West Oakland residents who live next to a toxic cleanup site demanded yesterday that the government move them and shut down an incinerator they fear is spewing chemicals into the air."Our lives are at stake," said Jeff Lopez, who lives with his newborn baby and toddler about 20 yards from an incinerator burning vinyl chloride, which can cause cancer and sterility. "We want them to shut the thing down or pay to move us out of here."
The demands are the latest development in the 2-year-old cleanup of an enormous plume of vinyl chloride that saturated soil and groundwater a decade ago in the South Prescott neighborhood near the Cypress Freeway.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials, who are overseeing the cleanup, said the operation does not pose a health risk and it is unlikely the agency will move residents or shut down the incinerator.
Although they supported the cleanup at first, neighbors said at a news conference yesterday they are furious that state and federal EPA officials have not given them details of the risks involved in burning hazardous chemicals so close to their homes.
The relationship between the EPA and the neighbors soured two weeks ago when high-level agency officials retracted their earlier assurances that only salt and steam were being emitted from the incinerator stack.
The agency is waiting for federal experts to evaluate a battery of recent air samples before officials explain to neighbors which chemicals are being released into the air, and whether dioxin, a known carcinogen, is among them.
"We feel very badly that information has not been properly communicated to them (the neighbors)," said Keith Takata, director of the EPA's Superfund division.
"When we first got involved it was as an emergency response because the vinyl chloride was at very, very high levels in the groundwater and the soil," Takata said.
"The trade-off here is when you burn vinyl chloride you do end up with small amounts of chemicals in the air," he said. "It's not a perfect solution."
Takata said he and his staff will meet with neighbors as soon as possible to discuss the emission samples collected recently.
Until then, neighbors want to know what they are breathing and said they won't be happy until the incinerator is shut down.
"If they can't tell us what is coming out of there right now, then I want it shut down," said Renee Morrison, who was born in the neighborhood and now raises her two children near the incinerator. "They are playing with people's lives here."
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