Landfill Ills

NY Post
By SAM SMITH
August 1, 2004

Three months before Tara Miesegaes' 10th birthday, in 1984, the Staten Island child died of a rare blood disease.

Six years later, her brother John, 14 at the time, was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. Three years later, bone cancer. Two years after that, lung cancer.

Stephen McFeeley died of leukemia in 1990. Stephen LaBracco in 1997.

Lisa Dellosso-Rosalia was diagnosed with Hodgkin's in 1991 when she was 13. She still goes to regular appointments at Sloan-Kettering medical center to monitor the replacement hip and hormonal problems that resulted from chemotherapy.

Besides the anguish of disease, all these cases and 50 others have a commonality: Everyone lived within blocks of the Fresh Kills and Brookfield landfills in Staten Island.

Now, 11 years after suing the city, the victims and their families will finally have their day in court after a state Supreme Court judge this month shot down a city motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

The suit, potentially seeking millions of dollars in damages, claims illegal dumping of known carcinogens led to toxic exposures that caused the various ailments.

Families remember their children playing in the creeks that ran through the landfills, which were not fenced in. But they remember the smell more than anything.

"There were days when the fumes coming from there were so strong, we had to bring the kids in and close all the windows," said Fran Miesegaes, Tara and John's mother. "It was just horrendous."

Even today, with the Brookfield dump closed for 14 years and Fresh Kills closed in 2001 (but reopened after Sept. 11), the smell persists on hot days.

Even so, said Stephen McFeeley's father, Robert, "We figured it was all legal and everything was all right."

But everything was not all right, according to the victims' attorneys Bert Blitz and Mitchel Ashley.

"The Department of Sanitation never inspected nor kept records of what was going into the dump," says Blitz. "The only way we know what's there is because the community forced the city to do toxicological studies."

Those studies found high levels of benzene, lead, mercury and other toxins in the ground and in fluid leaking from the landfills.

Staten Island has long carried the dark distinction of having the highest cancer rate among the five boroughs.

The city commissioned a study of the cancer rate in 1999, but withdrew funding before any work was done, saying new data pointed to high smoking rates as the culprit. A new study being released this fall by Columbia University contradicts that claim.

Another analysis, commissioned by Blitz, found Staten Islanders were four times more likely to have cancer if they lived near the landfill.

The city's own analysis of the same data found no significant difference.
A 1998 study by the state Department of Health found incidents of some cancers higher around landfills.

The city lost another motion to dismiss a Blitz case last fall involving a cancer cluster around the former Pelham Bay landfill in The Bronx.

Both cases took a decade or more to reach this stage. It's better late than never for the victims.

"I'm very happy that it's gotten through and people will become aware of this," said John Miesegaes, whose cancer is in remission. "They did bad things, and hopefully they'll pay for it."

The city's attorney on the case, Christopher King, calls the judge's decision "erroneous" and says an appeal will be filed.