KRisten Burke and her husband, Harold, moved to their home in Russell Landing, a rural area outside Jacksonville, Florida, nearly 15 years ago. This quiet, close-knit neighborhood is next to shaggy pine forests and the Blackwater Canal. “This was our dream home,” Burke said.

It wasn’t until 2018 that she realized the extent of the contamination lurking next door. Burke, who recently became part of the local watchdog, said an industrial plant that once operated nearby left barrels of toxic waste buried underground, never to be buried. I’m back to cleaning.

Many of these 50-gallon drums can still be seen sticking out of the ground just beyond the chain-link fence at the end of the street. Neighbors knew about the abandoned factory, which closed in the 1990s. But now residents and former employees say the contents of those barrels are linked to cancer, heart disease, birth defects, and hereditary conditions, as well as groundwater and air pollution that government agencies have failed to properly regulate for decades. They argue that this contributes to the pattern of disease.

In recent years, Burke and her neighbors have spoken out about the health risks of living in Russell Landing, as developers have focused on industrial sites to build new housing to stem Florida’s price crisis. It looks like this.

“The scary thing is, if the excavators start kicking up those soils and clearing the trees, [then] All the waste comes back to us,” Burke said. “Every day people ask me if it’s okay to live here.”

Last August, Burke launched a citizen advocacy group with other local residents whose lives have been affected by Sorite, the company that owned the factory until it closed in 1995. said Burke, who ran for county commission in 2020 and was elected. She and others were tired of local environmental regulators and politicians not taking their concerns seriously. The group recently paid for soil and groundwater testing to determine the spread of toxins outside the plant. These results, reported last October, showed the presence of toxic metals such as cadmium, barium, lead, chromium and arsenic.

The tests proved what area residents had long claimed was that waste was being moved off-site and, in some cases, into residents’ backyards.

Other facts have since emerged that further the group’s defense. A few weeks later, Burke and her neighbors learned that a 78-acre parcel of land on the former Sorite property was sold and a development agreement was signed with DR Horton, a multibillion-dollar company and America’s largest home builder. I knew it was tied.

TNortheast Sorite Corporation, as it is known today, opened its first quarry in Clay County, Florida, in the 1950s. Workers mined clay and shale from the site and fired it at high temperatures in rotary kilns to produce lightweight cement aggregate. This material has been used in the construction of some of America’s most iconic structures, including the U.S. Capitol, Freedom Tower, and the deck of the original Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

In the 1960s, Solite began using hazardous waste to fire its kilns instead of more expensive fossil fuels. Solite contracted out the treatment of such hazardous waste from other companies, which allowed the company to generate revenue and obtain a source of fuel for its kilns at no additional cost. Kodak, General Electric, Revlon, Benjamin Moore, and various military bases in the Southeast all paid Sorite and its sister company, Oldover, to dispose of their waste.

“There was nothing left of that site,” said Michael Zelinka, 59, a former factory employee, about how the raw materials were processed and fired in the kilns, or one of the company’s man-made lakes. He also mentioned whether the waste was disposed of at the scene, such as by being dumped. Or buried in a blue barrel.

Zelinka said working at Sorite was “hell” and that “nights were always the worst.” That’s when the kiln fires the hardest, he said. Black smoke continued to rise into the sky for hours, and employees were ordered to shut down air monitoring equipment around the perimeter of the property. Residents who lived nearby said they saw the treetops illuminated by an otherworldly orange light. In the morning, the surrounding area is often covered in a thin layer of soot, which environmentalists and hazardous waste experts believe contains dioxins and other toxic elements and compounds. Ta. (Representatives for Northeast Solite declined to comment on Zelinka’s account of his time with the company.)

Since its sudden closure in 1995, Sorite has maintained that there was no off-site contamination and that all hazardous waste was safely contained in surface retention ponds called “scrubber” and “overflow” ponds. . This claim appears to be tacitly supported by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP). Although Sorite was founded long before those agencies existed, records show both agencies were aware of chemical spills and misconduct at the plant starting in the 1980s. Fines for environmental violations have been paid by both government agencies for years, but no targeted health studies have been authorized until now.

“For the past 29 years since the plant closed…we have worked together. [EPA] and [FDEP] Per consent, an order has been issued to inspect and repair the property,” Northeast Sorite representative Albert Gagliano wrote in an email. “The results show that there is little environmental impact.”

Regarding the blue drum, Gagliano said it contained “fiberglass material and possibly debris from a water tank or culvert pipe.”

When the Sorite factory closed in 1995, plans to sell the property to a developer became clear shortly thereafter. In 1997, ownership of the property was transferred to Stoneridge Farms, which had previously unsuccessfully attempted to sell the property.

A possible link between air, water, and soil pollution and high disease rates in the region was first made public in the early 1990s, and significant concerns remain to this day. Long-term exposure to these pollutants can cause cancer, induce genetic damage, and bind to DNA. Clay County’s cancer incidence rate is 36.1% higher than the state of Florida and 47.2% higher than the state of Florida, according to the National Cancer Institute.

In 1996, the EPA issued a consent order mandating the cleanup of the 230-acre surface reservoir, which many residents saw as an attempt to shift blame from Sorite, which had abandoned the site. At this time, this site is not forced into full compliance. (EPA did not respond to requests for comment.)

Zelinka said she became concerned about the impact Solyte was having on her health and the community after suffering a near-fatal heart attack in her 20s, which she attributed to the working conditions at the factory. said. At the time, doctors found high levels of arsenic in his blood, which is associated with heart failure, according to the American Heart Association. Once Zelinka recovered and returned to his job, he became more vocal about his concerns for his safety. A few weeks later he was fired.

About six months later, in July 1995, the factory was abandoned overnight. (In the early 1980s, Sorite plants in Virginia and North Carolina were shut down following similar violations and conditions.) The company cited rising operating costs, but was on site the morning Sorite fled. Local reporter Susan Armstrong said that’s because of the growing noise of civic and environmental activities, pending lawsuits and fines, and the increasing number of civil and environmental activities, including the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), FDEP, EPA, etc. It has something to do with the agency pledging to start offering more frequent unscheduled visits.

The Citizens Task Force, headed by Burke, meets monthly and provides an outlet for residents to air their frustrations not just with Sorite, but with the development of the community in general.

“We don’t need 900 new homes here,” says Russell Landing resident Randy Gillis, who has a rare form of prostate cancer. He worries that the influx of residents will cause roads to become congested and make it difficult to get a doctor’s appointment.

Dr. Horton was cited on the task force as a common enemy, as was Jacksonville-area developer Michael Dunhour, who had pursued the Stoneridge Farms land since 2016 and submitted a rezoning proposal in 2018. often invoked (this proposal was rejected). He currently heads the land trust, which sold a development contract for 78 acres to DR Houghton in October.

When prompted, Dunhour suggested that development is the answer to harmful pollution. He said the best way to ensure cleanup is to give developers a path to buy the land and rezone it for housing. In return, the seller sets aside a portion of the sale price for the restoration of the land. “[Developers] We plan to work with Stoneridge Farm to accelerate the cleanup efforts,” Dunhour said.

He noted that $2 million of the $3.3 million purchase price for the DR Horton parcel will be earmarked for decontamination in accordance with FDEP provisions. But the task force was quick to point out that the $2 million was based on an environmental assessment from several years ago and that testing was incomplete.

“We did the best we could with the limited resources we had,” says Bruce Reynolds, a former U.S. military hazardous waste expert who advised the task force on its recent inspections. Last November, he traveled to Tallahassee to meet with the state Department of Environment and present the group’s initial findings. Reynolds and his task force are now hoping authorities will step in and conduct more substantive testing.

Their advocacy appears to be working, at least for now. In late December, after reviewing the new substances and test results, the state Department of Environmental Quality reversed course, writing to Burke and Reynolds and informing them that it no longer agreed with Stoneridge Farm’s claims about the extent of the contamination. did. Northeast Solite argued that its current proposal would not be approved and that a separate improvement plan was needed. The plan must be submitted in April. (Gagliano said in his email that testing is ongoing and a report will be prepared.)

The task force says this marks a dramatic change in the attitude of environmental regulators, which they have been waiting for for decades. However, residents remain cautious about the future of the property.

“I’m trying not to be pessimistic,” Gillis said. “But if I were a gambler, this is what I would say.” [FDEP] They try to tell us that this is not a concern for the community. One day it will develop. I can’t stop it even if I want to. ”