Some folks would say it's a simple life, well,
I don't think it's a simple life.
It's a hard life, but it's a unique life
that everybody grew to understand and... and to love.
These hills, the forest, you know, Mother Earth...
This is very important.
I've been in the city...
I can't take that noise, I can't take the traffic.
I wanna be here where it's just like... quiet.
You can sit outside, watch the sun come up, hear the birds chirp,
watch the leaves fall, get that smell of fall, when it comes...
I mean, it's just great.
The woods... they had been our lives, you know, we loved the woods,
always going out and exploring.
So I want to show you the area,
but I want you to be aware that this is... This is a hazardous
area, and we need to be very careful going in and out of it.
- Yeah, nice colors. - Holy cow.
You know, while it may look like a colorful rock,
it's a very toxic colorful rock.
This stuff has arsenic in it, volatile organic chemicals, PCBs, potentially dioxin.
Many people have ended up with rashes, real quick.
Really? Yeah.
That's why Mr. Spiegel has us bring gloves.
Yeah, I don't... I don't touch this stuff.
You can say, looks are deceiving. Yeah...
I've seen a lot of people go through that.
All of it comes from the same source.
It comes from the Ford Motor Company, the plant in Mahwah.
They've admitted that...
they dumped up here from '67 through '71.
We enjoyed playing on it.
We would jump around all the time on it, you know, because it was so pretty.
This was from the spray booths. They used to spray the cars with this,
and then they would take whatever waste was left at the end of the day,
give it to O'Connor Disposal, or other contractors, and...
Send 'em up to Upper Ringwood to dump on the Native American community.
It wasn't just the paint waste, also,
it takes an incredible amount of solvents... Solvents, yeah...
To clean out those guns. Acid baths on the cars, to prime them for painting.
We're finding Freon coming out of the water that they used to drink out of.
We find... different volatile organic chemicals,
and metals, and lead, and arsenic, and... And you name it,
a witches' brew of like, everything.
Don't let the trees, and the sound of the birds and the bugs and stuff fool you,
they dumped a lot of toxic waste up here.
This is as bad, if not worse, than Love Canal was.
And these people are really sick, as a result of it.
We had no choice but to fight back. We don't have a choice.
So, we'll just see if there's such thing as justice.
Will Ford be allowed to be punished?
If we'd murdered their kids, we'd have been executed.
So... I don't know, I honestly don't know.
It's a Pow Wow, everybody dance.
Life is short, pow wow hard!
This land is ours.
Once a rich land, and a rich mining community,
and we're still the same families that are from 225, 250 years ago.
Hello, there. I made it a little late,
but I finally got here to see you dance.
I'm watching you. I'm watching you with all your beautiful moves.
I'm probably a 10th, 15th generation from the same area,
You know? This is ours.
The names of lawsuits go through history.
You know, you talk about Dred Scott, or Brown vs. Board of Education.
Thanks, bro. As we started thinking about...
how do we want this case to be remembered?
Should it become that significant? And we hope it does.
Then, it was almost a tribute to Wayne, and what he's done.
To have him as the lead plaintiff.
You look good, as usual. Thank you.
Because he has impressed upon us as an individual, his...
involvement, and the extent of his work, and his own fight.
He is a voice of the voiceless.
I ran from it long enough, you know, my fears.
I said, "Well... I gotta do something. I gotta try to help,
"because others before me, were willing to fight for it."
So it was my turn.
All right, I'll talk to you later. I gotta go see my cousin.
Because I sort of...
felt that I, I, I... owed them that passed, my family,
which is the whole community.
You'll see, it's... yeah, no this stuff doesn't break.
You hear it, it makes like a rubbery sound.
The only way to let it be known, is to let the world know.
I don't think we'd even have been heard today if it wasn't for The Record,
and Edison Wetlands, who believed us.
I first saw the paint sludge in 1994.
The residents called the newspapers, and all these agencies, and said,
"We want to show you something."
Jan Barry? He's a hero.
Yeah, I mean, he has a, a fantastic national reputation for being one of the...
one of the best environmental investigative journalists in the country.
Yeah, well, this whole mountain where your standing is on top of this.
They took us on a two or three-hour walkabout,
showing chunks of paint sludge,
and pieces of paint sludge sticking out between the leaves.
This being one of the things that really caught my attention.
This is well into Ringwood State Park, next to a hiking trail,
and you have no idea how much paint sludge it is, and so we did this story...
When they finally dug it up, it was the size of a swimming pool,
and there was more of it across the trail.
Okay, I have a terrible sense of smell, I can't...
Ooh, you're really starting to smell it now.
Ford's Mahwah plant...
when it was designed and built, it was the biggest in North America.
It was dramatic to see when you drove by on Route 17, this huge...
acreage of brand new cars sitting out in the parking lot.
When the plant opened in July 15th of 1955, Henry Ford II said,
"This plant will provide a substantial, lasting
"contribution to the living standards of all Americans."
From our perspective, now, his lasting contribution is toxic waste.
The cars are spray-painted and all of it just drips down,
and then the drain would just fill up buckets and barrels.
And that's the stuff that was just carted away.
Yeah, look at that.
There's the red, white, and blue, right?
- That's amazing. - Yeah.
Look how pliable it still is, after all this time, it's still like rubber.
- It has not faded. - Not at all.
Automotive paint is damn good stuff.
Wow. I mean, that is still "Candy Apple Red."
From the very first... we tried to approach Ford,
because that was the other side of the story.
I know I was surprised when they just flat out...
"No, we're not meeting with you, we're not talking to you, we're not film... nothing."
So we were never able to get to any Ford executives at all, ever.
We're trying to, basically, get a body of, of evidence about...
what colors match up to what levels of contaminants. And this is, uh...
For us, this was just a place that we played,
from the top of the hill to down into the, the wetlands piece, there.
We would all four, five little kids get on a car hood,
and we would ride down, 'cause it was so steep.
You know, and it was a slow ride, but...
In the summer.
The dirt used to taste sweeter, so we used to like eating it, sometimes.
We'd make little pies like this big...
and then we'd cut 'em up in little sections, and
we'd each take a slice, and we'd eat it.
Well, then you'd have nosebleeds, and...
headaches, and bleeding from your ears, sometimes from your mouth.
But we didn't know... So, we just loved it 'cause it tasted good.
Thirty-some years later, and it's a constant nightmare.
Every time the phone rings, you gotta wonder,
if someone's just got diagnosed with something, or if someone just passed.
Who's in this house, now?
In this house is, uh, Paul Van Dunk, who has cancer now.
What kind of cancer is it?
Uh, I think it's in his throat. I think. Yeah.
Uh, but, his daughter died from cancer,
his daughter Pauline Wright, she died from cancer in this house.
What... how old was she?
She was 40... she was in her forties.
I saw her go through a lot of pain and suffering.
Now, who's in this house?
This house is my sister-in-law, Linda DeGroat. She has cancer.
- Oh my goodness. - Mmm-hmm.
That was Mike Milligan... Yeah.
And yeah, he died from cancer.
Now who's over here?
This is John Morgan, he died from cancer last year.
Uh, this is my aunt, Frieda Van Dunk... Yeah...
Who has cancer right now.
- Now, who's up there? - Mary Van Dunk...
had cancer, had several surgeries on her brain.
And her daughter just got diagnosed with lupus, and she's not very healthy.
We have a cancer here, Richard DeGroat died there from cancer.
- We had a cancer here... - Ugh.
We had a cancer here. Yeah.
Up here? Yes. We had cancer there.
Someone living there now, has cancer? No, he died.
Oh my gosh, it's just cancer, cancer...
cancer row. Everyone, yes.
Yeah, that's what they should call this.
It doesn't take long... You don't have to be up here for very long to see...
There was absolutely no concern,
about the fact that there were people living on this land.
None. Zero.
It was a place that was convenient to get rid of the waste of a plant.
Waste that they knew was dangerous.
But this was a convenient dumping ground.
That's why we have the lawyers, we wanna know...
Are we being injured from this stuff that went down,
in the, in the ground? And what can we look for, for our grandchildren?
It's too late for us.
My goodness, here, I'm 60 years old, I'll be in the ground soon.
We used to have people in this community,
and Roger will tell ya, that was over 90 years old.
Lots of folks. Now, what, 30 years later?
People over 60, you can count 'em on two hands, probably.
Turning out now to be 50s and 60s.
That's it, as far as you can get.
Only got a handful of people left that in 70s.
They were the strength, they still are.
I remember Wayne telling me that the first time I met him.
He said, "Vicki, there's no old people.
"There are no elders, and we all grew up with old people.
"And now there's not."
You know, that is such a simple explanation, and if
you listen to that, then you've got to say,
"Why are there no old people?"
If you go back generations,
this is where they're all from... Probably from the beginning of it all.
My mom's people, been here forever.
Ya know, even before, like Vivian and them said,
even before the Mayflower came here, they was here.
Try to get 'em down in the dirt as far as you could...
The DeGroats, the Van Dunks, the DeFreeses...
You know, there was a lot of, uh, intermarriage, from what I understand
between some early Dutch settlers and Native Americans,
which brought the... the Van Dunk name, the DeGroat name.
Uh, and a lot of the community members have been living here for hundreds of years.
It's a really unique community.
Most people don't leave.
You don't have people, you know, moving away to California.
People are content to stay here, in what, what they, for years was
their own little... their own little paradise, you know,
until Ford decided to treat it as a landfill.
Maybe if I seen him, I might know him.
Roger worked at the park, when he worked there.
Ringwood has a lot of history, going back way to the 1700s.
Because of the iron mines.
The Hewitts owned all the land.
They owned the iron mines.
And the people that now live in Upper Ringwood...
are the descendants of people that worked for the Hewitts, and worked the mines.
By the 60s, the mines had closed,
and Ford Motor Company purchased the area, about 900 acres.
And so Ford became landlords,
for the people that were living there, and those are the Ramapough Indians.
It was very close to the Mahwah plant.
There were mine shafts that were just open, willing...
ready, and willing, and able to take a lot of garbage.
And they began trucking their toxic sludge to Ringwood.
I think they decided,
"We own the land, we're gonna do whatever we want with it.
"There's people living here, but so what, we own their land, and... big deal."
They dumped all along there. They call that, "The O'Connor Landfill."
It's all a piece of Peter's Mine Road here.
They dumped all along that.
Six thousand gallons of paint sludge were produced
a day from the Ford plant.
And they had to get rid of that stuff.
So they would find...
Obviously, they're not gonna dump it where it's lit, and you know,
so they would find dark areas where no one went.
What's a better place? The woods, a stream.
Night times, you could hear trucks.
You know, you could hear them running like, all night.
And then you would hear either a bulldozer or a loader start up.
We were always told, you know, don't go to the window, keep the shade down, and...
Don't worry about it.
It became a way of life, because the elders were afraid of something...
or someone, or I, I don't know.
But they, sort of, taught you to...
actually, basically, turn your back on anything that happened.
There was a bad guy.
A bad guy that could not have been more "Americana,"
than Ford Motor Company.
And it was, to me, the epitome of...
how bad the system can be!
Because they were Ford Motor Company,
they were, I guess, allowed to ruin people's lives.
To kill them, and not be held responsible.
Now, if they had committed murder, they would be prosecuted.
If they were a person...
But because they were a corporation, they weren't sent to jail,
because you can't send a corporation to jail.
How do you make a corporation behave?
Well, first you depend on government agencies to do that.
If that doesn't work, then what do you do?
If the regulatory agencies don't seem to be able to control the corporation,
and it turns out the corporation is controlling them.
There is only one place to go.
And that's the courts.
Who's responsible for sending out the letter, is it us or New York?
And so, there was no doubt in my mind that we had to file a lawsuit.
And I would have to figure out how to do it,
and I would have to put it together and make it work.
My job, then, this is the way I take it, is that...
Sit back and watch.
If you don't think you did anything wrong, I'll prove it to you.
I'll show you what you knew, or should've known at that time period,
and you knew it was wrong.
I will show you that you made the decisions,
as to what you would clean, how you would clean,
and to the extent or the degree that you would take care of that clean up.
I'll show you.
Is Lisa coming today, or is this all of us that's going up today?
She's coming tomorrow.
Okay, good, we'll have room to put Cara and her boxes in your car.
I think so. What, what'd you get?
Explorer. Yeah, it's big.
Okay.
Cara, where's Kevin?
I'm not sure. I haven't seen him in the last few minutes.
I'm gonna talk to Mike for awhile, and then...
Then we're gonna talk to Jack, who's sitting right here, just let Kevin know that.
Okay?
And see if you can find my court reporter for me, please.
A lot of our folks was working for O'Connors, driving trucks.
Jimmy DeFreese, we called him "Flash," because he was a fast driver.
Their orders was, well, wherever they could find a spot,
get rid of it quick and go.
I took the paint over to the gondola's, and they were being dumped in.
And that would be, picked up by one of O'Connor's...
One of O'Connor's trucks. And what would they do with it?
As far as I know, they would bring it up here to Peter's Mine Road.
- And dump it? - And dump it.
Was that what they referred to as the O'Connor dump site?
Dump site, yes.
How many loads of waste would be hauled off from the Ford plant a day?
Oh, I'd say about, five or ten.
Oh, they'd dump anything that had to do with Ford, anything that had to do with Ford.
Cardboard, it could be wire, with copper inside,
and then maybe a truckload of sludge would come.
They would have, uh, containers of Freon that were half full,
some all the way full, some empty.
If you knew that there was a load coming up that had a lot of copper, you would be there.
That was good money then.
And... So that's what you were looking for?
When they dumped the loads... Copper, oh yeah!
We were lookin' for copper, or brass, radiators, looking for the money stuff.
I'm talking about boxes that you couldn't even lift, of brass fittings.
The company had to know that what they dumped there,
people were going in and getting.
That was no secret. Exactly.
You're definitely right. When people knew that that stuff was coming up there,
they wouldn't care what else was comin'...
Exactly. They just weren't worried about...
They wouldn't care... That's right.
Because you could take that copper and go sell it. So, in other words,
to keep everybody quiet, they gave a little piece every once in a while,
a little delight, they knew what they were doing.
And O'Connor knew it, and Ford knew it.
Definitely. When you'd go salvage these car parts,
wire, would you come in contact with the sludge then?
Oh, yes. Oh yeah. Would you see the sludge then?
We would inadvertently step into it, 'cause we would walk across cardboard,
and you know how slippery that is... Right.
And go through stuff, so inadvertently your 'foot would slip on through and you'd be,
end up with pants, shoes, destroyed with paint.
And then when we'd peel the pants off, the skin came off with it.
And from then, forever,
I get sores here all the time.
Everybody, at one time or another, had rashes on their arms.
And it would burn your nose, you'd get nosebleeds.
It'd burn your eyes, your eyes would bleed.
You can go right now, and that stuff's how many years old?
We got it right down at the town meeting over here, and...
One of the people touched it, they were like that...
and he went and washed, washed his hand, and it was all red.
It was just like that.
We filed this as a mass action, meaning,
we listed every single person's name on the complaint,
which means you have to answer interrogatories and do depositions,
potentially, for about 600 plaintiffs,
which means you need a lot of support staff,
a lot of paralegals, a lot of attorneys.
It's a massive undertaking.
When's the first recollection you have of seeing paint sludge,
or playing in paint sludge?
How young do you think you were?
About maybe eight, seven, eight.
Okay, and you wanted to play in it, and you did.
We enjoyed it. That was our playground.
Okay. Obviously, you had it all over you, you're kids, you're playing in it.
Right. Well, we used to play Cowboys and Indians.
You'd paint your face...
For, for me growing up, it was normal for me to see you...
with scabs, and sores all over you, because someone else had it.
Someone else had it.
But when you went to the outside to go to the school,
and you look at every other kid who didn't have these problems and...
They would shy away from you, nobody would touch you.
It's strange, because even, you know, my own
people too, you know I was just different, growing up.
Laid back, quiet, coward, if you want to call it, but...
Never really had much to say, I was more just a loner.
This is my favorite little place.
This is my sacred place.
This is where I come in and this is my little room.
They're still my strength. Even from the other world.
That's my cousin Garrett.
That was my brother Narv. He died of a heart attack.
This little baby passed away.
This was one of my friends, this was Mark Springer,
it was a guy I worked with.
And this was my cousin.
My mom never said much.
You know, and to find out she had cancer, I didn't sort of
really ask her anything after that.
She never said, you know,
"This is what caused it." 'Cause her doctor...
couldn't say, because, I mean, you know, who's gonna go to a doctor and say, you know,
"I lived on a landfill and, you know, I salvaged copper and...
"and ate on a landfill."
Who does this? No one was gonna tell a doctor.
I never even told my own doctor.
We took a lot of... hurt and a lot of pain growin' up, living like that.
You know, it's not easy telling anyone that,
You know, so how do you go and start telling the world this?
I wasn't ever comfortable in school or anywhere,
only to when I got up at Peter's Mine Road,
and then that's the only time I felt comfortable.
So the problems that you were having physically,
at the time, were just, sort of, connected with the Ramapough.
Yes. I mean...
The peop... it seemed to you, at the time, that the people and it's probably true...
were saying, "Oh, that's...
"That's just something that happens because they're Ramapough."
Yes, 'cause, realistically, I felt that the world hated me,
all of us.
"Plight of the Ramapo people, January 2nd, 1976.
"Historians have not been kind to the Ramapo Mountain people,
"an isolated kinship group of predominantly dark-skinned hill-dwellers,
"whose ancestors settled near Ringwood, in Revolutionary War times.
"Race is the principal factor that has socially isolated them throughout history.
"And the ambiguity of their origin is still at the heart
"of their unhappy and sometimes impoverished fl... plight.
"They have been described as living in unkempt,
"harem-like settlements...
"and mating copiously among themselves.
"They have been called mongrels, wretched scavengers, horse thieves,
"car thieves, and fearsome clan people, who shoot strangers on sight."
It's hard to believe that...
this has been happening in our country from the very beginning,
and it's still happening today.
I think what makes me sick...
is that I'm not sure that anything has changed. You know?
I think that they're still being, you know, mistreated.
I've been told they deserve everything they get.
I can't tell you how many e-mails I've gotten,
or phone calls from people in the community saying,
"When are you going to tell the real story,
"about the people up there?" Yes.
"That they've created their own lives.
"They've created their own mess.
"That they... look at the way they are living.
"They have washing machines on their front porch."
They've called us Jackson Whites.
Oh they... Oh my God... Um, they say we eat out of garbage cans...
"And walk around barefoot." We didn't know what a microwave or toaster was,
"No, we don't have a phone." "we were so behind the times."
When I worked at a little weekly paper, I was
warned by some police officers, "Don't ever go up there by yourself,
"it's dangerous."
The cops, they talk like, "Don't go up into upper Ringwood,
"because they will shoot you and throw you in the mine hole."
They're ostracized...
I live in the same community, in the same town that they live in.
God, sorry, I wasn't expecting this...
People taunt them in the grocery store.
There's things that I've heard, growin' up, from other kids.
Kids in school can be cruel. Race... racist remarks.
There are Ford documents out there that
really refer very negatively to the community as Jackson Whites.
I think part of Ford's analysis, of course,
had to be that "It's a community of, of coloreds.
"A Native American community with no political clout.
"What are they gonna do?"
Nobody really cared.
The dumping began in 1967, it continued into the early 70s.
And the sludge was finally stopped being trucked in there because...
Ringwood is considered a very important area for water.
The North Jersey Water Commission said,
"It's close to the reservoir, and this is toxic stuff,
"and we have to protect our water supply."
So Ford donated a large parcel of the land to the How-To Organization,
which is a, a local non-profit that builds homes for the needy.
They had that land, after they got done dumping.
They wanted a cheap way to get rid of it, which is to donate it.
Get a nice tax deduction.
Ford knew it was, it was donating land containing hazardous waste.
There's documents that show Ford saying,
"Well, why don't we donate this land to the How-To Organization?
"They probably won't know that it, it's contaminated,
and we might be able to minimize liability."
"You know, they're just building houses, you know, for poor people,
"they don't know any better.
"Let's do that."
My dad was one of them that built one of the original houses.
There was 16 families.
It was, it was a form of independence, all right,
and they were all wrapped up into it,
to have the opportunity to build the home and have their own new homes.
They weren't thinkin' about no contamination.
Not being aware, of any contamination.
You know, they were just anxious
to build these homes and become proud homeowners, because
prior to that, there was no homeowners up here.
And now the foundation of our client's American dream is built on...
a hazardous waste pile.
It's not like, we were all asleep one night,
and a strange plane came over and dropped something.
You know, we're talking about a giant corporation,
right in our backyard that give hope and promise,
that one day we'd be a Garden of Eden.
But it turned around and just became a cemetery.
One of my major fears is, it has worked its way up the food chain, and...
And things that were here, the grouse, the partridge, it's gone.
It's in everything,
You know, it's in all the plants and all the animals.
It's not like the outside didn't know, it's not like the EPA didn't know.
The signs were here, but we didn't know.
Upper Ringwood became listed as an EPA Superfund site in the mid-80s.
It was one of the most toxic sites on Superfund registry.
The federal Superfund program was instituted in 1980,
and it was put in place to address sites where
industries, and companies, and even the military,
had poisoned the ground, the water, and the air.
And walked away and left it to continue poisoning the earth.
And so the federal government came in to clean up these sites,
and that program was supposed to clean up Ringwood.
And the cleanup took a year.
One point, whatever million dollars, and that was the end of it.
What they did was they took out some,
and they just brought in big rock and put it over the rest.
This is Vivian Milligan's home.
She's one of the community leaders.
She knows so much about what's happened up here.
And she's got photographs. She has movies.
Really? She has...
documents. She's just a massive record-keeper.
This one I took from church records,
out of, uh, Good Shepherd. Wow.
That's... Oh my God.
Let's see, we have one, two, three cancers right here.
It's the things that we expected, and we can use them,
statistically to try to prove our case.
So then, we have a 10-year-old with cancer.
Ewing Sarc...
Sarcoma. Ewing Sarcoma. Yeah, Ewing Sarcoma. Yeah.
That's what that was, yes. A ten-year-old.
We're holding balloons for my nephew, Colin.
Colin Milligan, who died from cancer.
And we do a little memorial service on his birthday, which is today.
In loving memory of Colin Milligan.
God looked around his garden, and he found an empty place.
He then looked down upon this earth, and he saw your tired face.
He put his arms around you, and lifted you to rest.
God's garden must be beautiful, he always takes the best.
It broke our hearts to lose you...
He was first diagnosed, at nine years old,
and he passed away at ten.
It began with a pain in his neck.
And... they kept saying it was muscle spasms,
We knew something was wrong.
Doctors couldn't answer us up here, so we had to go further.
My sister called me on my cell phone,
and, uh, she told me, you know,
the tumor had already intertwined in his spine, up by his neck.
It, uh, it was, you know, cancerous and...
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday dear Colin
I just picked him up in my arms, and
and I told him to speak to me.
And he did, and... And that was it.
Colin kind of put a big impact on this community with the cancer.
I mean, it kind of broke everybody down watching him,
going through this ordeal.
And it got to the point where you feel like you're not gonna take it no more.
So it kind of gave the community some strength,
to try to go out there, and try to seek answers,
to find out what is going on?
This is gonna be the first site in the country to be relisted.
There's been other sites people have tried to do that with.
But upper Ringwood area's gonna be the first site in the country,
where the EPA has said, "We're done, it's clean," and walked away,
and then had to go back and relist it as a Superfund site,
admitting that they made, basically, fatal errors in the clean-up.
I think that it would be fair to say...
That a more comprehensive search,
back when this site was first put on the list,
would have been the appropriate thing, or would have been a better thing,
for the community, and obviously for EPA.
And I'll even say, for... for Ford, for everyone involved.
I think when the pressure then came about, and all the concerns were raised.
I think that was a good thing that the people did,
and that everyone who was involved did,
to get us to rethink our approach.
Back in the late 60s, early 70s,
uh, Ford Motor Company owned this property.
There was three identified sites,
Cannon Mine, Peter's Mine, and the O'Connor landfill.
There was a contract that said that's where the waste should go.
But, obviously, not all that waste went into those three areas.
Uh, you know, it went into other sites as well.
We don't know all the reasons for that, but that's what we have to go identify.
Why there was some random dumping in other areas,
other than... than the specified areas.
That whole area was a landfill area that was used,
you know, during Ford's operations out here...
The site was deleted. We thought we...
got all the waste that we needed to, basically, you know, address risks to health.
However, of course, and...
New information has come up since that point in time.
We've discovered additional paint sludge after the site was deleted in 1994.
And, most of what they were finding in these areas were chunks of paint sludge.
At the time, they thought that everything that was exposed
to the public was taken care of, and it was delisted.
Now, we found more things, how... how they got exposed through erosion, whatever.
Over time, I think a great deal of the...
topsoil has been eroded off of it.
You've see a lot of slopes out there.
A lot of the soil and paint sludge that's being recovered now is buried.
Whether we actually missed an area that was visible,
I can't tell you, because no one at that time told us, either.
In other words, the state didn't know it, the residents didn't know it.
In looking at the original case files,
the very early inspectors, starting in 1979,
for both the DEP and the EPA had told them what's out there.
They said, "You look here, you look there."
That's how I knew where to start looking,
to go out and walk around myself,
and find paint sludge and barrels all over the place in two hours.
In their own original files...
The reason it became a Superfund site, and they ignored it.
How do you miss something like this?
Look at this, this thing is full of, of paint sludge.
How do you miss something like this unless you're not looking for it?
I think even Stevie Wonder could find this.
When the decision was made to not clean up this site,
I'm telling you, it was something out of a movie.
You know, a limousine pulled up, an EPA representative got in.
They drove down a dark road, probably behind a warehouse somewhere.
They had a conversation.
The limousine came back, dropped the person off at their car,
and then they made a phone call.
You know, and that's what I envisioned,
how they decided they weren't going to clean up upper Ringwood.
I think that the EPA relied on Ford, to make their decisions.
I think that Ford controlled what the EPA thought, and what they knew.
And to the extent that any decision was made by the EPA,
it was controlled by what Ford and their agents told them.
Incompetence or corruption, take your pick.
I don't know, I can't... I can't say.
But they did not do their job.
These are the four sites that the original remediation plan addressed.
But in addition, you know, we're finding the waste throughout the entire area.
I mean, the disgrace here is that Ford...
is that EPA and Ford failed to investigate
any of the waste under any of the residential properties along Van Dunk Lane.
And it's popping up out of the ground on a daily basis.
Vivian, some was found here, right? Yes.
Yes, I'd say it was about... I think maybe like, right here.
See, you see where they...
Yeah, and look, this is right in the middle... Yeah, right in this area.
Of the children's play area. Yeah, there was a big chunk right here. Yes.
EPA was doing such a good job at enforcing environmental laws.
When Reagan came into office in the early 80s,
he put...
a woman in charge of EPA, Anne Gorsuch,
who was indicted, you know, for trying just to gut EPA.
You know, and ever since then, EPA's just been a hobbled agency.
The people above them have told them, "Hey...
"It's your job to make sure that corporations
"spend as little money as possible, to protect human health and the environment.
"So they can, you know, reinvest it in their business,
"and contribute to the economy," et cetera et cetera, and communities suffer.
And it's kind of a mentality in EPA, I mean, it's well-known.
If you talk to a lot of the employees that...
they're not supposed to be vigilant, you know.
I mean, employ... EPA employees that actually go out,
and find violations and issue tickets,
they're not rewarded. You know, they're put in the back, the back office,
with, with no windows, you know, next to the copy room.
We weren't looking to blame...
Regulators who were to protect us.
We were looking to blame the guilty parties.
But somewhere...
Somewhere there became some confusion with those who worked to protect us.
Somewhere along the line it became an ally with those who poisoned us.
And until they use what power they have from Congress,
to do what Congress granted them to do,
then they're still no better than Ford Motor.
So the community in Ringwood's fighting these David and Goliath fights.
I mean, they're taking on two major players.
They're taking on EPA, and they're taking on Ford Motor Company.
And they're trying to make them do the right thing.
Surface water sampling doesn't indicate that we have really any
surface water contamination leaving the site.
So if we don't have the groundwater contaminate plume,
leaving the site, or surface water contamination leaving the site,
there's no reason to believe any other areas have been impacted.
I've always been afraid, my whole life.
Afraid of the outside,
afraid of the pain and the suffering that we were caused.
And then I got involved five years ago, and then
you have to make a choice.
Either fight back or nothing will ever change.
I understand what you're saying, to a point.
You're saying, you know, there was no testing to show that it has
been leached over into Cupsaw. But,
what I have in my body, right now, no human being should have. At all.
I mean, for four years they told me I had a cancer, I had a tumor,
I had... epilepsy,
I mean, a laundry list of things that I don't have.
And it wasn't until I went to that specialist in the city where they said,
"You have heavy metal poisoning, and it's completely messing up
"every organ system you have."
What I have, in the amounts that I have, and do have now,
are exactly what was listed in the newspaper as coming from this area.
I'm a newlywed, and my doctors have said,
"Don't have children, it will die."
I'm 29 years old.
Right, you're not seeing it leaving the site now,
but is there a possibility and a probability...
that it could have left the site,
when they were dumping it by the truckload?
Anywhere and everywhere there was a stream,
and all the streams were feeding the Wanaque Reservoir.
I can't speak to what may have happened in the past. No, you can't tell the truth,
I'm asking' you... No, I'm not saying I can't tell the truth...
What's not fair, Pat? Wayne, I was five years old when that...
You were five years old, but your project manager...
You're protecting Ford, tell the truth,
I mean, use your heart for once.
I'm telling... I am telling the truth. I understand you was...
Five years old, but you're not five years old now.
I, all I can tell you is... I was 6 or 7 or 8, when I was playing in their poison.
The bottom line is, we are doing the best...
we are doing the best thing that we can do right now, and that is
making sure the paint sludge that's out there is addressed.
It's found and addressed.
So we are doing the best thing that we can do,
and that, you know... for, for you, at this point in time.
There's a lot of different ways to attack environmental problems.
Legally, you can attack them through the tort system,
through the administrative system, political channels.
How are you doing? Good to see you. Jon Corzine. Wayne Mann.
Wayne Mann. Pleasure to meet you. Wayne.
Pleasure to meet you, too. Wayne works for you, Governor.
He works for the state, and he's also a resident.
Thirty-one years.
How do you do?
Nice to meet you, and it's about time.
Well, I'm sorry we've... You know, I know you had other things to do, but...
This is... this is important and, you know,
we're doing all the work to make sure that,
hopefully... All right, now I want my kiss, too.
Yeah. That is easy. Yeah.
I'm not biased. How about a hug?
I'm not biased.
I think there's about four or five other dis... disposal areas,
that are being remediated right now that look just like this.
They've removed, like, 16,000 tons of, of sludge and soil,
since we started in... in 2004.
And that work's been done under order to Ford, right?
Right, so Ford's paying for it. Ford's paying.
And what is our role here?
Oversight.
Are you, Lisa, confident that this work will...
ultimately lead to a reasonable restoration?
This is just a small part of the problem, out here.
So, yeah, this area, I'm confident that we're not going to allow...
them to walk away until we believe that it's been remediated,
satisfactorily for people to live around here.
But, you know, when we walk down the road you'll see
the mines where this stuff was dumped, and
we're talking about a complex, long-term clean-up.
And they were trying to find another community in the country...
to match our community to do this study,
and they could not find another community.
With as high an incidence.
Right, in the country.
Maybe 99% of everyone in that home has some type of illness.
Probably a little bit of every, every type of cancer that there is,
and, and a few people even have up to three different cancers.
Basically, it was being dumped in the stream itself,
and this brook actually leads into the Wanaque Reservoir.
Ford didn't keep documentation too well, and it's being proven more and more, that
apparently, they didn't know all these other places, but...
they don't know where they dumped it all.
Anything you grab, it's stuck to. Right.
Yeah I, I get it.
But it goes from all the way. And this is supposed to be a cleaned-up part.
This was part of the original clean-up, in '94.
I mean, you know, the truth has to come out.
And there has to be a criminal investigation, because...
the criminals are doing the cleaning.
You know, I mean, in all honesty, I mean...
There, there's more here to lose than meets the eye.
You're talking about our culture, our history.
I have a request. Can I make it to you now? Sure.
Could you please make sure that we get our day in court with Ford?
Will you try to help make sure we get our day?
Absolutely. As a matter of fact, we're working on...
And as far as documents for the toxic waste... Environmental justice issue.
You have documents standing behind you, okay, just remember that.
People who saw what they did. You got it, right.
The way he acted, like he wasn't even aware this was going on.
It was like a big surprise to him.
I don't know, who knows. Who knows?
You know what I mean? You never know.
Hopefully, it does something better.
Take care.
I love ya, boy. I love ya, boy.
By the time my kids came... or grew up,
the paint was already dumped in there and, and, and...
decades had gone by, you know.
But it was still here, paint's still here.
I love you, sweetheart.
This is my grand... this my granddaughter, here.
This my son Nick over here, his daughter.
It's my youngest daughter, of three. Isabella.
Oh yeah... What's goin' on over here?
This is the last kidney stone I passed, it was about two months ago.
I was told by one nurse...
that the biggest they've ever seen was the size of a... grain of salt.
But I've passed 'em bigger than this.
Problems going to the bathroom,
constant blood in my urine.
Said if I don't get the stone out, my kidney's gonna shut down,
and I can't find a doctor to do the surgery without insurance.
It depends on the size of it, you know, how it comes out.
He already passed that one, and this is the big pass,
and that one... It's hurting really bad.
It hurts really bad.
The interviewing of the fact witnesses was fantastic.
What I was impressed with was the consistency.
I thought it went so well.
Our focus for the next month,
of course, is getting everything completed with the experts.
We scheduled over 500 appointments this week with our clients...
602. 602, latest number.
With Dr. Dahlgren, and this is a 17-page document.
He's very thorough. Um, I just want you guys to know what we're paying for.
Indigestion?
Yeah, I get that.
When you drive a car, do you ever get lost and turn the wrong... turn the...
Yes, I take everybody else the wrong way too, all the time.
- Hi. - Hi.
I'm Dr. Dahlgren. Ruth? Yeah, I'm Ruth. Right.
And you're Vivian, right? Yes.
And you guys are sisters? Yes.
Dr. Dahlgren is one of our experts.
He was made famous by the Erin Brockovich case,
and he's one of the best that's out there.
Did you ever slide down the sludge hill, as a kid?
Many times? Yes.
It was fun? It was a whole lot of fun.
And we used to do it back when we were kids, too.
We used to make mud pies, out of the dirt. Out of the sludge?
And then we'd eat it, 'cause we were kids, so that was a fun thing to do, so...
That's probably why your kidney failed, because when you eat dirt...
Yeah. You get a huge dose of lead.
Yeah, we all did. We loved it.
My son used to take the gum and sell it in school...
Oh, I never even knew he done that.
You're talking about the little sludge things, Mm-hmm.
Yeah. And he would chew it like gum?
It's rubbery, yes... Oh, God, I'll tell you.
Well, that's not good. Now, how are they doing, health-wise?
Well, my son's had a heart attack, he's been blind, he's a diabetic.
That's terrible. And he... that all happened when he was 30.
I'm a diabetic, he's a diabetic.
My dad died on dialysis. Yeah, he was on dialysis.
My mom, she just got sick all of a sudden, and the ambulance took her,
and she was dead before she got to the hospital.
- Forty-three years old. - Yeah, I've had...
Your mom was 43 when she passed? Forty-three years old.
- Yes. - That's not normal.
No kidding.
Well, you know, there's a chemical up there called arsenic.
Arsenic causes diabetes.
And there's also a chemical called dioxin, up there.
Very high concentrations. It causes diabetes.
Oh. So you got a double whammy, there.
Yes.
And the teeth are fallin' out, and Yeah, yes.
That's another effect of dioxin.
Dioxin is the most toxic chemical known to man.
Oh, wow.
It causes people to get sick in the parts per trillion.
You've heard of Love Canal? Yes.
Dioxin was the chemical in Love Canal.
And I understand Love Canal can't touch this, so.
Dioxin came about because of the fires.
Okay.
When they were burning, dioxin gets formed if there's chlorine present.
And they had chlorinated solvents. They had PCB's, up there.
Do you remember the time when there was this fire, around '73, '74,
that just burned for a long time, out of the mines?
- Do you remember that? - Oh, yeah. Yeah.
In the mines. And, and the O'Connor landfill, right? Yeah.
It burned for weeks, and then they finally got it out.
Because they couldn't put it out, really.
They couldn't because it was underground.
Peter's Mine and Cannon Mine fire burned for three to four weeks.
Peter's Mine fire you could see from Manhattan, as an orange glow.
Smoke, you know, coming through the windows, like ash.
Because the fires would put off ash.
You know, and you'd have all that coming...
Coming down? Falling down, yes.
Being around the fire make you feel sick at all, or do you remember anything like that?
Really wasn't paying attention.
'Cause the fire you would get different colors from it, like when it would hit
the copper wire, and get a nice blue fire.
If it hit paint, you'd get different, like, rainbow colors of fire.
It was all different.
- It was entertaining. - Entertaining. Yeah.
And they were talking about the stuff that came out of the sky during the fires, and...
The ash, yeah, the particulate. And would land...
Right, right, right. Loaded, loaded with dioxins.
This site is, in my opinion, is worse
than most other sites in the country.
It's comparable to a site in West Virginia,
an area that was impacted by an Agent Orange factory,
where they released massive amounts of dioxins into the neighborhood.
So this is comparable to, you know, the worst dioxin disasters around.
So, where do all the presents go?
Mommy took 'em.
My children are grown, now.
My wife gets our grandkids once in a while.
I miss them living in Ringwood, which is their home,
but I feel more comfortable with them
not being there because of the hazardous waste.
Let me see her... Wait, wait, wait!
No, I'll do it. I wanna see her.
You don't want to let 'em run in the woods.
You don't want to let 'em run in the stream, you don't wanna...
Let 'em do anything that we did.
He's a baby, just like you guys are.
Come on, Come on... Doggy!
My greatest fear is that I am going to die through some
disease that could've not happened.
So I have to go to bed every night,
feelin' on my body where I got a new lump,
and waking up in the morning, and thinking if one of 'em's going to be cancer.
Cheers. Drink.
Corporations aren't people.
They're just pieces of paper, just like this.
But on that paper are numbers, with dollar signs in front of them.
That's the only value they have,
and that's the only way that you get their attention, of that piece of paper,
Is to change the bottom line here, on the numbers.
I think we're going to find evidence of gross negligence here.
More than just negligence.
I think with memos like we've already seen,
where they knew they had a problem, and they were trying' to find ways...
To solve that problem with, quote, "Fewer questions asked."
That a jury...
may look at that and probably other information, and go,
"Wait a minute. This is punishment time."
And when a jury decides to punish a corporation,
they are allowed to base that on what would be,
a punishment to that particular corporation based on their net worth.
That's when they get scared. And that might be...
a huge number.
And that money goes to the people, and then we've...
Then, and you get to the point where you're going, "Yeah."
I think what they did was, they used that Kolene product.
Right. They used that to remove paint from surface...
Kolene is a salt, that when you add water,
it releases a tremendous amount of heat.
And so, what happens is, if there's any organic matter, it'll catch fire.
Oh, there's all this water down in the mines.
They could not have mixed those things together at their facility...
Unless they wanted to have a fire...
So... Right. But they did when they dumped.
It's gross negligence.
That means... that means punishment.
It's a care... it's a reckless disregard for the lives of the people there.
Which it, legally, goes to...
Punitive damages. Punishing. They wrote it off once it left their plant.
I wonder if they have grits. I just got this craving for grits.
For the first time, yesterday, people began to hear.
For the first time.
I mean, that they were poisoned.
I mean, there are people literally looking at me yesterday,
and at Dr. Dahlgren, going, "Really?"
And, well, obviously... "Really?" They had no idea.
And especially with dioxin, I mean, that's never been...
Never.
Dioxin has never been evaluated.
A-T-S-D-R dropped the ball on that. Absolutely.
We have to get the science right.
We're talking about chemicals and the movement of chemicals.
And the exposure to those chemicals, and then the illnesses that follow.
And even though common sense tells you that... Right.
These people live in a very contaminated environment,
that's not enough to get you in front of a jury.
Every step has to be proven in science.
So you guys, this is how this one works.
We will pay whatever it takes to find a scientist,
who will get this job done right so that your case will survive,
When Ford brings in their best attorneys, with their best scientists,
to make those challenges.
Before we finish?
Two to four million.
That's what it costs.
Hey, I'm Vicki. I'm one of your lawyers.
We're gonna go up into the attic.
We're lookin' for old dust. Probably 30 years ago.
Let me tell you what we're doing, you know.
Yeah, I know. Remember all the fires and stuff that burned?
We want to find that dust, because we think that dust can prove the poisoning,
You know. Thank you so much. You could be right.
The attic is a time capsule,
and everything that's blown through the community, is blown through the attic.
So we're going to continue testing.
Then we're going to write a report,
to show through air modeling that the fires were releasing dioxin, and.
PHs and metals into the atmosphere,
that were then depositing into the attics, and the soil around the homes,
into the lungs of the people.
It's the thing that no one expected, that no one looked for.
Hopefully it's the thing that they can't just brush away.
The lead? "Oh, you can get lead from something else."
"Oh, you can get the arsenic from something else."
But if that turns out to be unacceptable levels of dioxins.
That's still in those homes.
And there's no other explanation for how the dioxins got there.
Then that is, I hope, yes, that's... the nail in the coffin.
I hope for Ford.
There's an article on Ford in...
Ford made the front page of The New York Times about how...
- Is it their plant? - Yeah.
And... this one guys says... "It's like losing' air,
"in all four tires, and the spare."
So, it's just interesting that it came out today.
Vicki, this house has been here for over 100 years,
and he's had these windows open on the sides.
Which faces...
Both Cannon and... And... Cannon and the O'Connor landfill.
The stuff would just come down and... Yeah, this is it.
These windows face the mine area.
That's where fires would've been burning.
Most... a lot of them, were down there.
A lot of sickness been here, more than any place I... know of.
My son Mickey, he played in the stuff too, and...
been in it, I don't know, and the dirty water and whatever.
It just had come on him, 'cause he was never born that way.
He was a real good-looking boy, when all of a sudden that...
skin disease hit him, whatever it was, and
say, for the last 20 years, I guess.
He must've had about 21 operations and...
Pilonidal cysts, that's what they called it.
And, you know, they...
The only way to remove it, they had to excise a whole area,
like, it was about the size of a football.
And... you know, in his buttocks and that lower back area.
This is the colostomy bag, filled with stool,
and this is the one I urinate in,
from the, the fistulas.
It comes from my backside and comes all the way around to my...
my groin area and got in my scrotum area.
The doctor said that there's so many holes in my scrotum area, it's like a wet sponge.
So that's why that's there.
So there's no reversing either one.
This, this... that's when it very first started,
from the one bump that was in the middle of my chest.
And I had one that was on my arm.
And that's a surgical...
These are all surgeries that were... These are all from surgeries.
Successful. Yeah.
This one here was so deep and...
They cut... that's where they cut my lower back out.
He has to wear Depends.
He has to take three or four showers a day.
'Cause of infection.
You know, that's why I say, actually, it ruined my... it ruined me.
Like, destroyed my life.
I had a cousin, used to ride his motorcycle,
up on the top of Van Dunk Lane.
He had a track out there.
There isn't nothing but sludge out there. That's all it is.
We didn't know what it was. We were out there, we're kids.
We're running over on top of stuff. We didn't pay attention to that.
I go on the Internet. I talk to the people,
that have this, this problem that he has, you know, and...
They... they're from Pennsylvania, where
there's toxic waste dumps up in those areas.
You know, they, they're basically going through the same kind of things, you know.
They're trying to find out if it's related to,
you know, things like that.
When I was growing up, the same environmental injustice.
I felt it and I saw it, and I lived it.
I was raised on a farm where the delta of Louisiana
meets the Piney Woods.
So, on the delta lands, the crop dusters are
are flying over my house, dusting the crops.
And then the Piney Woods, there were the paper mills,
producing and emitting all kinds of chemicals.
How old is... how old is this house, do we know?
Old.
Old. Good.
I lived on the farm with parents and grandparents. I was adopted,
from an orphanage in New Orleans.
We grew our own food. We raised cows and pigs and...
Everything that we ate, almost.
My dad also hunted and fished.
And I fished.
And our community, which was a farming community,
there was, uh, black and white, um and we were all poor but we sure didn't know it.
Because we never felt like we lacked for anything.
I don't know why I decided that I needed to be married when I was 17.
But I did.
I started college,
and then had to quit, after I gave birth to my child.
I wanted to go back to college so badly,
but I couldn't... couldn't see a way to do that.
I worked full-time at a bank from the time I was 18.
I took care of my daughter and...
I remember thinking, one night,
I was, uh, 21. I remember...
going to the window of this house trailer and looking up in the middle of the night.
And looking up at the sky, thinking,
"I am 21 years old and my life is over.
"I have no future. I have a child. I can't go to college.
"I have a husband who can't keep a job."
I mean, you know, all those things, and it just seemed like...
Um, and I was very unhappy.
You shouldn't do that with your teeth.
Didn't your mother ever tell you that, not to use your teeth?
And I finally decided that I would take one class, at night.
And this one happened to be a law-related banking class.
And... I made an "A."
And I thought, "Maybe I can do this."
We turned...
This... Mmm-hmm. We turned in here.
It just caused a lot of additional friction, in my relationship with my husband.
So we, um, got divorced and...
I thought, "Now what am I going to do?" You know, I don't...
I don't have a way to take care of myself and...
I want to graduate from college, and I have this child and...
My parents said, you know, "We'll help you." And the thing that they gave me...
was the babysitting.
"You go and do, we're right here.
"We're gonna love her, we're gonna support her, you go take that class.
"Go to the library, what you need to do."
And so I graduated from college.
So we know we got good old dust. Yes, that's for sure.
That's good, thank you so much for letting us do that.
So I finally decided that I would go to law school.
I always felt, in my mind, when I saw people.
No matter what their plight, no matter what their situation.
It didn't matter to me what race they were or whatever,
I just always saw myself.
So we're going to test that and see if we can find any of the chemicals in the dust.
And that was the connection that I've always had.
They were, like, windows, maybe... like that.
So I've interned with the public defender's office.
And the story that the public defender told years later, he said,
"I'm sitting at my office one day and in walks Barbie.
"And Barbie says she wants to be a public defender."
And he said, "Yeah, right."
"But she went to work and you know what. This Barbie had balls."
And that's the story that he tells.
And every time she goes in it, she's broke out.
I know, that's what she was saying. Every time. Every time.
I guess what I felt in my heart,
if I could, I could represent people.
Because a lot of people would say, "How can you do that?"
"How can you represent 'those people?'"
I didn't see them as any different from me.
You know, because that could have been me.
Finally they told him he had the cancer.
They did the surgery, but... within a month's time, he was dead.
And so, if my voice is now louder,
because I've learned, and I... I can now speak out for people,
that need me, then that's my job.
That's what I am required to give.
He was down in there and he was picking...
like, the burnt copper and stuff. Sure.
And, you know, all the guys did at the time. Of course.
You know, justice comes maybe late,
but it should come.
It's a test of the American system.
If the rich, and white, and powerful,
cannot pay a crime as the poor, or the black, or the red or whatever.
Well, then, only the rich, white are America.
How are you? Good, I'm good.
What's going on? Good, how are you?
Paul Rosenfeld runs a company called SWAPE.
It is a very young and energetic team of scientists, and
graduate students who bring an unparalleled level of energy to cases.
Paul gets his, his teeth into something and doesn't quit.
Well, one of the most interesting things is that the EPA...
There's a document that the EPA...
basically said you didn't have to sample for dioxins or PCBs.
That was like, '86 or '87, around '87, right around there.
Yeah. But it's unbelievable that they'd do that,
What, what, there must have been some sort of conspiracy,
with the EPA being bought off or...
It makes absolutely no sense. Well, I think that Ford was
running the whole thing, and they had the choice.
They're the ones telling the EPA...
What they need to do. What they need to do,
and they had a choice to say, "Test it or not."
I think one of the most important things is, we're recognizing that
that while the fires were catastrophic events,
and there was really high exposure during those moments of the fire.
Really all it did is blanket the entire community,
- with dioxins, PCBs, metals... - I know.
And it's still there. And it's still there,
and these... that only has to do with the cancerous.
There's also a hazard index which is very high, and the hazard index
are all sorts of other acute ailments that people are seeing.
I think you're gonna be excited to hear what Dahlgren's gonna tell you.
'Cause he's already started telling me some of the things,
that the questionnaires are showing, and what his data...
The statistics are just unbelievable.
I think, probably the most important thing to mention is,
this is the sickest group we've ever seen.
There's almost no one in the group that is healthy.
And at the rates of the various diseases,
ranging from cancer, to diabetes, to high blood pressure, to...
asthma, to skin problems, to gastrointestinal problems, to
kidney problems, is off the charts.
We have, you know, six people over 65.
Wow. The distribution...
of 577 people that we did questionnaires on,
normally has 15 to 20% of people over 60.
This group is less than 5%.
So it's... there's a massive die-off of the human beings in this population.
The mean concentration of dioxin TEQs that we found in the attics,
was around 110 TEQs, which...
Is an exceptionally high number, considering that 3.9
is the preliminary remediation goal for EPA Region 2, which New Jersey's in.
So, the attics of these individuals are currently unsafe to
breathe in, but that's not the point, at all.
The point is, over the last 20-some odd years, there's been...
dust, and other sources diluting
these dioxin concentrations. And so, the numbers had to be
many, many times higher, historically. And the, the...
the terrible thing about dioxin is that it is a cancer promoter.
It accelerates the rate at which people die.
So anyone that contracts any form of cancer,
it's gonna accelerate the rate of mutations tremendously.
The diabetes rate is three, four, five times,
depending on which age group you look at, with a background rate.
Both arsenic and dioxin increase the risk of...
diabetes by at least two-fold.
But we have a four and a half to five-fold increase in diabetes.
It's probably the combination of the two,
at least, that... contribute to that, um, marked, excess of diabetes.
I'm sure reproductive problems are significant. Oh, they've massive.
The miscarriage rate is off the charts. Yeah.
Almost every woman reported at least one miscarriage, and most reported two.
Miscarriages are common, but in this group,
- it is even more common. - Right.
It's very unusual that people don't move,
I mean, I know that poor communities, that doesn't happen, but...
These people have lived there their whole lives,
and so they've been constantly exposed. It's not like,
people that go travel, and move from city to city to city. They've just
stayed right there in the super-contaminated hotspot, never left.
It's really a tragic story, and that's one thing that makes this a unique case.
It's coming together already in our minds of what this is gonna be, but...
this is the most complicated case.
I think, you know, right now.
We're looking at probably 12-to-18 months of discovery.
I know.
If we can get a trial date, that will give,
I think, the people of the community,
something concrete to look forward to.
We have to move the process as quickly as we can, given all the circumstances.
Well, the greatest injustice would be if Ford declared bankruptcy,
and then threw our case into bankruptcy court.
I mean, that would just be... I know. I can't imagine what a nightmare...
So, we're goin' to O'Connor's?
Uh, let's go to the sludge hill, first. Let's go take a look.
Well, we're up by Sludge Hill. EPA and Arcadius, their contractors,
for Ford have been basically done here.
So, we're comin' up here to take a look and see what Ford left behind.
Where? Oh, yeah, yeah.
All right, guys, we found our first...
Yeah, don't touch it without the gloves. One right there, another one right here.
You can walk past this and just think it's part of the parent rock.
But once you've seen it, you should know.
There's another big piece. Come on over, Rich, there's plenty here.
More Ford paint in blue.
There's some real horrible...
Yeah, this is about 25 pounds, here.
You know, right now, this goes down
to the reservoir that feeds 2 million people drinking water.
And I'm sitting here with a piece of paint sludge that smells like fresh paint,
very toxic, very high in metals,
and certainly something that shouldn't be sitting here,
above a drinking water resource.
And this whole area has supposedly been cleaned.
This is exactly the same as when they'd clear-cut a forest,
There's nothing here to stop the erosion of anything down the hill.
For Ford to come out here, and say this is clean, you know, is a lie.
And for EPA to believe their lies, continually, and still
be their best cheerleader, they should be ashamed of themselves.
Wayne, is this the sixth or seventh time they've walked away?
We've lost count. It's hard to count.
The sixth or seventh...
This is the seventh time they've said, "Mission accomplished."
Look at this, all this, that...
It's just not gonna go away.
Peter's Mine's gonna be tested to the bottom,
Cannon's Mine's gonna be tested to the bottom, no matter what I gotta do,
it's gonna be tested to the bottom by Ford.
Tomorrow is our third funeral...
in three weeks... in three weeks,
of our family members that have died.
You just don't seem to get it, there's a sense of urgency,
you just don't get.
These are these people's lives. This is an emergency.
Two and a half million people have a right to know.
I can't change your failure for what happened to us.
I don't care, I'm not gonna stop this fight.
And I don't care where I gotta go, what I gotta do.
It's gonna be tested to the bottom.
The U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C.,
is one of the symbols of our great country.
The dome was made of Ringwood iron,
that was fabricated at Cooper-Hewitt foundries in Trenton, New Jersey.
They have to go into those mineshafts, and they have to clean up that paint sludge,
and everything and take it out of there.
No more are we gonna take EPA's answers, and Ford's answers,
that everything is okay, trust us.
We lead, they follow.
What has been done to my people and the water, and the land, hurts so much.
Ford Motor Company will never understand.
She was the first African-American chief of staff in the Governor's
office, and now she's tapped to become the first, ever African-American...
to lead the Federal Environmental Protection Agency.
I've chosen Lisa Jackson.
Lisa has spent a lifetime in public service, at the local, state and federal level.
We're heading to Washington D.C., to watch Lisa Jackson be sworn in.
I'll be waitin' for it.
All right.
Be careful. Safe trip. Yes, thank you.
Goodbye, sister, make us proud.
She is the first African-American that's going to lead the EPA.
And not as just a regional administrator, she's...
If I may say, she's going straight to the top.
Hi, Iris? Is my husband there?
All right, just tell him that we made it okay, all right?
All right, bye.
Mr. Lincoln, good God.
It's beautiful.
Never thought, in my life, would I ever see the day I would be here.
And especially for the reason that I am here.
I am here, because I started the journey.
I started on a journey for my people.
And this journey has brought me this far,
and I don't know how far it will take me, but I do not want to stop.
Being here really makes me feel I've takin' a giant step.
Lisa? This is your seat.
And now I'm standing here proud,
that I represent, and I intend to keep representing.
Committee will come to order, we have very important business ahead of us.
I want to first talk about the mission of the EPA.
To protect public health and the environment, that's the mission.
Unfortunately, I believe we've seen the agency move in a
direction diametrically opposed to its mission.
I think all you have to do is look at these headlines and see...
How astray they've gone. I'm just showing you a few.
It doesn't matter where you live and where you look.
Uh, this is the record.
And I believe EPA has hurt the American people,
made them less safe these past eight years.
At this hearing, I am looking for a renewed commitment, simply to EPA's mission.
The whole EPA, until the changing of administration,
has been, uh, a complete failure.
EPA has been industry's puppet.
Each administrator has proven themselves that it was a failure.
If I may, Madam Chairman, I would like to introduce friends,
from the Ramapough Mountain nation in Ring... in upper Ringwood, New Jersey.
Wayne Mann, Vivian Milligan, Jay Van Dunk, and Veronica Van Dunk.
They, and too many other Ramapoughs have lived
on top of a Superfund site for decades.
They are vivid reminders to me of how EPA can be a force for good,
if it does its job well,
and what can go wrong if EPA falls short.
When I was nominated by the President-Elect to lead EPA, Vivian called me,
and she cautioned me with one simple request.
Don't forget about us.
So I asked them here today, not to offer them empty promises,
but as witnesses, to what I hope,
will be the beginning of my journey as EPA administrator.
None of them are victims. They are survivors.
They are Americans. They are my conscience.
And I pledge today to serve them, and all Americans well.
Thank you very much.
We would love to see the community members who came here,
for this occasion to, to rise, so we can see you.
And we welcome you all here, thank you very... Thank you.
I think Lisa will do the right thing.
I don't think that she'll be industry's puppet.
But I don't think it'll be completely her decision to decide...
It's... it's how far up the chain a new administration goes,
where life is put before industry.
Miss Jackson, I need your commitment that you will
correct the failure of the current administration,
to declare a public health...
I came out against Lisa Jackson's nomination as administrator of the EPA,
because of the way she ran New Jersey's environmental protection programs.
You know, she got her marching orders in New Jersey from Governor Corzine.
And her marching orders were, "Don't spend money."
"And don't... don't do anything that's going to hurt industry or business."
And she did what she was told, and she did it well,
and she was promoted for it.
Together, these community members and Miss Jackson
are working to clean up the Superfund site.
Now, she may get different marching orders from President Obama,
but who the hell knows?
The real test for Lisa Jackson, the real test...
is when plans are put before her by Ford that say,
"We want to cap the mines, we want to cap these landfills.
"And we, and we... And it's safe for the community to do that."
And, and then they start putting political pressure in Washington,
to get those plans approved.
And if she's not willing to stand up to Ford,
and she's not willing to stand up to the political pressure,
that's going to be brought to bear on her, that will be her test.
And that's how the community will know,
whether they were just being used to go to Washington, to be...
used as props, or whether Lisa Jackson genuinely cared about the community,
Because you judge somebody not by the words that they use,
but by the actions that they take.
Now, I just have to tell you guys that,
I met with Ford yesterday, and they're going to be pretty tough.
Not... you know, not surprising.
But to get a view, a feel for their story is that...
The people up here aren't really sick.
And if they are sick, they certainly didn't cause that.
They didn't cause any of the illnesses...
They've pretty much told their story through EPA.
There's plenty of documents out there, for us to know what happened in the past,
and the chemicals that are here.
They're going to be demanding of us, in the next...
probably less than 45 days. Specific information...
about each client.
They're gonna ask dozens and dozens and dozens of questions...
You're going to be deposed, where you're gonna be at a, you know, sitting at a table
like this, with Ford's attorneys asking you all types of questions.
So, this is the part... And we're gonna... We're gonna prepare you
for each one of those events, everybody, as it goes along.
But this is the part of the litigation where everyone actually,
you know, really becomes involved.
What I need is you guys, let them know.
This is it. You know, if... if Vicki sends you a letter, it's serious.
- Right. - Okay.
We really need it, 'cause we could lose this.
Oh, good morning. Please be seated, please be seated.
May I have the appearances of counsel?
Typically, what happens is that the judge will decide,
in some shape, form, or fashion, we're going to choose five, or...
we're going to choose ten people, and we're going to go through all the...
the discovery on those people. Because it is,
for all of us, it is more reasonable to handle the case that way.
Because of the expense.
We're funding this, you know, if we have to fund the preparation for 650 people,
and the science for 650 people, that's tough.
I might as well not keep you in the dark, as to what
my idea is, and...
Then let you tell me why I'm being too aggressive.
I'm ruining your lives, but this is what I think is appropriate.
647 plaintiffs.
Six groups created, of about 108 plaintiffs each.
Court staff e-mails both sides
148 randomly selected names.
Or, I randomly select.
And each side gets 20 excusals.
I pick 148, alternate 20 back and forth.
Plaintiff would remove one, then the defendants would move one.
Plaint... back and forth, until you're down to 108.
You would be e-mailed a spreadsheet containing 148 plaintiffs by a deadline.
Thirty-six random, 36 plaintiffs, 36 defendants.
Depositions of all 108, no later than January 31, 2009.
All fact discovery, July 31, 2009.
All opinions will be reduced to a report and the discovery expiration date.
One plaintiff, five plaintiffs, ten plaintiffs, 108.
Rolling merrily along. Group Two, Group Six, whosever in Group Six...
One week, two week, one week cycle...
Will not have to have the depositions finished until April of 2010.
And so we're going to move these cases along,
and you'd better get started getting up your trial teams.
Because, I mean, if you thought you had one trial lawyer for every single case.
It's not going to work that way.
Now, all of this having been said.
When is there gonna come a time,
when the parties are going to be able to be in a position,
to discuss some sort of resolution?
Is it after you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, or is it before?
And I haven't imposed these deadlines in order to force anybody's hands,
but, I mean, I know how some of these cases resolve.
And I know how others resolve. And...
I don't want to be left speechless for too long.
The crazy thing is that after the depositions of wave one are done, we start
the wave two depositions, right. Two depositions a day. But...
Then full-blown discovery continues on wave one.
Well, then you need a lot of bodies, So then...
a lot of lawyer bodies to run this show. So then...
Potentially wave three starts, you start doing the
two depositions a day on wave three, and then...
The judge says, "Well, when we get to trial, we're gonna have.
"We'll have multiple, um, we're gonna have multiple trials,
"going on in the courtroom, And it'll be...
"This way, the experts, the experts can go from courtroom to courtroom, testifying."
You know, the judge essentially
made a case management order that was impossible to... Yeah.
To... comply with. It's a nice...
You know, he wants to... Nice way to nudge everyone towards
trying to resolve things. Nudge, nudge is putting it...
putting it mildly. Yeah.
Well, I mean, you know, like you said, it's going to be impossible to try.
Can I get you anything else?
Sounds like so much fun.
The case management conference that we had on September 29th.
At the same time, Ford's stock,
literally, started freefalling on, on September 29th.
And it went, it was 4.05. One week later, October 6th, 1.99.
It's bad news.
The value of the defendant, basically, was cut in half.
It's pretty much... about the worst week that you could ever, ever want,
at this stage in the proceedings.
In every single one of these cases,
defendants never want to settle a case piecemeal, meaning that...
You know, if you have a case with 100 plaintiffs.
If the defendants are going to settle it, they want to settle it with 99 or 100.
You know, they want closure.
The financial risk involved in pursuing a case like this with,
a defendant who may have no money, is pretty obvious.
Number one, your clients.
Do I have a right to roll the dice with their money?
You know, as we move forward, it's just going to become more and more
important for the community to come together and speak in...
in one voice, when we get to the point where,
you know, we hope we all are, are going to get to someday.
And then, it's the risk of losing the money that's been put into the case,
by the plaintiff's lawyers.
Remember, plaintiff's lawyers take a huge risk.
First of all, they have to really believe in a case, and...
and believe they can prove the case.
Then they start to put lots and lots of money into a case like this.
And finally, can we prove causation?
I think it's an issue, in all of these toxic court cases, and it's certainly
an issue in the science, in this case.
How are we going to make that leap?
Because we are not there scientifically.
Maybe that's a good opportunity to... I think it is.
To get him up here.
We didn't find consistent levels of dioxin...
in the blood when we did our testing.
And unless you have the consistent, elevated levels
throughout an affected community,
it can be challenging, to make a strong case.
To the layperson, it's like... Of course, you know,
of course these contaminates made this community sick.
How else do you explain, you know, all these, all these cancers?
But, you know, unless you can prove it in a court of law, it...
doesn't matter how powerful, you know, the case looks
when you're just looking at the culpable conduct of the defendant.
Sometimes there is no path to justice, unfortunately.
So, if there's a possibility,
that there is some money there available for them at this point.
And a trial may be two or three years down the road.
If you wait two or three years, knowing the financial condition of this defendant,
you may end up with zero.
You said the magic word for me, I mean, you know, closure.
So, I don't know, whatever comes of it, but there is a resolution,
Then I, you know, I'll be happy for myself for closure, but my dad too, you know.
Good.
There are rumors going around that some ain't getting some.
A little bit, and some are getting more, and...
Ford and its contractors agreed to pay 11 million dollars,
and the town of Ringwood agreed to pay 1.5 million dollars.
So you have the people splitting 12.5 million dollars amongst 600 plus residents.
We don't know who is getting what.
They all had to sign agreements saying they wouldn't' talk about,
how much they're getting, and they've pretty much stuck to that.
Take care. Have a good day now. Be seeing you. You too, bye, bye.
They divided them up into categories,
and when they're done paying the costs and the attorney fees,
they're getting a range of amounts anywhere from a little over $4,000,
to just below 35 thousand.
You're all set. Thank you. Feel better.
You have one person with cancer in your family,
and 35 thousand's just, just nothing.
Your name.
Most of the people will be getting just under $8,000.
Comin' back from the, the service? Yeah.
As we stand talking right now, there's a funeral going on,
for Linda DeGroat passed with cancer.
So, so if you was to say sweet, it's bittersweet. It's more bitter than sweet.
I think Ford got away with it.
The economy made Ford have the upper hand.
Ford was like, make them an offer,
or make us think that they were gonna claim bankrupt.
In which, that's... that's the way the picture kinda went,
and so... we opted, you know, something's better than nothing.
11 million dollars, 12 million dollars. Is that enough?
No, absolutely not.
Erin Brockovich, that one movie, everyone thought,
"Wow, that's the way to go, that's what's gonna happen."
And that's why they made a movie out of it,
You know, that just doesn't seem to happen very much.
It, It's so complicated, I think.
There's so many chemicals. There's so many different variables,
that to get these corporations to fork over that kind of money is just very, very rare.
There's been a pattern in this country of these environmental cases,
even being pushed by the judges to come to a settlement.
I'm suspicious enough to think it's because,
even the judicial branch of this government doesn't really want to know,
the extent of the problems that are caused by government inactions.
America wasn't going to let it be that way.
It wasn't going to let it go down that way in history, that a...
that a minority community beat an industry the size of Ford.
It wasn't going to be allowed to happen anyway.
Ford has admitted nothing.
And as part of the settlement, they admitted absolutely nothing.
No liability whatsoever, no responsibility for the illnesses.
Um, and, and they read a public statement, in court.
It was about three sentences long, to that effect,
and said, "We will have no further comment."
And, of course, you track 'em down, you know, track 'em down in the court hallway, and
they wouldn't speak to us.
Nothing.
I'm a realist, not a dreamer,
anymore, because, sooner or later, somebody's gonna have to tell the truth.
That there's no... there's no savin' this place.
I don't understand it.
You can't deliberately poison people, and walk away.
You don't poison someone you like. You don't poison someone you dislike.
You poison someone you hate and that... it's truth.
It was no less than a hate crime.
If I poisoned, let's just say, 10 kids,
and the system caught me,
I'd be waiting for my turn on death row.
You know, but you got a corporation, a giant,
poisoned people who played a major role in history,
and their children, and their children,
and they still can walk free and act like it never happened.