By Chad Smith
Staff writer

Published: Tuesday, April 20, 2010 at 6:13 p.m.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A group of seven Gainesville residents on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against three companies responsible for the cleanup of a contaminated site near North Main Street, seeking $500 million to screen for diseases and decontaminate thousands of homes they believe have been impacted by the pollution.

The Cabot/Koppers Superfund site -- occupying 140 acres between Northwest 23rd and 39th avenues to the west of Main Street -- was for decades home to wood-treating and charcoal-production plants and has been on the government's contamination radar since the 1980s.

Investigators have since found contaminants such as arsenic, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and creosote compound there, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's profile of the site.

The lawsuit, filed in the federal courthouse in Gainesville, is seeking damages from two Pittsburgh-based companies that operated on the site in some capacity for decades -- Koppers Inc. and Beazer East Inc. -- and from Boston-based Cabot Corp.

Telephone messages left with Beazer East, which recently purchased most of the Superfund site, and Koppers were not immediately returned Tuesday evening.

While cleanup on the site began in 1985, it isn't nearly finished, with an EPA report on the cleanup process due in the coming months.

The EPA says it has spent about $4 million to date on the site, while the city says it has spent $2 million to study water contamination.

It is unclear how much money the companies have paid.

A lot of the discussion about the remediation process has centered around the effects on the Floridan aquifer.

But Stuart Calwell, one of the attorneys representing the complainants, said the purpose of the suit is to get relief for those who live in a two-mile radius around the plant. The suit asks the companies to pay to clean up individual homes and monitor the health of residents.

Calwell, based in West Virginia, said there have been few cases brought forth to compel Superfund site owners to clean up residential properties.

"This is fairly rare, and I think it demonstrates a lack of focus on the impact on the community that Superfund sites have had," he said.

Calwell and his fellow attorneys are seeking a class-action classification for the suit, which lists seven complainants -- James Arthur Jones Sr., Mary Ann Jones, Kevin and Sandra Kennedy, Farinda Osteen, and Maria and Michael Parsons -- as well as their children.

Testing has shown unhealthy levels of dioxins -- toxic compounds found to contribute to cancer and other diseases -- in their homes, Calwell said.

While the EPA is overseeing the process to get the site itself cleaned up, the pollutants that were released in the air at the site have polluted areas around the site as well, he said.

"Of course, what goes up must go down," Calwell said.

Sandra Kennedy, 46, lives about a block from the site with her husband and 10-year-old daughter.

She said her family moved in about eight years ago but always thought they were relatively safe inside their home.

"We always thought the worst of it was outside," Kennedy said, adding that dust in her home recently tested at more than 1,000 times higher for toxins than is deemed safe.

"We're very worried," she said. "We have ourselves a valueless home ... We need to get our daughter away."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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