Opponents To Dispute Coronet Health Report

By DAVE NICHOLSON The Tampa Tribune

Published: Jun 15, 2006

PLANT CITY - Patti Britt Walker grew up in the shadows of Coronet Industries - living as a child on its property - and wonders if it has caused health problems she said has plagued her family for years.

She said her father, a 30-year employee of the phosphate processor, died of a mysteriously illness and she’s suffered various ailments, including five strokes, since she was 16.

Walker and at least a dozen of her neighbors and the Texas attorney who represent them went to a public meeting today where health officials discussed their preliminary report that Coronet poses “no apparent public health hazard.”

Walker, 46, says she doesn’t believe it.

“I want somebody to take responsibility,” she said.

Jim Ross, who represents about 1,200 residents and former employees in a lawsuit against Coronet, confronted state health official Randy Merchant at the meeting with his claims that the plant is responsible for illness and pollution in the area.

Surrounded by news cameras and reporters, Ross asked Merchant why the state apparently didn’t act after a 1989 federal Environmental Protection Agency report that warned contamination at Coronet posed a risk to the Plant City area drinking water supply.

Merchant said he didn’t see the 1989 report until his agency started research after getting complaints in 2002.

Merchant said the state did what it could with the information at hand and several studies in recent years show no current risk in the soil or air. Several people are on bottled water because their wells are contaminated while the city extends its lines to reach them.

Ross claims authorities “dropped the ball.”

“I believe they (state’s conclusions) are inaccurate.”

Later he added, “We’re coming to a different conclusion, in all honesty.’

Those who came out for Thursday’s meeting included Vera Harper, Thelma Curtis and Naomi Kriete, longtime residents of Oakview Estates, a neighborhood not far from the closed-down factory. All three women said family members suffered from various ailments, including cancer, over the years.

The neighborhood is now served by city water, but Harper said she worries about what might still be in the pipes and in the ground from years of emissions. Coronet was in operation from 1908 until it closed in 2004 amid declining prices for its principal product, an animal feed supplement. The factory on Coronet Road is currently being demolished.

Ross said health officials have no way of knowing the impacts of years of exposure to any pollution from the plant, a point that Merchant concedes because the studies didn’t begin until 2002.

Coronet spokesman Tom Stewart said he doesn’t doubt claims by neighbors of illnesses, but there’s “no scientific evidence” linking it to Coronet.

“We think the (health) report speaks for itself,” he said.

Ross offered few specifics on his experts” findings, although he said tests have detected arsenic and lead in some residents attics. He said he couldn’t recall how many.

Ross repeated an earlier promise to file suit against state and county health agencies for allegedly not doing enough to protect public health. A trial over the alleged Coronet pollution could be at least 18 to 24 months away, he said.