Children, cancer clusters, citizen water tests @ GA EPD 2014-07-17

Citizens are not convinced EPA, GA-EPD, and GA Dept. of Health are doing enough to find what’s causing widespread sickness and death in Waycross, GA. They asked questions and provided data and anecdotes for more than an hour, demanding more testing and answers, at a meeting about the Seven Out Superfund and other air and water contamination, for example from CSX and AGL.

Georgia Department of Health did offer a new survey, with local help. She also offered to send a local health dept. rep. right out whenever they were alerted a certain site stunk after rains. EPA and GA-EPD admitted there was a problem and said they were trying to fix it, which is a step forward from their preliminary Waycross meeting last November. But not a big enough step or quick enough to satisfy Waycross people who are or who know many who are sick or dying.

They asked very insightful questions, about children exposed daily everywhere they go, synergistic effects and whether the agencies had actually found anybody sick from these chemicals, about unsellable property, surface water contamination that might affect the Satilla River, well testing, when, where, rainfall or not, and vs. city water, landfills used to dispose of contaminated soil, and many more. Joan M. Tibor had even rented an instrument and done her own testing, but her results were pooh-poohed by EPA.

Sure, it’s a hard problem, as I mentioned to GA-EPD afterwards, but as I mentioned to GA-EPD afterwards, they’ve got a very willing public ready to help.

At the front table, left to right: Jame M. Perry of Georgia Department of Health, Jim Brown of GA EPD, (unknown), Matthew J. Huyser of EPA. They apparently gave slide presentations for the first hour. I arrived just after Q&A had started.

Here are links to the individual videos, followed by a video playlist. a video playlist:

Here’s the video playlist:


Children, cancer clusters, citizen water tests
Seven Out Superfund Assessment,
Public Meeting, Georgia Environmental Protection Division (GA EPD),
Video by John S. Quarterman for Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange (LAKE),
Waycross, Ware County, Georgia, 17 July 2014.

-jsq