West Grove residents worried over losing medical monitoring program
WEST GROVE -- Residents living near the old City of Miami trash incinerator site are worried they could lose a medical monitoring program that was put in place to help detect and treat illnesses from exposure to toxic ash.
CBS4 spoke with residents speaking out against the city's latest motion to dismiss the program.
"My father used to work over there, he used to have to take off his clothes before coming in this house. Because the stench that came from him," Hollis Gaitor said.
Gaitor's dad was a sanitation worker at the former trash incinerator site. The City of Miami burned trash there for almost 50 years until a judge shut it down. It started operations in 1926 when that part of West Grove was a segregated area for Black families. His house is one of the few still standing from what used to be an area filled with shotgun homes initially built for Bahamian settlers.
Today the facility has been turned into a firefighter training facility, but for years, it burned debris, and that smoke flew all over the area, leaving ash behind.
"And just imagine being across that foul smell all day every day," Thaddeus Scott said.
Scott remembers growing up 4 blocks away. As a young child, he would get headaches, and he didn't know what caused it.
"A few nieces right and a sister-in-law who passed from breast cancer," he said.
Over the years many were diagnosed with illnesses that they say did not run in the family.
"5 people in this house, 5 different kinds of cancer and don't nobody know nothing?" Gaitor asked.
Gaitor and Scott are part of a class action lawsuit against the City of Miami. The suit is asking for compensation for personal injury, property damages, and medical monitoring, that last part may be the most critical.
"I don't have the necessary funds to see the people I need to see," Gaitor told CBS4.
In February the city attorney for Miami asked the Third District Court of Appeals to reverse its decision denying the city's motion to dismiss medical monitoring because it claims it is immune.
"Now if you just take a look at the news around the country, medical monitoring is clearly necessary, just in the past month we've seen the railroad spill in East Palestine, Ohio, we've seen the trash fire in Doral, we've seen the plastic fire in Kissimmee," Jason Clark, an attorney with Downs Law Group said.
Clark is co-counsel for the lawsuit.
"And again, they are trying to revictimize this community by getting rid of the one cause of action that is available to them, to prevent future harm, to allow them to see if they are still healthy and to allow them to get treatment for their medical conditions," he explained.
13 are named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, and some say they are fighting for hundreds of others who have been affected, particularly those who have already passed away.
"Especially those of us of African descent feel like we're drowning. In my lifetime, I'm 67 and in my lifetime, no one has heard this community's cries," Scott concluded.
CBS4 reached out to the City of Miami for comment and will update this story once we get a response.