WP: A Well of Pain (about env'l racism)

[MountainLaurel]

DICKSON COUNTY, Tenn. Sheila Holt-Orsted sits on the edge of a sofa in her mother's living room, digging through the large translucent plastic bins arrayed at her feet. The Holt family's fight is in there -- the contaminated water, the cancers, the allegations of racism, the lawsuit. A family's seeming devastation, documented in those bins.

snip

Holt-Orsted's father, Harry, had cancer too, and died of it in January at 67 after it grew in his prostate and his bones.

"The Lord was just ready for a good man. He wanted a good man and He took him," Mrs. Holt says wearily.

She has had cervical polyps. Another of her daughters, Holt-Orsted's sister, has had colon polyps. Three of Holt-Orsted's cousins have had cancer. Her aunt next door has had cancer. Her aunt across the street has had chemotherapy for a bone disease. Her uncle died of Hodgkin's disease. Her daughter, 12-year-old Jasmine, has a speech defect.

They believe trichloroethylene, or TCE, is to blame for it all. The carcinogen leaked from the county landfill, just 500 feet away, and contaminated the Holts' well water. That fact is undisputed. For years, the family drank that water, bathed in that water, cooked in that water -- and had no clue that it might harm them.

snip

In that box, she found letters and documents indicating that Tennessee environmental and water officials had concerns about the possibility of TCE appearing in the Holt's well water as early as 1988. The Holts' well was left untested for nine years while TCE problems in the wells of white families were tended to with haste, the records showed.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/19/AR2007031901559.html