Many California children in county with waste treatment site born with birth defects

From The New York Times:

KETTLEMAN CITY, Calif. — State and federal officials are scrambling to determine what caused the deaths of three children in this Central California farming town, which shares a ZIP code with the largest hazardous waste treatment site west of the Mississippi.

Over a 15-month period in 2007 and 2008, six children of mothers from Kettleman City were born with serious birth defects, including cleft palates, deformities and brain damage. Half of those infants subsequently died.

And while health authorities have not placed any blame, the apparent cluster of defects has given new ammunition to environmentalists and local residents who have long been wary of the town’s proximity to the Kettleman Hills waste facility, a 1,600-acre landfill that lies in an unincorporated area less than four miles west of here.

“We’ve always been saying, ‘The sky is falling, the sky is falling,’ ” said Maricela Mares-Alatorre, a Kettleman City resident and longtime critic of the facility. “Well, for those mothers, the sky fell.”

Last week, officials from the Environmental Protection Agency toured the landfill and visited with families of the children with birth defects. That action came less than a week after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered the State Department of Public Health and California’s Environmental Protection Agency to look into what he called “an abnormal percentage of birth defects” occurring here.

On Feb. 9, the first report from the state is expected to be delivered to the Kings County Board of Supervisors, which recently approved an expansion of the waste facility, owned by Waste Management, the largest recycler and waste-handling company in North America. The company operates hundreds of other landfills nationwide.

The company says it welcomes the investigation and the visit from the E.P.A.’s regional administrator, Jared Blumenfeld.

“We were proud to showcase our sophisticated, state-of-the-art facility,” said Bob Henry, the senior district manager of the Kettleman Hills facility in a statement, “and provide him an opportunity to see, firsthand, why we set the standard for safely managing hazardous waste.”

For Ms. Mares-Alatorre, the government scrutiny is long overdue. Her parents moved to Kettleman City from Los Angeles, about 160 miles south of here, in the late 1970s. “They wanted a safe place to raise a family,” said Ms. Mares-Alatorre, who is 37 and teaches GED classes to farm workers. “It’s got that Mayberry feeling, with a Latino twist.”

The waste facility opened in 1980. Late in that decade and in the early 1990s, the town became an environmental battleground when Waste Management, based in Houston, proposed opening a chemical-waste incinerator, a plan that was later abandoned.

That battle contributed to what Kit Cole, a spokeswoman for the company, called “a legacy of tension between Waste Management and selected members of the Kettleman City community that we struggle with even today.”

Ms. Cole said that the Kettleman Hills facility was safe and that a vast majority of the waste handled was run-of-the-mill garbage from municipalities. Only 60 acres was devoted to the most dangerous material, she said, including hazardous chemicals and byproducts from manufacturing and agriculture, which are stabilized in cement blocks before they are buried.

And while Ms. Cole says the company made mistakes in “not reaching out to the community as much as we could have,” she also said she believed that environmentalists from other parts of California were using the situation in Kettleman City as “a gigantic fund-raising effort.”

Bradley Angel, a persistent critic of the facility, said that that accusation was groundless, adding that Waste Management had “a lot of nerve resorting to bogus claims in a desperate attempt to divert attention from the fact that babies are being born with birth defects and dying in Kettleman City.”

Environmental concerns, including air and water quality, have long been a reality in the Central Valley of California, one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world. Kettleman City, a town of about 1,500 mostly low-income Latino residents, is no exception.

Founded as a home base for workers in nearby oil fields, the town is now located just off Interstate 5, California’s major north-south corridor, where a steady stream of speeding cars and diesel-burning trucks roll past. The town’s history is evident in the names of two of its main streets, General Petroleum and Standard Oil Avenues, which border a small, worn park in the middle of town.

The town, a collection of single-level ranch houses and rough streets, is bordered by electric transmission wires and the California Aqueduct, which is sealed off from town residents by a barbed-wire, chain-link fence.

County health officials said they had been cautious about suggesting any connection between the facility and the birth defects, while also trying to manage the fear and pain of victims and their families.

Dr. Michael MacLean, the public health officer for Kings County, said that drawing conclusions from such a small sample was a challenge. “I understand why people are concerned about it,” Dr. MacLean said. But, he added, “If I had to bet the farm on it, I think that this is just a statistical anomaly.”

State officials, meanwhile, have promised a wide-ranging investigation including a look at the overall rates of birth defects in the community and the region, as well as those for cancer and asthma. The investigation will also monitor the area’s drinking water, an issue in a community where using well water is common.

Findings will be announced to the county board on Tuesday morning, with a briefing in the community that night.

One of those in attendance will be Maura Alatorre, 26, who is related to Ms. Mares-Alatorre by marriage. Ms. Alatorre’s son, Emmanuel (pictured), was born during the 15-month period when other children suffered defects. He had a cleft nose and upper lip at birth. He was also missing a portion of the left side of his brain, and his eyes were very wide-set. Surgery has corrected the facial clefts, with only a trace of a scar.

On Thursday night, Emmanuel, now nearly 2, seemed to be a happy toddler, wearing SpongeBob SquarePants pajamas and playing with a string. But Ms. Alatorre says he often loses his balance and has been slow to learn even basic words like “mama.”

Like others in the family, Ms. Alatorre and her husband, Adrian, a farm laborer, blame the facility for their son’s problems.

“It’s toxic waste,” Mr. Alatorre, 28, said in Spanish. “It’s got to affect you.”