THE SET-UP: Today’s “toxic” TRIFECTA starts with a deep dive into a cancer cluster on the Duck Valley Indian Reservation. Sadly, it’s a familiar story … as AP’s Gabe Stern noted:
There’s a long legacy of contamination across Indian Country, ranging from uranium tailings in the Southwest to solvents dumped at a military installation in Alaska and pesticides used on the North Dakota plains. Health risks and other critical information are often concealed from Native American communities until years, sometimes decades, after the damage is done.
Not coincidentally, fenceline communities like “Cancer Alley” also find accountability elusive when it comes to the source of their ailments. And speaking of “damage,” the story of Maui’s wildfires is still unfolding and, it seems, is something of a canary in the climate coal mine. - jp
TITLE: A remote tribe is reeling from widespread illness and cancer. What role did the US government play?
https://apnews.com/article/native-american-agent-orange-contamination-cancer-121a13698b876ddcd67b4a13b2ad830a
EXCERPTS: The family placed flowers by a pair of weathered cowboy boots, as people quietly gathered for the memorial of the soft-spoken tribal chairman who mentored teens in the boxing ring and teased his grandkids on tractor rides.
Left unsaid, and what troubled Marvin Cota’s family deep down, was that his story ended like so many others on the remote Duck Valley Indian Reservation. He was healthy for decades. They found the cancer too late.
In the area, toxins are embedded in the soil and petroleum is in the groundwater — but no one can say for sure what has caused such widespread illness. Until recently, a now-razed U.S. maintenance building where fuel and herbicides were stored — and where Cota worked — was thought to be the main culprit. But the discovery of a decades-old document with a passing mention of Agent Orange chemicals suggests the government may have been more involved in contaminating the land.
“I don’t know if I’m more mad than I am hurt,” Terri Ann Cota said after her father’s service. “Because if this is the case, it took a lot of good men away from us.”
Owyhee is the sole town on the reservation, where snow-capped mountains loom over a valley of scattered homes and ranches, nearly 100 miles (161 kms) from any stoplights. The area is bookended by deep Nevada canyons and flat Idaho plains. For generations, the legacy and livelihoods of the Shoshone-Paiute tribes have centered around raising cattle year-round. And many still use the same medicinal plants and practice the same ceremonies as their relatives buried there.
The U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs was an integral part of everyday life in Owyhee. The agency, which oversaw the maintenance building and irrigation shop, told the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in February that it found a revelatory document from 1997.
In it, a BIA employee recalled clearing foliage in the irrigation canals at least 20 years earlier, when he sprayed at least one of the herbicides — but possibly both — that make up Agent Orange. The EPA banned one of those chemicals in 1979 because of its cancer risks.
A BIA official told the EPA and tribal leaders that it was long believed the herbicides were used for weed control along certain roads — not the canals — before rediscovering the document.
The tribes’ current leaders said they were unaware of either scenario. What alarms them, they say, is that the canal system has greater reach than the two-lane highway that runs through town.
Word cascaded down to tribal members, most of whom live along the canals, swam in them, used the water to farm on the edges, and gathered branches from surrounding willow trees to fashion cradleboards and roast marshmallows.
But they know little else.
Hundreds of pages of emails, memos and other documents obtained by The Associated Press show federal agencies have promised the tribes that an investigation is coming. Still, the details are scarce because the BIA redacted or withheld most of the contents of the records.
The BIA declined interview requests from the AP but said it’s evaluating the extent that Agent Orange components might have been used on the reservation.
Officials from the BIA and the EPA visited Duck Valley as recently as Aug. 7 to talk about the process of hiring a contractor to clean up contamination from the federal buildings, tribal leaders said. The presentation noted gaps in data analysis, including for the storage and use of herbicides.
Action can’t come soon enough for tribal members who say the federal government’s prior cleanup attempts have lacked urgency and direction. They fear inaction could lead to further sickness and death.
While tribal Chairman Brian Mason presses federal officials for answers, tribal members are being urged to get annual medical exams and an environmental team is tasked with digging up historical documents.
“People are dying. And I don’t know what they’re waiting for,” Mason said.
“I’m going to run out of days sooner than I should’ve,” said Julie Manning, a tribal member who was diagnosed with advanced stage ovarian cancer last year. “And my child can pick up the pieces, and she’s been holding them together. And BIA can say ‘whoops, sorry.’”
TITLE: The huge US toxic fire shrouded in secrecy: ‘I taste oil in my mouth’
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/09/marathon-oil-fire-louisiana-cancer-alley
EXCERPTS: At 8.04am on 25 August last year, Darnell Alboudoor watched a plume of black smoke blanketing the sky and rolling in the direction of her family home.
A stench like burning oil filled the air on that piping hot summer morning, as Alboudoor, 54, looked in the direction of the sprawling petroleum refinery, which sat a few hundred feet from her back yard. She called 911.
“I’m just wondering what’s going on over there,” she told the operator. “Nobody tells us nothing.”
“They’re handling it,” the operator responded. “Nothing to worry about.” There was no need to evacuate, Alboudoor was told, as she expressed her concerns over the fumes.
“I just want to know why we weren’t aware of this,” Alboudoor said. “Why are we just finding out about it now?”
Unbeknown to Alboudoor and the thousands of other south-east Louisiana residents who lived next door, the facility had been leaking for more than 13 hours. A storage tank containing at least 26,000 barrels of the flammable hydrocarbon naphtha had been on fire for about an hour and a half.
Twenty-six minutes before Alboudoor’s 911 call, a state environment official had recorded an alarmingly high reading of toxic air pollutants at a location on the plant’s fence line.
But there had been no alert. No blaring sirens. No word from local emergency responders.
It was an example, residents and experts say, of the embedded culture of secrecy surrounding the hundreds of chemical plants and refineries that dominate the heavily polluted region between New Orleans and Baton Rouge known as “Cancer Alley”.
Marathon and local government officials have maintained that “no offsite impacts” were detected during the entire four-day episode, citing company, state and third-party air monitoring.
But interviews and a review of an array of records by the Guardian in collaboration with the multidisciplinary research group Forensic Architecture – including air-monitoring data, police reports, 911 calls, videos and photographs captured by residents, satellite imagery, 3D simulations, medical records and internal emails – have raised significant doubts about official and company claims. They also reveal how the petroleum giant may have minimized the episode in its reporting to both federal and state governments.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data indicates that the leak and the fire, which blazed over three days, produced one of the largest accidental releases of flammable chemicals since 1994, when the agency began monitoring such hazardous facility incidents across the US.
Eleven of the 17 residents interviewed in Garyville, Lions and Reserve told the Guardian they experienced symptoms associated with chemical exposure, including breathing problems, migraines, burning eyes and sore throats. Some sought medical attention and one later became critically ill, linking his symptoms to the fire.
The St John parish government did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Marathon did not respond to a series of detailed questions, but said in a statement that it operated its facilities “with the highest commitment to the safety and health of our workers and the community”. The company said this included working with and notifying “regulatory authorities and other stakeholders during and after an incident with integrity”.
The Marathon refinery came online in 1977. It later became one of the company’s most valuable assets, with a capacity to process over half a billion barrels of crude oil a day – a key contributor to Marathon’s status as the largest refiner in the country with a net income of $9.7bn last year alone. It was the last large petroleum refinery constructed in the US.
It has also left many residents concerned about the fumes and stench that emanate from across the fence line. The communities of Garyville and Lions are exposed to more toxic pollution, released by Marathon and the many other industrial plants in the area, than 99% of the US, according to a Guardian analysis of three decades of chemical-release data that the EPA requires industrial facilities to report.
The company has still not provided a cause of the fire or details of a plan to prevent a recurrence, citing an ongoing investigation to state regulators. But an EPA inspection report published last month noted “speculation is that the ignition source was a live electrical wiring” located underneath the leaking tank. The report noted company deficiencies in failing to properly inspect the tank or to repair cracks in its floor. A small entry in a state police record also indicated that plant officials believed at the time the high heat and dry grass may have also contributed to ignition.
A Guardian review of EPA accident data at thousands of hazardous facilities across the country, released under the Freedom of Information Act (Foia) to the Data Liberation Project, indicated the accident was the second largest release of flammable chemicals in the EPA’s record across three decades.
TITLE: Maui wildfire survivors say insurers are failing to clean up toxic damage to their homes
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/09/05/wildfire-smoke-damage-home-insurance-maui-colorado/
EXCERPT: More than 2,200 homes burned in the deadly fire that roared through west Maui last August. Janice Hussey’s was not one of them.
When the 79-year-old turned onto her street on Aug. 9, 2023, she exhaled. The light green house where she’d lived with her husband, children and grandchildren for nearly 20 years, was still there. Her old Nissan truck was still in the driveway, her floral curtains still rustling in the wind. It felt “miraculous,” she said.
Until she went inside.
“It was not the same,” Janice Hussey recalled in May, still displaced eight months later. “Every time we went in there, I could feel —”
“Icky,” Makanalani Hussey, her granddaughter, interjected as she hugged her wriggling 2-year-old daughter against her pregnant belly. “It’s icky.”
“There is something in the air that settles on your skin,” her grandmother continued. “Something is there.”
That “something,” according to five experts and two contamination reports, is a mixture of toxic chemicals and microscopic particles that urban wildfires create and carry in their smoke. As the wind-driven fire swept through much of Lahaina, killing 100 people, it incinerated cars, gas stations, electronics, metals and plastics. Those smoke plumes blew into dozens of homes that didn’t burn down, and their components can cause an array of health issues, including brain tumors and cancer.
This dangerous fire residue contaminated nearly everything in the Husseys’ packed, three-bedroom house: the insulation, carpets, clothing, furniture, even down to the old, chipped drawers in their kitchen, according to two independent experts, who also said it would take weeks of meticulous work to make this space safe again, at a cost of up to $80,000.
State Farm, the Husseys’ insurer and the largest residential carrier nationwide, disagrees that such a level of cleaning and restoration is needed. The company initially gave them about $29,000 to cover all the expenses associated with the smoke damage, including cleaning all their belongings. They are afraid to move back, Janice said, and unable to cover the difference. Her big family “has spent the last year jostling between hotels and apartments until State Farm stopped paying” for their rent in February. In a letter viewed by The Post, the carrier said that since it had paid for restoration, the family’s home should be habitable.
Janice and her husband have been squeezing into their daughter’s home since March; Makanalani, her partner and children are in a one-bedroom hotel room.
“It’s not right,” Janice shook her head, “how they are treating us.”
These disputes are happening across Maui. The Post spoke to 11 families — nearly all of whom have State Farm policies — who are fighting with carriers over the discrepancies between what they received for smoke contamination and what independent experts say they need. State Farm gave three homeowners about $13,000 each to fix the problem. Estimates from restoration companies and independent experts show the work could cost nearly four times that amount.
In a statement, State Farm said that “claim handling has been ongoing and we have been actively working with customers to resolve concerns.” In response to detailed questions about the Husseys’ and other families’ claims, the carrier said it could not comment on individual cases.
But in emails to a public adjuster representing the Husseys back in May, the company said its coverage decision, based on their retained expert, as well as their investigations of the home, was appropriate. After The Post reached out about the family’s situation in August, the company gave them an additional $14,000 for the damage and the expenses they racked up from not being able to live there.
Hawaii’s Insurance Division did not respond to questions about residents’ issues with State Farm, including a family who had filed a complaint about the carrier.
Families whose homes were left standing after the 2017 Tubbs Fire in Santa Rosa, Calif., and the 2021 Marshall Fire near Boulder, Colo., endured similar battles with State Farm and other major insurers. And as climate change and development turn more wildfires into urban blazes, homeowners are increasingly reporting smoke damage and sparring with their insurance companies. It’s a reflection, experts say, of the growing gap between what a disaster costs and what insurers are willing to cover.
There’s no comprehensive, nationwide tracking of these smoke damage claims. However, in California — the nation’s largest insurance market — smoke-related wildfire claims have increased as much as 37 percent from 2018 to 2021, the last year that data was publicly available, according to the insurance data company Guidewire. In 2020, carriers reported $179 million in losses from smoke-related claims.
A big part of the problem, experts point out, is that there are still no industry standards or state or federal laws that regulate the assessment, testing and removal of wildfire smoke residue in homes. That means the insurance company and their chosen experts are the ones who determine if a home is safe and habitable, and who can rule that its contamination is not as serious or costly as physical property loss.
“There’s no oversight,” said Louis Adams, an indoor air quality specialist. “Anyone can do whatever they want.”
Colorado is trying to become the first state in the nation to change that. Years after the Marshall Fire left scores of residents with smoke-shrouded homes, state lawmakers are working to create minimum “uniform standards” for insurance and testing companies as they assess houses that absorbed toxic, cancer-causing pollutants.
At the same time, carriers have been straining under the mounting costs of climate-related events. State Farm stopped selling new home insurance in California due to wildfire risk and has recently asked state officials for another massive rate hike “to protect the insurer’s solvency,” filings show. For the Maui wildfire, the carrier said it has received about 2,360 claims — about half of all residential claims related to the disaster — and has paid out approximately $257 million.
SEE ALSO:
California policyholders may be on the hook for wildfire losses
https://www.propertycasualty360.com/2024/09/09/california-policyholders-may-be-on-the-hook-for-wildfire-losses/
San Bernardino Sought Emergency Action on Home Insurance Months Before Fire
https://www.newsweek.com/san-bernardino-sought-emergency-action-home-insurance-months-before-fire-1950671
Progressive is the latest insurance company to stop offering homeowner coverage in Texas
https://www.tpr.org/news/2024-09-09/progressive-is-the-latest-insurance-company-to-stop-offering-homeowner-coverage-in-texas
How climate change is contributing to the home insurance crisis in Florida and across the country
https://www.wusf.org/environment/2024-09-04/how-climate-change-contributing-home-insurance-crisis-florida-country