Turners Station resident Maxine Thompson talks on the radio about pollution from the nearby Sparrows Point steel mill.

Photo by: Mark Reutter

Maxine Thompson tried to convey the human cost of Sparrows Point pollution yesterday, as she spoke on the radio along with Brew reporter Mark Reutter and Chesapeake Bay Foundation attorney Jon Mueller.

“When we were growing up, we swam in the water, fished in the water. It was clear. You could see through to the bottom. We’d catch perch and my grandmother would fry them up as soon as we brought them out of the water,” said Thompson, a third-generation Turners Station resident whose grandfather migrated from the South to work at the plant and lived opposite it, right on the water.

Over the years, residents noticed the water “got darker” in Bear Creek, which empties ultimately into Chesapeake Bay and separates the community from the century-old mill.

“We started seeing fish kills,” Thompson said, speaking on the Mark Steiner Show, on 88.9 WEAA. “There were different kinds of odors from the water.”

Thompson, who moved away from Turners Station, described what she encountered upon returning after 20 years.

“I started noticing that a lot of the women in my age group were having breast cancer,” she said. “There were also other incidents of cancer. And most of the people getting this cancer were living directly on the water. This is still going on.”

Thompson’s fellow Turners Station activist, her aunt Phyllis Seward, died recently of cancer, she noted.

“She was heavily involved in trying to get the water and grounds cleaned up and in getting a health study,” Thompson said. “She died of lung cancer and she never smoked. She developed breast cancer at the age of 24. And she lived right on the water.”

Environmental group changes tactics

To be sure, the Sparrows Point pollution issue is so loaded that even the normally-dry topic of environmental litigation and enforcement generated some sparks, during the nearly hour-long on-air discussion. They flew when talk turned to the question Reutter raised this week in The Brew about why the Bay Foundation’s long-awaited lawsuit, filed last week, names only the mill owners — and not the government agencies who have failed for 13 years to enforce the consent decree that was supposed to clean up the mess.

REUTTER: Water quality has actually deteriorated since the signing of the consent decree with the government in 1997…

STEINER: Is there a lack of political will for the government to do something here?

REUTTER: “The government has carved out these little narrow niches of what is their responsibility and what isn’t their responsibility. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation has carved out what it sees as its responsibility and areas it doesn’t want to get into–

MUELLER (Interrupts): “Let’s be fair, Mark. That’s not accurate. I think the focus of this should be on the question of what is the best way to address Maxine’s concerns. We’ve tried the government way, the government way of the last 13 years hasn’t worked, the consent decree. We admit that. What we are trying to focus on is results. And who is ultimately responsible for cleaning up the contamination. That is the owners and operators of that facility…”

But those agencies didn’t show up yesterday. MDE sent a brief statement. Severstal and Arcelor Mittal declined. And so, somewhat emblematic of how the whole saga has unfolded over the years, the discussion was left to others: the media, an environmental group and a private citizen.

Here’s the statement that Shari T. Wilson, Secretary of the Maryland Department of the Environment, sent to Steiner’s staff.

“We understand the residents’ serious concerns. We also want the clean up to move faster. But Marylanders should know that progress is being made in the complex and difficult endeavor to clean up SPt. The department will continue to press aggressively for more action.”

The Severstal spokesperson said they would not comment on pending litigation and Arcelor Mittal could not be reached, staff members said.

Bay Foundation’s explanation

Even with the guests at hand, there was some news to be made. Why, Reutter asked, did they drop MDE and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from the litigation after naming them as litigation targets a year ago in a formal Notice of Intent to sue?

Mueller said that after the group threatened litigation, MDE and EPA “made some progress on some of the claims we’ve raised.”

“Since the date when the consent decree was signed in 1997 until we issued our notice letter, we agreed that there was very lax enforcement by both the state and federal governments,” Mueller said. “Since that time, I think they recognize that they’ve fallen down on the job. There’s a new EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson, whose No. 1 priority at EPA is environmental justice issues. And so, they have made Sparrows Point an issue.”
“Steel companies will fight to the death”

Mueller also argued that limiting the number of parties in the complaint is a better approach because it would make their battle simpler and cheaper.

“The issue has become that we would have to fight two large steel companies… They have hired top-notch law firms to represent them,” Mueller said. “They have told EPA and MDE and us that they are going to fight to the death over the question of whether they have to do anything in the Patapsco or Bear Creek.”

“So then it became a question of whether I am going to spend all of our resources fighting MDE and EPA on questions of sovereign immunity,” he said. “Can we enforce the terms of the consent decree when we are not a party. Or are our efforts better directed at the actual polluter.”
Losing patience with finger-pointing

Thompson complained that the arguments about who is responsible aren’t getting the residents the health study she thinks they need.

Maxine Thompson points to a sign indicating that a local swimming beach has been closed. (Photo by Mark Reutter.)

“The agencies that were responsible have failed us. They have allowed these people not to clean up Sparrows Point,” she said. “So I think they definitely need to be included in this lawsuit.”

Thompson noted that no one has done a study to verify residents’ belief that their community is a cancer cluster. She said residents also feel that, although the government, the environmental groups and the company have known a lot, for years, about dangerous substances emanating from the mill, there are still unanswered questions.

“The residents would still like to know,” she said, what’s in the unlined, 100-foot tall Gray’s Landfill, looming right near the water, beside I-695.

Until their questions are answered, Thompson said, she worries about the signs she sees everyday that suggest things are not right in her community — that even the local wildlife know it.

“The water is so bad even the ducks don’t stay in the water now,” she said. “They are coming out of the water and laying eggs around our houses.”