"Typically, a community seeks help from the government, which doesn't do anything," he says. "An entire community feels it should take part in a lawsuit because they feel every illness is related to contamination. We can't prove that's true in every case. People see their neighbors got a lot more than they did. Then people become convinced that there is a cover-up and the lawyers are in cahoots with the government."
But the troubles aren't over.
Since January 1992, two additional class-action lawsuits against Hughes and other parties were filed.
I guess it could go on and on.
@rule:
@body:Velma Dunn insists that the fact that she is a plaintiff does not affect her activism. However, she does admit that some documents she turns up as an activist may find their way into court some day.
"My job is to get the truth out to the people," she says of her activism. "Our job is to change laws so that the government can protect us."
Last week, Velma Dunn and her Oversight Committee, which includes her new friend Tupac Enrique, drafted a list of citizen demands. Dunn wants city, state and federal elected officials to take action on the Motorola contamination. Among the requests:
ù Thorough federal health studies of both sites.
ù A federal disease registry to log cases of lupus, cancer and birth defects in the Superfund sites.
ù Specialized medical treatment and counseling for citizens who have been poisoned by chemicals, to be paid for on a sliding scale by the citizens and provided by the state.
ù A "risk-assessment" study that would look at past and present risks associated with living in the area, to be paid for by the federal government and the state.
ù The purchase of new county air-monitoring equipment that would enable the county, and not the polluters, to report and monitor air-pollution data.
ù The rejection of the EPA's new Superfund plan to clean up sites according to "risk."
ù Spending a substantial portion of EPA's research dollars on developing alternative groundwater cleanup technologies.
ù A complete public accounting from the Department of Defense that details monies reimbursed to Motorola for Superfund expenses.
ù A financial mechanism, such as a trust fund paid into by polluters, that would protect citizen consumers from paying for cleanup of drinking water pulled from contaminated plumes in times of drought.
ù Integrating into the North American Free Trade Agreement amendments demanding that Mexico should have community right-to-know laws so that the worker and environment would be protected and American companies moving to Mexico would have to follow the same rules as in this country.
Dunn and Enrique may get some help from Senator Dennis DeConcini, who says it is "crucial to examine" some of the issues they raised.
The senator supports further health studies and the development of new groundwater cleanup technologies, says DeConcini spokesman Bob Maynes.
Upcoming hearings on the reauthorization of the EPA Superfund in 1993 will be an ideal place to examine whether defense contractors should be reimbursed for Superfund costs by the Department of Defense, says Maynes.
The risk-based Superfund "revitalization" ushered in during the waning days of the Bush administration and detailed by New Times should also be investigated during the reauthorization, he says.
"Senator DeConcini is obviously going to be sure that the new Superfund approach is evaluated very carefully," Maynes continues. "The groundwater problems in Arizona may not be an 'immediate high risk,' but in a desert environment eventually that water may be critical and necessary. We will shoot ourselves in the foot if we ignore it until it becomes an 'immediate risk.'
"The senator is concerned about any move on the part of the EPA and the federal government that tends to write off those kinds of problems. Senator DeConcini does not want to see federal dollars no longer flowing in to deal with our kind of problems simply because someone defined them away."
Right before Christmas, Velma Dunn got a telephone call from Ed Delaney, a top aide in the office of representative-elect Karan English. She says Delaney wanted to meet the second week in January. He'd just gotten a letter from Dunn's committee.
On the agenda, according to Dunn: the North American Free Trade Agreement, the new Superfund Plan, Motorola's backbilling the Department of Defense for Superfund costs.
"I feel like we're finally getting light at the end of the tunnel," says Velma Dunn. "And this time it's not a freight train coming my way."
"This is nothing we can walk away from," says Tupac Enrique.
We got the news out.
It feels great.
