Chemical Assault on An African American Community: Community Group Wins $42.8 Million Settlement
The People vs. Montsanto: An Interview with Cassandra Roberts

Anniston, Alabama, November 27, 2001 (EJRC) - Millions of Americans are concerned about the threat of exposure to chemical and biological agents. The tragic events of September 11, 2001 (terrorists attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, and the plane crash in Pennsylvania) and the Anthrax scare have created heightened concern and worry from New York to Alaska. However, toxic chemical assaults are not new for many Americans who are forced to live adjacent to and often on the fence line with chemical industries that spew their poisons into the air, water, and ground. These residents experience a form of "toxic terror" 24 hours a day and seven days a week.

When chemical accidents occur, government and industry officials tell residents to "shelter in place." In reality, locked doors and closed windows do not block the chemical assault on the nearby communities. Health risks from chemical exposure disproportionately affect poor and people of color communities that are physically trapped in toxic "hot spots."

The Sweet Valley/Cobb Town neighborhood in Anniston, Alabama typifies this chemical assault on poor communities. The neighborhood is a largely black and low-income community that has been poisoned by Solutia, Inc., a spin-off company of the giant Monsanto chemical company. Community residents are fighting back. The Sweet Valley/Cobb Town neighborhood residents organized themselves into a task force and filed a class action lawsuit against Monsanto for contaminating their community with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Monsanto manufactured PCBs from 1927 thru 1972 for use as insulation in electrical equipment including transformers. The EPA banned PCB production in the late 1970s amid questions of health risks.

In April 2001, a group of 1,500 Sweet Valley/Cobb Town plaintiffs reached a $42.8 million out-of-court settlement with Monsanto in the federal District Court of the Northern District of Alabama. There is little doubt that the community was determined to get justice in their fight against Monsanto.

Cassandra Roberts, a 44 year old African American community resident, summed up their struggle and environmental justice victory against Monsanto: "No amount of money can repair the damage caused by exposure of generations to toxic chemicals, but we are happy to get some compensation."

Environmental Justice Resource Center staff attorney Ruth Neal conducted an in-depth telephone interview with Ms. Roberts. The interview attempts to capture a view from a resident who lives on the front line of a chemical assault. The interview was conducted on July 8, 2001.

Q. Would you describe your community and what it was like to live there.

Roberts: I have lived in the Sweet Valley/Cobb Town neighborhood for 44 years, practically all of my life. This community was always filled with plenty of houses, open space, and gardens. My father raised fruit trees. This was a real neighborhood where people cared about each other. Everybody knew each other. Over the years, the community started to deteriorate. People started moving out. The community has a real bad flood problem. The houses started to deteriorate because the community was such a bad flood area. We didn't know why. People just started moving out. We still haven't figured out why. In the area where the contamination was coming in, I know now that's the reason why. The majority of the houses flooded. My house didn't. My father built the house that I lived in higher than the other houses in the area. Only a few of the houses didn't flood. Sometimes people couldn't go out of their houses for two or three days until the water and mud went down. Then we'd all get together in the community and help clean the mud out of the houses when the water went down.

Q. What is the neighborhood like now?

Roberts: It is not a neighborhood anymore, because Monsanto bought the community out. They bought all of the property in the area. People are scattered. Our neighborhood is dead. Toxic contamination killed my community.

Q. What racial or ethnic group made up the majority of the residents in your community?

Roberts: My community is mostly African American. The neighborhood that I lived in was one of the first communities contaminated. It's the only community that Monsanto acknowledged was contaminated.

Q. Do you think race had anything to do with the way your neighborhood was treated by Monsanto?

Roberts: I've done some research on the history of Monsanto in the area. Monsanto moved in while my parents were still there. One of the elderly people in the neighborhood spoke about the community when the company first moved in. She spoke about how her father and grandfather cleaned out the property for Monsanto to move in. They used to play softball on the property where Monsanto is now. It is a racial issue. There is a white community that sits right behind Monsanto, a poor white community. Monsanto bought some of the white families out when I was a little child. They got the whites out early. This place is dangerous. I remember hearing explosions. The area also smelled bad, like rotten eggs. It was a shame when we'd have company over to our house. People would ask, " what's that smell?" The smell was worse for us because we were closest to it.

Q. What other industries are located in your community?

Roberts: We have Monsanto and Alabama Power. Anniston is a foundry community. The only kind of company that they had in the area for years was a foundry company.

Q. What kind of impact did these industries have on your community?

Roberts: We have one company called Union Foundry that has been here a long time. EPA came into the community and found them in violation. They had to pay fines big time and people are still complaining. It's about two miles from my community. What they do is let off smut. It's a pipe shop, and they let out smut into the community where the people's houses and cars are being damaged. That's the only other contamination that I know of in the area. We do have some lead, but we don't know where the lead is coming from. I know from my research that one company in the area uses containers that have lead in them. The lead may also be coming from the pipe shop, but we don't know where the lead is coming from. The lead exposure has just come out. EPA started coming to the community about two years ago. They just started testing the children. In Anniston they never tested the children. There is supposed to be a law requiring the children to be tested by the Health Department. But the kids in Anniston were never tested before until about three months ago when EPA went to the Department of Health and required them to do testing.

Q. What are the major environmental problems that your community faced?

Roberts: You would have to live here to know. When it rains, it floods. Monsanto sits across the street. When it rains the landfills would flood and all the water would come into our community and we would have to get out in the yard and clean out all the debris. We would have paper and cans. We had everybody's trash. Sometimes they'd have to get boats to get people out of their houses.

Q. How did you first learn about the chemical contamination problem?

Roberts: I had gotten married and moved from the area. I owned property near Monsanto that my mother had given my husband and me as a wedding present. Monsanto had to write us letters. The letter asked our permission to test our property for PCBs, and they said that they would give us the results. When the testing was completed they called a meeting at one of the local community churches. When they called this meeting they said that it was a small amount of PCBs in the area and that's when they offered a buyout. It was our option to take the buyout or stay in the community. We were told that it was just a small amount of contamination. I was being curious and I asked the plant manager how much PCB was found on my property and they wouldn't tell me. I was told that I had to call a telephone number to get the information. But when I called the number, I still couldn't get any information. It was like a bell went off in my head. I thought that something was not right about this. It was around October that they brought the information in to us and it was around Christmas time that people started to sell their property. I tried to express to them not to sell their property, but a lot of people needed the money and they wanted to get out of the area.

Q. Do you know of residents with health problems associated with the chemical contamination?

Roberts: My father was exposed to a lot of contaminants because he built houses in the area. After several community health surveys, we learned that there were a lot of kidney failures. We've had five kidney transplants in the past five years. We've also had a lot of liver disease and cancer. One of our young children was diagnosed with leukemia when she was 13 and died when she was 16. We had another child that was also diagnosed with leukemia. All sorts of diseases were reported on the health survey. Kidney disease was particularly bad. We had a lot of heart attacks too. We don't know all of the health impacts of PCBs, but we do know that this stuff is not making us any healthier.

Q. Why did you decide to fight Monsanto?

Roberts: My mind was never on money and I have never been the type to protest or demonstrate. I pretty much attended to my own business. But after seeing the danger that my mother was in because she was still living there, I felt like I had to fight it. I felt like I had to fight it because the company was too bold about it. I felt that Monsanto was not being honest with the people. After people started selling houses, the company began tearing down houses. The Southern Organizing Committee (SOC) came in. We had no idea what PCBs would do to you. When Monsanto had its meeting they didn't tell us about the effects of PCBs. When SOC came in they brought brochures. They brought a scientist and lawyers to explain what PCBs could cause. That's when I felt that I had to fight them, because of what they were offering people for their homes. I wanted my mother to move, but she is over 60 years old and was on a fixed income. She couldn't move without a mortgage. I knew that she couldn't stay there because of the contamination and the house was falling apart. The house had been damaged, and by that time it was well publicized that the community was contaminated and she couldn't get money to repair it. My main reason was to get her out of harms way.

Before SOC came in I didn't know anything about environmental issues or task forces. But, when SOC came in they told us what we needed to do. And that's what we did. We organized the night that they came in and brought all the lawyers. We had about 10 community people there to talk to them and find out about the PCBs. We organized that night. The people at this meeting became our official board.

Q. What made you think that you could go up against a big multinational corporation like Monsanto and win?

Roberts: I didn't know that we could win. We certainly did not pick this fight with Monsanto to lose. I just felt like I could make them move my mother and others like her. When we started dealing with lawyers I learned that we could file a lawsuit and possibly win some money. I was mainly trying to get my mother and other people out of the community to keep them from continuing to be exposed. We finally got my mother and others out of the area and Monsanto ended up giving them more money than those who had already moved. They are moving them into temporary housing for two or three years until they find the houses that they want. They paid all of their bills. They didn't have to pay anything. Before the lawsuit, Monsanto was calling my mother's house everyday asking if we wanted to sell. My mother was too old to deal with this. I had to do something. I was the only one here. It fell on my shoulders. Who wouldn't fight a company to save one's mother?

Q. Do you feel that environmental racism is present in Anniston?

Roberts: Oh, yes! Environmental racism occurs when a company comes in, purchases property in your community and no one lets you know what they are about. In most black communities that's what they do. They walk in and buy the property and start building, with the black community never knowing. I used to say that it had to do with the black community not keeping up with what's going on in the community. But how are you supposed to know when somebody purchases property? If a company comes into the community and purchases property the city or the company should be responsible for letting you know. They may put it in the newspaper, but that's not letting us know. Also, property is cheaper in the black community. I can guarantee you that. Racism lowers our property values. Racism lessens our home investment. That's the reason that they head for us. That's the reason that Monsanto moved in. They will never find property cheaper, and in Alabama the property taxes are so cheap. In white communities, if they are even halfway middle class, they always know when companies are coming into their community. These companies dump on us because we are black people.

Q. Some people say that Monsanto brought needed jobs into the community. What is your opinion on that?

Roberts: At one time, Monsanto had black workers. But after a reorganization, the company got rid of the majority of the blacks. They reorganized and brought in new people. The only thing that they offered them was a little stock. Everyone who worked there has stock in the business. When these employees were fired by Monsanto, they had the option of selling the stock back to Monsanto or keeping it. I know one man now who has his. He didn't sell his stock. But the majority of the blacks who were fired by Monsanto sold their stock. They had to live.

Q. What was the outcome of your lawsuit?

Roberts: We went to trial for two weeks in Federal Court. After two weeks, Monsanto decided to throw in the towel. We had tried to negotiate with them for three months prior to trial, but they refused. The judge ordered them to settle, but they refused. They settled after two weeks of testimony, expert testimony, because we only had one community person that had a chance to testify. It was a holiday weekend and I was due to testify on that Monday. They settled on the Saturday before I was scheduled to give my testimony. The community had picked five people to work on the settlement for the community. We also had very good lawyers who along with the committee kept the community abreast of developments with the litigation and settlement process.

Q. What was your first reaction to the settlement?

Roberts: I am going to be very honest with you. On this settlement, I wish that we had not settled. I wanted to take the case to a jury. One thing that I had to consider was the importance of getting the older people out of the community. It wasn't just my decision to settle. Everything was taken back to the community for a decision to be made on the settlement. The lawyers called a community meeting of all the clients that they had before anything could be approved. If it were up to me we would not have settled.

Q. How do you feel about the buyout and relocation?

Roberts: I think that that buyout and relocation part was the best thing that they did. As far as the settlement, they couldn't have given us enough money. I would have liked to see more done for the community. Nobody expected we could have gotten this far. Our win is a victory for environmental justice.