9 ms·

OUC coal plants linked to east Orange County cancer spike, lawsuit claims

187 points by wonderwonder 8y ago

ben_w 8y ago
I can’t read this story because of geoblocking. How can a coal company possibly expose anyone to Polonium, half-life of 138 days and not produced by any chemical process?
- adrianN 8y ago
  Coal contains all kinds of things besides carbon.
- Johnny555 8y ago
  Po-210 is in the decay chain of U-238: https://nucleonica.com/polonium210.aspx https://nucleonica.com/polonium210.aspx it is constantly being produced in nature from the decay of uranium-238 – the main component of uranium in the earth. Due to this “equilibrium”, the concentration of Po-210 in nature is approximately 75 µg of Po-210 for every ton of uranium-238 It's a commonly known byproduct from burning coal, even though it's very rare, the sheer volume of coal burnt means that a lot of it accumulates. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016236118314467 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001623611... http://www.shl.uiowa.edu/news/polonium.xml http://www.shl.uiowa.edu/news/polonium.xml https://www.chromatographytoday.com/news/gc-mdgc/32/breaking-news/coal-burning-power-plants-affect-po210-in-marine-life/15363 https://www.chromatographytoday.com/news/gc-mdgc/32/breaking...
  - ben_w 8y ago
    Ok, those PPMs are surprisingly high. 1.5 million tonnes per year, 100ppm U-238 -> 150 tonnes U-238/year, 75μg Po/tonne U -> 11,500μg Po/plant-year, LD-50 human adult < 1μg
    - Turbots 8y ago
      One gram of 210Po could in theory poison 20 million people of whom 10 million would die... let that sink in :-/
  - ams6110 8y ago
    How expensive/complicated would it be to process the mined coal to remove the uranium. That element is significantly heavier than carbon so chemically and/or physically it should be possible. Of course, better to just stop burning coal altogether.
    - cjslep 8y ago
      If you chemically try to, you have to avoid combusting the coal or putting it into a form that isn't combustible or through a process that lowers its potential chemical energy in the powerplant. That leaves physically, which is really tough considering that it would probably require a chemical transformation to be able to run it through a centrifuge (like uranium gas in uranium centrifuges) in order to do the separation, and centrifuges can require nontrivial amounts of power to run, so no free win here either. On top of all that, now an output is a more-concentrated radioactive material (a lump of uranium), and suddenly whoever is doing this removal has quite a number of new NRC and OSHA regulations to follow, which are known to not be economically cheap. So it's no wonder businesses default to "just burn it, let the public suffer the externality costs". Edit: To be fair, a variant of this this has been attempted before: see the gasification of coal and the "clean coal" movement. It failed.
      - rbanffy 8y ago
        Can't you do it to the ashes? I'd assume that most of the mass is gone by then, so whatever processing needs to be done could be cheaper. If you compress your radioactive ash into bricks and take them to my currently fictional interesting materials recovery facility, I may even pay you for the trouble.
- thereisnospork 8y ago
  Polonium is commonly found as a (v. minor) impurity in uranium, formed via natural nuclear decay. As coal plants burn massive amounts of coal, something on the order of 1.5 million tonnes per plant per year, even a small uranium impurity itself containing only a small amount of polonium can result in significant environmental release. Hence the oft-quipped 'coal plants release more radiation than nuclear plants' line.
- hu3 8y ago
  Append URL after outline.com to avoid geoblocking and clean content: https://outline.com/https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-ne-ouc-coal-class-action-suit-20181218-story.html https://outline.com/https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-...
tempay 8y ago
For those in the EU: http://archive.is/GfC2X http://archive.is/GfC2X
ajuc 8y ago
It is incredibly ironic that people protesting nuclear powerplants increase their exposure to radiactivity :)
- rcMgD2BwE72F 8y ago
  How many coal power plants have been built because of the closure of nuclear power plants?
  - ajuc 8y ago
    Many: http://airclim.org/acidnews/germany-still-constructing-new-coal-power-stations http://airclim.org/acidnews/germany-still-constructing-new-c... https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-germany-nuclear/german-government-wants-nuclear-exit-by-2022-at-latest-idUKTRE74Q2P120110530 https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-germany-nuclear/german-gov...
  - belorn 8y ago
    A while back there was a story on HN that link to a page that listed every country and how much of their energy consumption get created from different sources. One very noticeable aspect is that almost every country create their energy through either coal or nuclear power, with all other usually representing a singular digit. If it has 20% coal, then around 70% will be nuclear. If its 70% coal, 20% nuclear. Nothing is more clear cut when comparing France and Germany next to each other.
    - mikeash 8y ago
      How recent were those numbers? The US is currently around 30% coal, 20% nuclear (so only about 50% combined), 32% gas, and almost all of the rest is renewables of various sorts. Germany is 35% coal, 12% nuclear, 13% gas, 35% renewables. France is 72% nuclear, 12% hydro, 8% coal and gas. I'm having trouble finding the exact breakdown of coal and gas for France, but it looks like gas dominates.
      - rypskar 8y ago
pjc50 8y ago
I'm fairly sure EU powerplants have been required to do ash capture (usually electrostatic) in addition to acid rain mitigation measures for some time, to avoid this kind of thing.
jillesvangurp 8y ago
I live in a former east german neighborhood in Berlin. When I moved here 10 years ago, lots of apartments were still coal heated. Buildings had lots of dirt on them and you could smell it in the winter. Burning coal creates lots of smelly smog. That's also a huge problem in places like China. Smog kills people by the millions. It's a slow killer that's why nobody gives a shit. Average lifespan decreases measurably by many years in areas with heavy smog. Living next to a busy street or coal plant is not good for your health. That's why diesel, coal, etc. need to get banned in a hurry. Suing coal plants for killing their neighborhoods is just as logical going after tobacco companies. It will basically kill that industry in no time. Good riddance; the sooner the better. Meanwhile, make them pay for the damage they do. Incentivize them to clean up their act or pull the plug on their operations.
- skocznymroczny 8y ago
  What do you propose as replacement for coal? Both for electricity and heating up homes?
  - makosdv 8y ago
    Nuclear
  - jillesvangurp 8y ago
    Clean energy + batteries seem to be eating that up rapidly in places where they invest in that kind of thing. Simply ramp up investments there and this problem can be solved. Even the US is doing this. Meanwhile, force remaining plants to install filters and fine them appropriately for killing their neighbors every month they don't do this. Of course, there's no such thing as cheap coal when you factor that in. Most of this stuff is already unsustainable from an economic point of view. That's why plants are shutting down, plans for new ones are getting shelved, etc. Coal without subsidies and government protection, is not going to last long.
    - wonderwonder 8y ago
      I agree with you, but interesting part about this suit is that it does not claim that contaminants are being emitted via the smoke. There are essentially large hills of radioactive coal ash just sitting on the site, the residue from the burned coal. They are just sitting in the open and the wind is blowing it into the surrounding area.
cmrdporcupine 8y ago
In Ontario we closed every single one of our coal plants over a decade ago and it is a night and day improvement in air quality. Our power generation is mostly nuclear and hydroelectric, with about 5-10% filled in by a combination of natural gas and wind generation. I drive around in an electric car which is fueled almost entirely by non-CO2 emitting energy. That feels good. A global ban on all coal energy would be a modest but important improvement on many fronts, even if it means a switch to natural gas.
- merpnderp 8y ago
  Too late. To get this natural gas would require fracking, and much of the world now believes their environment will be destroyed if they frak. So we end up with developing nations burning dirty coal when switching to nat-gas would be cheaper and 99% cleaner.
  - ryanmercer 8y ago
    >believes their environment will be destroyed if they frak. Because there are valid reasons to believe so based on the way some fracking operations have been run. Contaminated ground water (look at Wyoming) and potentially even seismic related risk (a 5.6M earthquake in Oklahoma may have been directly caused by fracking). Hydraulic fracturing can also result in its own air pollution, noise pollution etc. Sure, it can probably be done safely but a single mistake could have wide-reaching and long-lasting implications. Instead of replacing one bad thing with another risky thing we need to get less spooked by modern nuclear reactors,and renewables, until (if ever) we figure out fusion.
    - njarboe 8y ago
      "directly caused by fracking" Those big earthquakes in Oklahoma were caused by waste water injection wells so "indirectly caused by hydrocarbon extraction" (fracking and oil well waste water being injected) would be closer to the truth.
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    I really doubt developing nations are avoiding using cheap natural gas because of fracking concerns.
mrfusion 8y ago
I wonder why they need those coal plants. There’s an enormous looking nuclear plant on the outskirts of Orlando.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- wonderwonder 8y ago
  That's actually this plant, a coal and natural gas plant.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    It should be noted that the iconic hyperboloid nuclear cooling towers are actually unrelated to nuclear power. Many nuclear plants use them, but many do not, and many non-nuclear plants also use them.
    - ams6110 8y ago
      The cooling towers are used to cool waste water before discharging back to rivers/lakes, if I am not mistaken. Too bad there's not a practical way to put that heat to better use.
      - mikeash 8y ago
        Right. Nuclear plants turn heat into electricity the same way coal plants do, they just generate the heat differently, so the second stage of the process looks similar for both. Some plants are built where there's enough water flow (or enough lack of concern over the environmental problems) that the towers aren't needed.
        village-idiot 8y ago
        For a while the Russians had a designed plant that produced electricity, steam heat for nearby homes, and desalinated water with what energy was left. Apparently the design was abandoned, which is kind of a shame.
brudgers 8y ago
OUC exists for the benefit the City of Orlando's residents. Stanton was built where it was built to externalize it's pollution keeping utility rates for its citizen customers low and avoiding property value impacts to the city. It was deemed acceptable to externalize the impact on the unincorporated community of Bithlo. Since Stanton was built, the area within city limits around the old OUC Ivanhoe Plant has significantly gentrified. Orange County began promoting development in the area in the 1980's. It widened Lake Underhill Road and extended Alafaya Trail south of SR50 toward FL528 (the Bee Line). Stanton was part of the development plan because OUC/Orlando chipped in on the infrastructure costs. The lawsuit's 30,000 potentially affected people are not among OUC's 200k power customers. They live outside Orlando's city limits in Orange County. Their power is at market rate from Duke Energy. All those people live out near Stanton by design. The first of those developments, Huckleberry, was affordable and convenient because the road network was planned for further development, e.g. the 408. Coal firing Stanton was always a bit of boondoggle. Orlando is a long way from any mineable coal face. People knew its location would exhaust into both of Florida's major water sheds. The site sits in the south end of the St. John's watershed and just north of the Florida Everglades headwaters in Deseret Ranch south of the Bee Line.
mikeash 8y ago
Good. It's outrageous that people are allowed to dump waste on other people and we just act like it's perfectly normal. It's even more outrageous that the people who claim to be the most concerned with individual rights and basic freedoms don't see pollution for the massive violation of property and personal rights that it obviously is.
- njarboe 8y ago
  I would say that almost all of "them" are concerned with pollution, but people with that view are not the ones you hear about. They would just sound like reasonable people then. It wouldn't set off peoples' outrage (like you just stated) button and get them to click on the article taking about "them".
dopamean 8y ago
Holy shit. I lived in Eastwood for 3 years. My brother was born and raised in that neighborhood and still lives there. My father died of pancreatic cancer. He was one of the first homes bought and built on his street when Eastwood was first being built. His wife suffered from ovarian cancer at one point. I dont know what to say. Edit: My wife went to high school in Avalon Park for 4 years and lived in that neighborhood for most of her life as well. She also had teenage osteo sarcoma.
bearjaws 8y ago
I lived in Avalon Park and Stoney Brook for 3 years, got diagnosed with Non-Seminoma Testicular Cancer (one of the rarer ones) 3 years ago. I'm conflicted on whether this is responsible or not, no family history of Testicular Cancer. I'm not sure if I should join this class action lawsuit, it seems unlikely to go anywhere since proving that cancer was caused by XYZ is difficult.
- brudgers 8y ago
  I hope you have a quick and full recovery.
  - bearjaws 8y ago
    It was an arduous process, 12 weeks of chemotherapy due to it spreading to 2 lymphnodes. But 3 years later I am still cancer free!
- wtvanhest 8y ago
  IMO, you should join the class and let the lawyers argue over who is responsible. Maybe you get something, maybe you get nothing, but it is really, really important to have lawyers hold large companies financially responsible for externalities when possible. Not really important for the comment, but I lived near UCF (05 grad), but obviously spent a lot of time in Avalon park.
- wonderwonder 8y ago
  I'm sorry that happened. Read the legal complaint, and then see if that resolves things for you as to whether or not to get involved, claims are pretty egregious. Note: I am neither an attorney or plaintiff in this case, but I used to live there and my child was born there. The whole thing is pretty scary. https://www.cohenmilstein.com/sites/default/files/Final%20Complaint.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2dyCoO82RZ0btZSdKpaLNGIVsoXexoGXXChE70UJoz5iyNp0YHL_a1s7o https://www.cohenmilstein.com/sites/default/files/Final%20Co...
wonderwonder 8y ago
The actual legal complaint: https://myeclerk.myorangeclerk.com/CaseDetails?caseId=10816988&caseIdEnc=cN7eLZFEyFcmazNah%2BT9pVndLKRaPwmr13rBLDwPxjJuFfboWcif1co2veb%2B%2FBq6MK6Rj%2FhqtJQteqGw0lbyUlPDugWIwj%2FSsFPqszeaYfs%3D&fbclid=IwAR0c2SXeIu55gPSrPTQGiNdQXYrked1enDKT9RB9Vkw8Kj2MSeyE3qj_gco https://myeclerk.myorangeclerk.com/CaseDetails?caseId=108169...
vharuck 8y ago
Forgive me if I missed it, but what's the evidence the plant's operations actually caused cancer cases? I work for a state cancer registry, and in my experience, reports of potential cancer clusters are rarely shown true. Going by a presentation and the audience's reactions at this year's NAACCR conference, most registries have similar experiences. That's not to say the claims are disproven, but a cancer diagnosis is a rare event, and childhood cancer is an order of magnitude rarer. This is one of those times where "small and biased sample" is a valid criticism.
- wonderwonder 8y ago
  The article is not great. The actual lawsuit is more informative. At its heart its a property damage lawsuit rather than personal injury / death. It claims to have physical proof that the area is contaminated with polonium and other carcinogens far in excess of allowable levels. Specifics in regards to cancer levels are also in the lawsuit. Link to the legal filing is in this thread.

187 points by wonderwonder 8y ago

I can’t read this story because of geoblocking. How can a coal company possibly expose anyone to Polonium, half-life of 138 days and not produced by any chemical process?

adrianN 8y ago
Coal contains all kinds of things besides carbon.
Johnny555 8y ago
Po-210 is in the decay chain of U-238: https://nucleonica.com/polonium210.aspx https://nucleonica.com/polonium210.aspx it is constantly being produced in nature from the decay of uranium-238 – the main component of uranium in the earth. Due to this “equilibrium”, the concentration of Po-210 in nature is approximately 75 µg of Po-210 for every ton of uranium-238 It's a commonly known byproduct from burning coal, even though it's very rare, the sheer volume of coal burnt means that a lot of it accumulates. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016236118314467 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001623611... http://www.shl.uiowa.edu/news/polonium.xml http://www.shl.uiowa.edu/news/polonium.xml https://www.chromatographytoday.com/news/gc-mdgc/32/breaking-news/coal-burning-power-plants-affect-po210-in-marine-life/15363 https://www.chromatographytoday.com/news/gc-mdgc/32/breaking...
- ben_w 8y ago
  Ok, those PPMs are surprisingly high. 1.5 million tonnes per year, 100ppm U-238 -> 150 tonnes U-238/year, 75μg Po/tonne U -> 11,500μg Po/plant-year, LD-50 human adult < 1μg
  - Turbots 8y ago
    One gram of 210Po could in theory poison 20 million people of whom 10 million would die... let that sink in :-/
- ams6110 8y ago
  How expensive/complicated would it be to process the mined coal to remove the uranium. That element is significantly heavier than carbon so chemically and/or physically it should be possible. Of course, better to just stop burning coal altogether.
  - cjslep 8y ago
    If you chemically try to, you have to avoid combusting the coal or putting it into a form that isn't combustible or through a process that lowers its potential chemical energy in the powerplant. That leaves physically, which is really tough considering that it would probably require a chemical transformation to be able to run it through a centrifuge (like uranium gas in uranium centrifuges) in order to do the separation, and centrifuges can require nontrivial amounts of power to run, so no free win here either. On top of all that, now an output is a more-concentrated radioactive material (a lump of uranium), and suddenly whoever is doing this removal has quite a number of new NRC and OSHA regulations to follow, which are known to not be economically cheap. So it's no wonder businesses default to "just burn it, let the public suffer the externality costs". Edit: To be fair, a variant of this this has been attempted before: see the gasification of coal and the "clean coal" movement. It failed.
    - rbanffy 8y ago
      Can't you do it to the ashes? I'd assume that most of the mass is gone by then, so whatever processing needs to be done could be cheaper. If you compress your radioactive ash into bricks and take them to my currently fictional interesting materials recovery facility, I may even pay you for the trouble.
thereisnospork 8y ago
Polonium is commonly found as a (v. minor) impurity in uranium, formed via natural nuclear decay. As coal plants burn massive amounts of coal, something on the order of 1.5 million tonnes per plant per year, even a small uranium impurity itself containing only a small amount of polonium can result in significant environmental release. Hence the oft-quipped 'coal plants release more radiation than nuclear plants' line.
hu3 8y ago
Append URL after outline.com to avoid geoblocking and clean content: https://outline.com/https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-ne-ouc-coal-class-action-suit-20181218-story.html https://outline.com/https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-...

tempay 8y ago

For those in the EU: http://archive.is/GfC2X http://archive.is/GfC2X

ajuc 8y ago

It is incredibly ironic that people protesting nuclear powerplants increase their exposure to radiactivity :)

rcMgD2BwE72F 8y ago
How many coal power plants have been built because of the closure of nuclear power plants?
- ajuc 8y ago
  Many: http://airclim.org/acidnews/germany-still-constructing-new-coal-power-stations http://airclim.org/acidnews/germany-still-constructing-new-c... https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-germany-nuclear/german-government-wants-nuclear-exit-by-2022-at-latest-idUKTRE74Q2P120110530 https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-germany-nuclear/german-gov...
- belorn 8y ago
  A while back there was a story on HN that link to a page that listed every country and how much of their energy consumption get created from different sources. One very noticeable aspect is that almost every country create their energy through either coal or nuclear power, with all other usually representing a singular digit. If it has 20% coal, then around 70% will be nuclear. If its 70% coal, 20% nuclear. Nothing is more clear cut when comparing France and Germany next to each other.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    How recent were those numbers? The US is currently around 30% coal, 20% nuclear (so only about 50% combined), 32% gas, and almost all of the rest is renewables of various sorts. Germany is 35% coal, 12% nuclear, 13% gas, 35% renewables. France is 72% nuclear, 12% hydro, 8% coal and gas. I'm having trouble finding the exact breakdown of coal and gas for France, but it looks like gas dominates.
    - rypskar 8y ago

pjc50 8y ago

I'm fairly sure EU powerplants have been required to do ash capture (usually electrostatic) in addition to acid rain mitigation measures for some time, to avoid this kind of thing.

jillesvangurp 8y ago

I live in a former east german neighborhood in Berlin. When I moved here 10 years ago, lots of apartments were still coal heated. Buildings had lots of dirt on them and you could smell it in the winter. Burning coal creates lots of smelly smog. That's also a huge problem in places like China. Smog kills people by the millions. It's a slow killer that's why nobody gives a shit. Average lifespan decreases measurably by many years in areas with heavy smog. Living next to a busy street or coal plant is not good for your health. That's why diesel, coal, etc. need to get banned in a hurry. Suing coal plants for killing their neighborhoods is just as logical going after tobacco companies. It will basically kill that industry in no time. Good riddance; the sooner the better. Meanwhile, make them pay for the damage they do. Incentivize them to clean up their act or pull the plug on their operations.

skocznymroczny 8y ago
What do you propose as replacement for coal? Both for electricity and heating up homes?
- makosdv 8y ago
  Nuclear
- jillesvangurp 8y ago
  Clean energy + batteries seem to be eating that up rapidly in places where they invest in that kind of thing. Simply ramp up investments there and this problem can be solved. Even the US is doing this. Meanwhile, force remaining plants to install filters and fine them appropriately for killing their neighbors every month they don't do this. Of course, there's no such thing as cheap coal when you factor that in. Most of this stuff is already unsustainable from an economic point of view. That's why plants are shutting down, plans for new ones are getting shelved, etc. Coal without subsidies and government protection, is not going to last long.
  - wonderwonder 8y ago
    I agree with you, but interesting part about this suit is that it does not claim that contaminants are being emitted via the smoke. There are essentially large hills of radioactive coal ash just sitting on the site, the residue from the burned coal. They are just sitting in the open and the wind is blowing it into the surrounding area.

cmrdporcupine 8y ago

In Ontario we closed every single one of our coal plants over a decade ago and it is a night and day improvement in air quality. Our power generation is mostly nuclear and hydroelectric, with about 5-10% filled in by a combination of natural gas and wind generation. I drive around in an electric car which is fueled almost entirely by non-CO2 emitting energy. That feels good. A global ban on all coal energy would be a modest but important improvement on many fronts, even if it means a switch to natural gas.

merpnderp 8y ago
Too late. To get this natural gas would require fracking, and much of the world now believes their environment will be destroyed if they frak. So we end up with developing nations burning dirty coal when switching to nat-gas would be cheaper and 99% cleaner.
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  >believes their environment will be destroyed if they frak. Because there are valid reasons to believe so based on the way some fracking operations have been run. Contaminated ground water (look at Wyoming) and potentially even seismic related risk (a 5.6M earthquake in Oklahoma may have been directly caused by fracking). Hydraulic fracturing can also result in its own air pollution, noise pollution etc. Sure, it can probably be done safely but a single mistake could have wide-reaching and long-lasting implications. Instead of replacing one bad thing with another risky thing we need to get less spooked by modern nuclear reactors,and renewables, until (if ever) we figure out fusion.
  - njarboe 8y ago
    "directly caused by fracking" Those big earthquakes in Oklahoma were caused by waste water injection wells so "indirectly caused by hydrocarbon extraction" (fracking and oil well waste water being injected) would be closer to the truth.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  I really doubt developing nations are avoiding using cheap natural gas because of fracking concerns.

mrfusion 8y ago

I wonder why they need those coal plants. There’s an enormous looking nuclear plant on the outskirts of Orlando.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
wonderwonder 8y ago
That's actually this plant, a coal and natural gas plant.
- mikeash 8y ago
  It should be noted that the iconic hyperboloid nuclear cooling towers are actually unrelated to nuclear power. Many nuclear plants use them, but many do not, and many non-nuclear plants also use them.
  - ams6110 8y ago
    The cooling towers are used to cool waste water before discharging back to rivers/lakes, if I am not mistaken. Too bad there's not a practical way to put that heat to better use.
    - mikeash 8y ago
      Right. Nuclear plants turn heat into electricity the same way coal plants do, they just generate the heat differently, so the second stage of the process looks similar for both. Some plants are built where there's enough water flow (or enough lack of concern over the environmental problems) that the towers aren't needed.
      - village-idiot 8y ago
        For a while the Russians had a designed plant that produced electricity, steam heat for nearby homes, and desalinated water with what energy was left. Apparently the design was abandoned, which is kind of a shame.

brudgers 8y ago

OUC exists for the benefit the City of Orlando's residents. Stanton was built where it was built to externalize it's pollution keeping utility rates for its citizen customers low and avoiding property value impacts to the city. It was deemed acceptable to externalize the impact on the unincorporated community of Bithlo. Since Stanton was built, the area within city limits around the old OUC Ivanhoe Plant has significantly gentrified. Orange County began promoting development in the area in the 1980's. It widened Lake Underhill Road and extended Alafaya Trail south of SR50 toward FL528 (the Bee Line). Stanton was part of the development plan because OUC/Orlando chipped in on the infrastructure costs. The lawsuit's 30,000 potentially affected people are not among OUC's 200k power customers. They live outside Orlando's city limits in Orange County. Their power is at market rate from Duke Energy. All those people live out near Stanton by design. The first of those developments, Huckleberry, was affordable and convenient because the road network was planned for further development, e.g. the 408. Coal firing Stanton was always a bit of boondoggle. Orlando is a long way from any mineable coal face. People knew its location would exhaust into both of Florida's major water sheds. The site sits in the south end of the St. John's watershed and just north of the Florida Everglades headwaters in Deseret Ranch south of the Bee Line.

mikeash 8y ago

Good. It's outrageous that people are allowed to dump waste on other people and we just act like it's perfectly normal. It's even more outrageous that the people who claim to be the most concerned with individual rights and basic freedoms don't see pollution for the massive violation of property and personal rights that it obviously is.

njarboe 8y ago
I would say that almost all of "them" are concerned with pollution, but people with that view are not the ones you hear about. They would just sound like reasonable people then. It wouldn't set off peoples' outrage (like you just stated) button and get them to click on the article taking about "them".

dopamean 8y ago

Holy shit. I lived in Eastwood for 3 years. My brother was born and raised in that neighborhood and still lives there. My father died of pancreatic cancer. He was one of the first homes bought and built on his street when Eastwood was first being built. His wife suffered from ovarian cancer at one point. I dont know what to say. Edit: My wife went to high school in Avalon Park for 4 years and lived in that neighborhood for most of her life as well. She also had teenage osteo sarcoma.

bearjaws 8y ago

I lived in Avalon Park and Stoney Brook for 3 years, got diagnosed with Non-Seminoma Testicular Cancer (one of the rarer ones) 3 years ago. I'm conflicted on whether this is responsible or not, no family history of Testicular Cancer. I'm not sure if I should join this class action lawsuit, it seems unlikely to go anywhere since proving that cancer was caused by XYZ is difficult.

brudgers 8y ago
I hope you have a quick and full recovery.
- bearjaws 8y ago
  It was an arduous process, 12 weeks of chemotherapy due to it spreading to 2 lymphnodes. But 3 years later I am still cancer free!
wtvanhest 8y ago
IMO, you should join the class and let the lawyers argue over who is responsible. Maybe you get something, maybe you get nothing, but it is really, really important to have lawyers hold large companies financially responsible for externalities when possible. Not really important for the comment, but I lived near UCF (05 grad), but obviously spent a lot of time in Avalon park.
wonderwonder 8y ago
I'm sorry that happened. Read the legal complaint, and then see if that resolves things for you as to whether or not to get involved, claims are pretty egregious. Note: I am neither an attorney or plaintiff in this case, but I used to live there and my child was born there. The whole thing is pretty scary. https://www.cohenmilstein.com/sites/default/files/Final%20Complaint.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2dyCoO82RZ0btZSdKpaLNGIVsoXexoGXXChE70UJoz5iyNp0YHL_a1s7o https://www.cohenmilstein.com/sites/default/files/Final%20Co...

wonderwonder 8y ago

The actual legal complaint: https://myeclerk.myorangeclerk.com/CaseDetails?caseId=10816988&caseIdEnc=cN7eLZFEyFcmazNah%2BT9pVndLKRaPwmr13rBLDwPxjJuFfboWcif1co2veb%2B%2FBq6MK6Rj%2FhqtJQteqGw0lbyUlPDugWIwj%2FSsFPqszeaYfs%3D&fbclid=IwAR0c2SXeIu55gPSrPTQGiNdQXYrked1enDKT9RB9Vkw8Kj2MSeyE3qj_gco https://myeclerk.myorangeclerk.com/CaseDetails?caseId=108169...

vharuck 8y ago

Forgive me if I missed it, but what's the evidence the plant's operations actually caused cancer cases? I work for a state cancer registry, and in my experience, reports of potential cancer clusters are rarely shown true. Going by a presentation and the audience's reactions at this year's NAACCR conference, most registries have similar experiences. That's not to say the claims are disproven, but a cancer diagnosis is a rare event, and childhood cancer is an order of magnitude rarer. This is one of those times where "small and biased sample" is a valid criticism.

wonderwonder 8y ago
The article is not great. The actual lawsuit is more informative. At its heart its a property damage lawsuit rather than personal injury / death. It claims to have physical proof that the area is contaminated with polonium and other carcinogens far in excess of allowable levels. Specifics in regards to cancer levels are also in the lawsuit. Link to the legal filing is in this thread.