t believe that—you haven’t done the right investigations to know what’s happening that deep under the site,” said Rick Hutton, an engineer from Gainesville Regional Utilities.

After further investigations, experts from the EPA, Beazer, and Gainesville Regional Utilities all agree that the Floridan Aquifer is already contaminated. Now, chemicals are slowly moving towards the Murphree Wellfield, where Gainesville Regional Utilities draws the city’s drinking water supply.

“We have wells in between our site and the Murphree Well Field,” said Mitchell Brourman of Beazer East. “Those monitoring wells are consistently clean. The protection of Gainesville’s water supply is one of the premises of our work.”

Hutton said Beazer will probably need to dig more wells to contain “hot spots” of underground pollution, and pump groundwater out of the aquifer at a faster rate to ensure it can be treated at the surface before contaminants reach the water supply.

“We don’t think the low-rate pumping will work,” said Hutton. “The EPA wants to give it a chance. If it doesn’t work, we expect them to take further steps.”

What can we do?

Groups of concerned citizens, including the Stephen Foster Neighborhood Association, Ban CCA, Protect Gainesville Citizens and the Stephen Foster Neighborhood Protection Group, have been working for decades to spread awareness of the issue and encourage community activism.

“Over 158 other sites have been closed since ours was declared a Superfund Site,” said Maria Parsons of the Gainesville Neighborhood Protection Group. “We’re still not cleaned up. Why? People coming together matters. You need to get active. Dig your heels in. Protest. Write letters. Make phone calls.”

Tia Ma, an officer of Protect Gainesville Citizens, has proposed the idea of using the property previously owned by Koppers to build an environmental research center, which would commemorate decades of anxiety and suffering, transforming them into a learning experience.

Brourman said Beazer East has “no problem” with that idea.

“There are going to be some public meetings where people can talk,” he said. “We’re all ears to those sorts of things.”

Update: On Feb. 2, the EPA issued its Record of Decision, a 703-page document detailing their plans to remedy the Superfund site. Have we reached the end of the road? Check out A Haunting Past, Pt. 3: The Record of Decision.

Above: Inside the 90-acre facility operated by Koppers Inc. before its operations were shut down. Photo by Robert Pearce, former president of the Stephen Foster Neighborhood Association.

Tia Ma, a local massage therapist, no longer feels comfortable treating clients at her house, eating herbs from her organic garden or letting her cat roll around in the soil. When she moved into her home at 708 NW 31st Ave. two years ago, she didn’t realize the dangerous consequences of living there.

“I’ve noticed more and more animals with tumors in this neighborhood,” she said. “To hear that three doors down the street, people are dying of cancer and houses are going out for sale – my heart has been broken.”

Slowly, Ma learned about a nearby place called the Cabot/Koppers Superfund Site.

For 93 years, Koppers Inc. operated a 90-acre industrial facility at 200 NW 23rd Ave. The area is now ranked as one of the nation’s top-100 polluted sites. In 1983, it was declared by the Environmental Protection Agency to be a Superfund site – a place so heavily polluted with toxic waste that it poses a threat to human health and the environment.

For decades, Koppers released industrial toxins into Gainesville’s air, water and soil, including arsenic, hexavalent chromium, creosote and dioxins. Combined, these chemicals can cause cancer, rare diseases, changes in DNA, and birth defects.

There’s a 500-foot buffer around the site, including ABC Liquor, Ward’s Supermarket, the Salvation Army, a daycare center and dozens of homes, which the City of Gainesville designated an “area of special environmental concern” in 2005.

Cheryl Krauth is an officer of Protect Gainesville Citizens Inc., an organization dedicated to spreading awareness of the issue. She said the EPA is currently doing too little too slowly to help the residents who live near the site.

“We know there are homes along the border of the site – roughly 20 of them – who received letters from the [Alachua County] health department saying, ‘Don’t allow your children to play in the dirt; don’t grow gardens in your yard; and stop using your wells,’” she said.

The letters also included other warnings, such as, “Do NOT get soil in your mouth, bathe upon reentering the house, and keep a separate set of ‘play clothes.’”

Cindy Harrington, a resident of the Stephen Foster Neighborhood, has been working with Protect Gainesville Citizens for years to help her neighbors. Nonetheless, she secretly hoped her own home would be safe, as it was located across Northwest Sixth Street, outside the buffer area. Slightly over a month ago, a private environmental consulting firm tested nine homes, including hers, revealing evidence of high dioxin levels.

“If you feel your health is at risk and you want to leave, nobody wants to buy your house,” Krauth said. “So there are lots of residents that feel trapped.”

Joe Prager, founder of a local organization called Ban CCA, has personally experienced the damaging effects of industrial toxins. His daughter was born with a cleft lip and a cleft pallet despite his wife’s efforts to stay perfectly healthy during her pregnancy. He later learned that the defects stemmed from his wife’s exposure to CCA-treated wood products, which contain a dangerous mixture of copper, arsenic and hexavalent chromium.

Prager’s personal tragedy led him to years of research. From 2005 to 2008, Prager served on the Alachua County Environmental Protection Advisory Committee and decided to investigate Koppers.

He asked for reports from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and found that the water run-off from Koppers contained arsenic levels that were eight times higher than what was acceptable near a residential area. Copper levels were 18 times higher. There was one patch of land in which the dioxin levels were 24,377 times higher than the accepted residential standard.

“There have been reports of cancer clusters, large numbers of pet deaths from cancer, [and] more than one case of multiple sclerosis nearby,” Prager said.

In 1988, Koppers sold their property to Beazer East, a private developer that is currently responsible for working with the EPA to clean up and redevelop the area. Despite the property’s Superfund status, Koppers still operated the lumber-treatment facility and continued their toxic operations until 2009. That’s when Koppers decided to leave Gainesville, after all the investigations and bad publicity. Now that the operations are closed, the EPA has a chance to finally do its job.

“The EPA has done little or nothing for 26 years,” Prager said. “They appear to have a cozy relationship with industry as a rule.”

If the EPA doesn’t move faster, there could be permanent consequences. There are spots on the Superfund site where creosote oils – highly carcinogenic toxins – have leached through layers of rock and soil toward Florida’s aquifer system 200 feet below. From there, the pollutants could potentially flow north into the Murphree Wellfield, where Gainesville Regional Utilities draws the water supply for Gainesville and other surrounding communities.

“I’ve called this site the greatest environmental issue for Alachua County, and I still think that’s true,” Prager said. “Our drinking water is at stake here.”

How can we, as a community, hold Beazer and the EPA accountable? Groups like the Stephen Foster Neighborhood Association, Ban CCA, Protect Gainesville Citizens and Gainesville United Neighborhoods have been working hard to spread awareness of the issue and encourage community activism.

“The EPA says they’ve done almost 10 years of studies,” said Ma, who is now involved with Protect Gainesville Citizens. “We have no idea what those studies are. I want a compilation of all the tests that have been done so we can make decisions together. I don’t want to create bad guys. I just want honesty.”

Local activists are calling out to concerned residents, including UF students and professors, to educate themselves on the issue and to contribute whatever skills they might have. This includes a call for artists, photographers, journalists, urban planners, engineers and just about anyone else.

“I think the city of Gainesville and UF can really come together with some creative ideas,” Ma said. “I think it can be an amazing win-win. We should just admit that we’ve fucked up. And we can utilize the resources we have in this town. We can do our best to clean it up and do so publicly and teach others how to do it so this never happens again. It’s not okay to just sit back and let the company decide how to make money on their 90 acres after they clean it up.”

Ma’s lease on the house will expire in July. She plans to permanently leave before then. Ma is a healer, and her beliefs include leaving places in a better condition than how she found them. Her goal is to fill the entire meadow around her house with ferns and sunflowers, known for their ability to heal the earth by absorbing industrial toxins.

Update: A lot has happened since this story was written. New tests have been done and the results are disconcerting, to say the least. For testimony from a troubled family living next door to the site, as well as responses from GRU, Beazer, the EPA, and GDEP, check out A Haunting Past, Pt. 2.

Note: Follow The Fine Print’s complete coverage of the festival, which runs March 19 through March 24, here.

Environmental journalist Trish Riley has lived in Gainesville for three years. The one thing that bothered her was what seemed like a lack of environmental news, especially regarding local issues. In the summer of 2008, while signing books at Goering’s Book Store, she asked the audience, “How green is Gainesville, anyway?”

Everyone in the audience, which included UF students and Gainesville residents, had a story to tell about some kind of grassroots project they were working on, but not a single person knew about anyone else’s project. What the community needed, she realized, was the opportunity to get together and combine their efforts. Without widespread awareness, this could not happen.

“I realized there’s not much environmental news that makes its way through this town,” Riley said.

She started a web site called GoGreenNation.org, a resource for environmental awareness, and a Gainesville chapter of Green Drinks, an international organization for people interested in living sustainable lives. Her goal was to post information on every environmental project in the community so concerned citizens could gather and collaborate.

Green Drinks started meeting on the first Wednesday of every month. At first, there were only three members. By December 2009, there were 60 people at the organization’s first anniversary. This is where she met Shirley Lasseter, the cinema director of the Hippodrome State Theatre.

“I told her we need to have an environmental film fest,” Riley said. “There are so many cool movies that don’t show up in Gainesville, you know, because they’re not Avatar.”

Lasseter had been thinking the same thing. She enjoyed showing documentaries, but they were a hard sell. She and Riley worked together to create something new in order to open people’s eyes.

On March 19, their creation will come to life: The First Annual Gainesville Environmental Film and Arts Festival. It’s a 10-day celebration of the earth and its resources – a chance to learn about the problems the earth is facing and how to build a better future.

“It’s all about positive personal action,” Lasseter said. “We were careful to choose films that give you a way out, that give you an idea, that provide light at the end of the tunnel.”

The festival will be more than just a series of films. Everyone will have the opportunity to speak with local experts in the lobby of the Hippodrome about what can be done in Gainesville to make a difference. There will be long feature films, as well as short ones. Topics include environmental history, overfishing, green building construction, plastic, soil, lawn fertilization, the importance of organic farming and organic foods, herbal medicine, phosphate mining (a huge issue in southwest Florida), water contamination, vegetarianism, and alternative energy, among others.

“We’re planning to have special organic treats and goodies on certain movie nights from local farmers and local restaurants,” Lasseter said.

On March 27, there will be an Eco Fair at the Sun Center with vendors, community organizations, musicians, artists and eco-dancers. The Heart of Florida Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council, as part of a Haiti relief project, will demonstrate how to build an “earth bag home,” a sustainable, earthquake-resistant shack. The materials required to build an entire shack can fit neatly into a rain barrel. The goal of the project, known as Barrels of Hope, is to send rain barrels filled with supplies to Haiti, thereby providing people with a means of shelter and water collection.

The Alachua Department of Environmental Protection will sell rain barrels at the fair. A rain barrel is a 55-gallon drum that can be put underneath agutter system. It captures rainwater, which can then be used instead of sprinklers to irrigate a lawn.

“Fresh water is a finite resource, and to pour half of it on the ground, as we do in Florida, is crazy,” Riley said.

On March 28, there will be nature outings with local professional tour guides. Throughout the festival, all of Gainesville’s most prominent galleries (basically, everyone who participates in Art Walk), will showcase art with a focus on ecology and sustainability. Lorelei Esser, a self-taught sustainability artist, and Chris Fillie, a co-manager of the South Main Community Arts Center, have been working together to rally local artists behind the festival.

The gallery at the Hippodrome will feature work by local eco-artists, like John Moran, as well as work by Dom Martino, a renowned Gainesville photographer who recently passed away, leaving a legacy of beautiful pictures that highlight the plants and wildlife of Paine’s Prairie.

The films and art will come together to serve a unified purpose.

“My goal is to spread environmental education to the community,” Riley said. “This festival is an extension of that work for me.”

For 35 years, Goerings Book Store has struggled to survive in Gainesville’s increasingly corporate market. Located on 1717 NW First Ave., behind midtown, it was a place for students, professors and Gainesville residents to meet, talk about literature and browse titles by local authors. In a few weeks, its shelves will be empty. By March, even the shelves will be gone, and its doors will close permanently.

Remy Boucias, a UF journalism junior who grew up in Gainesville, recalls tagging along with his mom to visit Goerings as a kid.

“I really liked the environment,” Boucias said. “It was better than, say, Borders or Books-A-Million. A lot of it had to do with the owner, Tom Rider. He’d always be at the front desk with quirky books to show me – stuff I wouldn’t have read otherwise.”

Boucias appreciated seeing work there by local authors.

“When you go to a chain store, you just get the New York Times best sellers list,” he said. “You don’t get exposed to anything from your community.”

In addition to providing work by local authors, Goerings held events, such as book signings, which created a sense of literary community. UF English Professor Padgett Powell, a local author himself, has patronized Goerings since 1984.

Powell and other professors like him supported Goerings each semester by sending the store exclusive textbook orders. He expressed frustration with the UF Bookstore’s poor quality of service and the fact that they only stocked a set percentage of books ordered by each professor to prevent overstocking the inventory.

“If you told Goerings you had 30 students, Goerings would order 30 books,” Powell said. “They handled our textbooks with a moment’s notice. We sometimes ordered books after classes began, the way it should be done, not as we’re doing it now, so far in advance that you forgot what you ordered for your classes.

The drawback is that exclusive orders leave students with fewer choices when it comes to where their textbooks come from. This would have been a serious problem had Goerings chosen to take advantage of the situation by charging more.

“The prices were very reasonable,” said Hanny Lane, a UF economics and math junior. “And the people there were very friendly.”

Naturally, the UF Bookstore had serious competitive advantages, such as its ideal location and its affiliation with the University.

Until 2000, UF owned and operated its own bookstore located at The Hub. The decision was made in 2000 to build a new bookstore and welcome center. The Business Services Division of UF contributed $10 million to the project. Follett Higher Education Group contributed $2 million. Student fees contributed $6.3 million.

From 2000 on, Follett owned and controlled the campus bookstore. For the first $10 million made by the bookstore in a given year, the university got 10.75 percent. If the profits reached $15 million, the university got 11 percent.

“All the money made at Goerings stays in the Gainesville community,” said Tom Rider, a co-owner of Goerings since 1981. “Most of the money made at the campus store goes back to Chicago, where Follett Enterprise keeps its headquarters.”

The UF Bookstore may have been run by a $2.5 billion dollar corporation, but they could not match the level of service that Goerings Book Store provided.

“I don’t go to the UF Bookstore,” said UF junior Lindsey Green. “They’re not as interested in serving students as they are in making money, as is apparent in their prices. And they have terrible customer service.”

So Goerings remained competitive, despite the factors stacked against them.

“As chain bookstores flooded in, small bookstores…began to close,” Rider said.

Rider said each chain store controls such a massive sector of the market that publishers can’t force them to pay for their books on time. The publishers then have to make up for this by tightening restrictions on independent stores, like Goerings.

Still, Goerings prevailed because professors chose to support them.

“I ordered all my textbooks for all my classes at Goerings before they stopped doing textbook orders this semester,” said Elise Takehana, a UF graduate student who teaches literature and writing courses. “Goerings had so many texts that you don’t see anywhere else. There’s also a level of service here that you don’t get at other stores.”

Why, then, did Goerings fail?

State legislation requires professors to post their textbook requirements online at least 30 days before classes start. This gives students more time to compare textbook prices and, if necessary, order textbooks online.

The University’s Office of the Provost is stricter about this than the state government. Professors are required to post their textbook requirements online two to five months before classes start. Otherwise, their departments get fined. The textbook information, posted online, can then be accessed by local bookstores. This effectively ends the ability of professors to place exclusive textbook orders, which were the life support of Goerings.

Goerings will clearly be missed by students and professors looking for noncommercial sources of literature and conversation. To prevent this sort of tragedy from happening again, Tom Rider suggests that sympathetic students do their best to venture off campus and support local businesses. After all, they may not be around for much longer.

A few blocks from Tim and Terry’s, Tygur nervously smokes a cigarette. His eyes are red and watery from the other four he just smoked. Every time he gets invited to freestyle onstage at a bar or club, he walks around town and bums as many cigarettes as he can. As the performance draws nearer, he asks me to buy him a beer. I say it’s a bad idea.

“Nah,” he says, “It’s cool, man. You know I do better when I’m fucked up.”

Tygur One, an underground rapper, has lived on the streets of East Gainesville since 1998. A year later, he started an unofficial record label called Phatt Boy Entertainment, which has provided recording time to nearly a hundred local rap and reggae artists.

Tygur can usually be found downtown at Bo Diddley Plaza, rolling his own cigarettes. On a typical day, he wears a colorful beanie over his dreads. The faded black outline of a tiger is tattooed on his left cheek, barely noticeable against his dark skin. Just above his other cheek is a patch of scarred flesh where his face hit the pavement in a motorcycle accident.

Ever since Tygur arrived in Gainesville, his life has been driven by music.

He wants to give every artist he meets on the streets a chance at recording, even if all he can offer is a few pieces of old equipment.

“I wish I could reach all the youth and start a change in society,” he said. “Those young fellas, they gotta grow up and reach for the sun.”

Tygur said music is what saved him from living the wrong kind of life.

“It was a war between gangs, where I come from,” he said. “We were foot soldiers, fighting for superiority on the streets. Only the strong survived.”

Tygur was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. At 3, he moved with his family to Chocolate City, Georgia. In his early childhood, Tygur listened to his dad play reggae and blues with a keyboard, guitar and drums. He started hearing music in his thoughts constantly, which helped him deal with the reality around him. Most of his peers were involved in drug dealing and gang fights.

As he got older, Tygur drifted from his family. His Haitian father envisioned him finding a stable job and conforming to the family tradition of arranged marriage. He began to skip school so he could roam the streets, looking for ways to make an extra buck. Tygur said that’s when his “dark side” developed. At 13, he met a new role model: an older drug dealer.

“A smooth cat,” Tygur said. “A real cool Jamaican. His name was Boxy.”

Boxy asked Tygur to wash his car each week in exchange for some money. In the meantime, Boxy sold marijuana discreetly to passersby.

“It caught my eye,” Tygur said. “The fast money. He started letting me sell weed for him. The more I did it, the more we became friends.”

At this point, Tygur had dropped out of school and rarely went back to his house. He slept in alleys, playgrounds, tunnels and abandoned railroad tracks. At 16, he bought a keyboard and began to practice whenever he could. Still, most of his attention was directed elsewhere.

“By then, I was part of a street fraternity,” he said. “I was selling the most drugs. And this guy I knew, who had a pawnshop, he and my father were best friends. My dad would get all these antique guns and shit and store them in the shop. Getting guns was easy.”

He also found a partner-in-crime: a young man his age named Rodney Jackson, who had his own six-member hip-hop crew called King of Beats. Rodney was the kind of guy who could fracture someone’s skull with one punch. He and Tygur raised hell together.

“Back in those days in Georgia, you had to have a gun,” Tygur said. “I had several. You pull a gun on me, we get into a fight, and I grab your gun. That’s how my collection formed.”

Tygur’s interest in music was still alive. Whenever they could, he and Rodney would show up at clubs and freestyle together. At one of those clubs, Rodney got into a fight. The other guy pulled out a nine-millimeter pistol and shot him in the head. As Rodney was airlifted to the hospital, Tygur realized how alone he felt.

Meanwhile, his talents and resources led to a new lifestyle. By his early 20s, he had a two-bedroom apartment, three cars, and a girlfriend named Alicia Kirkpatrick, who helped him get rich. Together, they recruited eight girls who sold their bodies and brought in tons of clients, including lawyers and police officers.

Spiritually, Tygur felt bankrupt. Alicia fell into a downward spiral, snorting more cocaine than she was selling. Rodney had recently left the hospital in a wheelchair, permanently paralyzed.

“The first time I saw him, all I could do was cry,” Tygur said. “He told me, ‘All this shit you’re doing, man, you can end up like me. The police are watching you. All these boys hanging out with you, they’re not really your friends. They’re all waiting to get you.’”

Tygur said that’s when he started to see the light.

“I realized life is serious, and a gun can really fuck you up,” he said. “I turned to music to escape the drama.”

With Rodney gone, the King of Beats had fallen apart. Tygur sat alone with his keyboard, searching for inner peace. He left Alicia and left the apartment. His travels, which mostly consisted of hopping buses, led him to a small college town in Florida with a thriving independent music and art scene.

“Gainesville was a good place for music,” he said. “A lot of local bands. I made friends with punks and joined the underground movements.”

When Tygur was sitting in a bar one night, depressed, he met a girl named Sparkle. She was a beautiful work of art, with pink, white, blonde and blue-striped hair, fishnets and “at least seventy piercings on her face,” he said.

Sparkle took an interest in Tygur’s music and introduced him to her friends from The Wayward Council, a nonprofit record store on West University Avenue. They invited him out to a place called “the spot,” an old clubhouse on Depot Road, to record some music and party. Thus began his new lifestyle.

Since then, Tygur has rapped at Brophy’s, Tim and Terry’s, The Laboratory, The Kickstand and more parties than he can keep track of. He moves his studio equipment from place to place, such as the backrooms of convenience stores, depending on who will grant him time and space.

“I was living in Babylon,” Tygur said of his life in Georgia. “In Gainesville, I found Zion. Zion is life, art and music. I want to bring Zion to Babylon, you know, and tear Babylon down.”

Tygur is 36 and continues to sleep on the streets. His goal is to find a permanent place to store his equipment and record some music. Until then, he stands and waits for shows, compulsively bumming cigarettes.