Wilmington News Journal, Jeff Montgomery
Published July 16, 2005
A cloud has dogged DuPont sites making super-white titanium dioxide pigments and coatings in recent years, including the company's Edge Moor Plant near Wilmington and plants in Mississippi and Tennessee.
Each of the three DuPont plants combines titanium-bearing ilemite ore, chlorine and other compounds in unique ways that spin off pigments and coatings for paint, paper, food products and other materials.
They also spin off toxic dioxins and other hazardous wastes.
Since 2002, southern lawyers have been lining up hundreds of lawsuits accusing the company of failing to control releases of these dioxins and other pollutants at DuPont's Delisle, Miss., plant. The lawyers say the releases have contaminated the air, drinking water, nearby bays, fish and shellfish.
Allen M. Stewart, an attorney with Dallas-based Baron & Budd, is part of a four-firm group that represents more than 2,000 residents around the Mississippi plant who claim they were harmed by DuPont's pollution.
The first case, involving Glen Ray Strong, an avid fisherman with a rare cancer called multiple myeloma, is expected to go to trial in Jones County, Miss., on Aug. 17. Strong's suit claims that the company "fraudulently concealed and intentionally misrepresented information about their toxic chemicals ... with the full knowledge that their toxic chemicals could cause severe injury and even death."
Hundreds of lawsuits are in line to follow, because Mississippi law prohibits combining the claims into a single action.
The lawyers in those cases are also watching what is happening in Delaware.
"The lawyers in Mississippi stay in touch with us," said Alan Muller, who directs the environmental group Green Delaware. "They've expressed a willingness to share information. Obviously, the outcome of the litigation in Mississippi could have an effect on what happens in Delaware."
"We do keep our eye on what's going on at the other DuPont titanium dioxide plants," Stewart said, "and we're aware that there are permit issues in Delaware."
DuPont has questioned claims that its Mississippi plant has contaminated local drinking water or shellfish, a stand partially supported by a federal review of health risks.
The federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry issued a report earlier this year that found "no public health hazard" for drinking water around the DuPont Delisle plant.
"Our current finding for dioxins and groundwater contamination is that there's not an apparent public health threat," said James Durant, an agency health assessor based in Atlanta.
"We have recommended additional sampling in crabs," based on suspicions that crabs may tend to accumulate dioxins in their bodies more than some other types of aquatic life.
Stewart's legal group recently commissioned a study that found so much pollution in oysters near DuPont's Delisle wastewater discharge that eating even one a day could cause long-term health threats.
During parts of the year, the study concluded, dioxin levels in oyster samples could increase by a factor of 8.5 to 12.7, "to levels that would be of public health concern" and making the oysters unsafe to eat.
Chromium and nickel levels in the oysters also exceed levels for regular safe consumption, the study found, with current levels far exceeding those reported before DuPont began heavy production and wastewater discharges.
Meanwhile, state officials in Mississippi have opened their own probe.
The dioxin problem came to light in 2000, when the Environmental Protection Agency first required industries to report releases of dioxin and dioxin-like compounds as part of the annual Toxics Release Inventory. The new rule revealed that DuPont's plant in Delaware easily leads the nation in creating and releasing dioxins and related compounds.
"They don't want to talk about that," said John Kearney, who directs the group Environmentalists for Truth. "They just want to say there are no dioxins of concern. But that's not how other people look at this."
Kearney's group opposes a Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control approval for a DuPont cleanup plan that would put 500,000 tons of dioxin-tainted ore-processing leftovers under a permanent, 16-acre cover adjacent to the Delaware River.
Company officials in Delaware point out that Delisle processes ore in a different way to create products for paints and foods, rather than the paper coatings that make up the majority of products emerging from Edge Moor.
Much of Edge Moor's problem wastes are solid, while Delisle produces toxic wastewaters that are injected into deep wells.
Mississippi resident Brenda Songy said she considers DuPont's operation a serious problem. The company pumps liquid waste from TiO2 processing into wells up to 10,000 feet below the surface.
Similar concerns cropped up for a time in California, where residents worried about dioxin contamination from a paving compound made from titanium dioxide waste. The paving compound was used for suburban roads and some construction, including a schoolyard.
Company officials were able to settle fears about toxic residues after state health studies found little risk from the contamination. But the company recently agreed to pay $12 million to seal and repair prematurely aging streets where the compound was used.
Wilmington's Angela Jones said DuPont's pile has become a symbol for the region's industrial legacy. Northern Delaware once was labeled the "Chemical Capital of the World" because of the huge role DuPont and other chemical industries played in the state's economy.
Now, however, Wilmington and other areas are struggling to clean up, reclaim and redevelop areas contaminated by factory operations.
"They shouldn't have put it [in Edgemoor] in the first place. We already have enough problems here," said Jones. "I know they can afford to get rid of it. It's something they should just do, and stop fighting it."
