By:Scott Brinton
Editor's Note: The Herald is seeking input from our readers about cancer cases in Merrick, particularly in Lindenmere, to understand better the community's apparently high cancer rate. Readers interested in sending us their stories can e-mail us at merrickeditor@liherald.com. Please be sure to provide us with your general street location and a phone number where we can contact you, if you wish.
Joyce Schmaeling, a lifelong resident of Merrick's Lindenmere section, is like so many local folks -- she's scared of getting cancer after watching numerous neighbors die of the disease.
The 40-year-old single mother of three, ages 4, 6 and 7, said, "It seems that a lot of people have it or have died of it, and this is going back years."
She said that cancer killed her neighbor, an older man. The disease had spread throughout his body. His death didn't shock Schmaeling, considering his age. Then his daughter, a younger woman, got ovarian cancer and died. Then, her sister got kidney cancer.
"That just blew my mind," said Schmaeling, a bank teller.
The Merokean could name seven neighbors on one small block around the corner from her who have had cancer. She wonders now if Freeport Electric's Plant No. 2, which has spewed diesel exhaust into Lindenmere for three decades, is to blame for the area's seemingly high cancer rate. Diesel exhaust is a suspected carcinogen, meaning it may cause cancer.
Concern over the health risks that Freeport Electric's diesel Plant No. 2 may pose is mounting among Merrick residents, says Joseph Kralovich, president of the Old Lindenmere Civic Association, which organized in large part to fight the plant.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency's Web site, "There is great concern about the adverse human health effects related to exposure to diesel exhaust..." Cancer is among the concerns that the EPA lists.
In 1993, Kralovich collected more than 100 signatures in a petition against Plant No. 2. One Lindenmere resident who signed the petition is Margie Nappi, who lives around the block from Kralovich.
The mother of two children, ages 11 and 15, said, "There is no reason why we can't get more [pollution] controls on that facility." There are none now.
Nappi said she is particularly concerned about Plant No. 2 after her mother-in-law, who lived in Lindenmere for 40 years, died in 1994 "from a very unusual strain of lymphoma [blood cancer]."
Her doctors couldn't "even tell how she got it," said Nappi, who has lived in Lindenmere 19 years and is an information systems coordinator for a pharmaceutical consulting company.
She added that her children "have a lot of allergies. I have concerns about opening my windows in the summer. I'd rather run my air-conditioning to avoid the pollutants in the air, and we constantly change the filters in our house."
In a previous Herald article, Vincent Greco, 75, a longtime Freeport resident and former civic leader, said that last summer a cloud of foul-smelling brown smoke from the plant blew into his boatyard during a get-together with friends. Everyone vomited. For two weeks after, Greco's mouth was so full of sores that he couldn't eat.
That account struck a "sensitive point" with Nappi, because her family "constantly get sores in our mouths," she said.
"We've been to the doctors a lot, and we don't know why," said Nappi. "It's got to be something in the air."
Alice Daley, 39, formerly Alice Lubrano, lived on Rugby Road in Lindenmere for the first 21 years of her life. The mother of four who now calls West Islip home, said, "The road I grew up on, every single house, except for one that I knew of, has been affected by cancer, including my own home."
Her brother, Daniel, died of a "very rare cancer" of the joint tissue at age 30, she said.
"He suffered for many, many years before he was even diagnosed," she said.
Daley could name at least 30 people in Lindenmere who she knows were stricken with cancer, many of the them at an early age. "The whole area surroudning Rugby Road, neighborhoods, young people, affected by cancer, Hodgkin's disease, breast cancer, brain tumors, and children born with developmental disabilities," she said.
For years, she assumed the former Town of Hempstead garbage dump in south Merrick was to blame for Merrick's health problems, never realizing that Freeport was running a diesel electric plant just across the Meadowbrook Parkway. Now she wonders whether these ailments are owing to combination of the dump and the electric plant.
Daley added that she would "welcome" a class-action lawsuit against whomever may be responsible for the area's apparently high cancer rate.
Michele Walsh, president of the Central Merrick Homeowners Association, said her group is backing Kralovich and the Old Lindenmere Civic Association in the fight against Plant No. 2. She worries, she said, because "my mother-in-law was a neighbor of Joe's and died of cancer, and her neighbor and an acquaintance around the block."
"Merrick residents really have nothing to gain by Freeport making their own electric," said Walsh.
Schmaeling said, "As much as I like Merrick, I wouldn't mind leaving. Right now, financially, I can't. I'm a single mother, so I can't go for the fight, but I'd like to see something investigated or some kind of survey" of cancer victims in Lindenmere.
Evidence linking diesel exhaust with cancer and other diseases is growing.
A Japanese study of diesel emissions found in 1997 that 3-nitrobenzanthrone, a gas given off during diesel combustion, produced the highest score ever reported in the Ames test, a standard measure of potential carcinogens.
Hitomi Suzuki, a chemist at Kyoto University in Japan, said in New Scientist magazine: "I personally believe that the recent increase in the number of lung-cancer patients in vehicle-congested areas is closely linked with respirable carcinogens such as 3-nitrobenzanthrone."
Diesel exhaust also contains the second-most toxic known carcinogen -- 1,8-dinitropyrene, according to a recent Reuters news service report.
Last spring, Richard Kassel, senior attorney with the National Resources Defense Council, told the EPA in a hearing about diesel emissions: "There is no real debate that breathing diesel fumes is hazardous to the public's health. Compared to auto emissions, which are bad enough, diesel fumes are especially noxious."
During the Clinton presidency, the EPA issued stringent guidelines for vehicle diesel emissions, but none for an electric plant such as Freeport's.
The EPA is requiring that oil refiners reduce sulfur content in "highway diesel" by 97 percent to allow vehicles, including cars, buses and trucks, to be fitted with pollution controls. Sulfur disables diesel controls, the same way that lead in gasoline stops up catalytic converters -- hence the need for lead-free gasoline.
The new federal rule, which will take effect as of 2007, is estimated to save 8,300 premature deaths owing to respiratory illnesses annually, according to the EPA.
hed: Diesel plant under scrutiny
drophead: Federal, state agencies examining electric company that Merokeans worry over
By Scott Brinton
Editor's note: This piece is a followup to the article, "An epic power struggle," which appeared in the February 15 edition of the Merrick Herald. To check out the original article, log on to www.liherald.com. Readers can find it in our archives. We welcome letters to the editor about this story. Readers can send them via e-mail to merrickeditor@liherald.com.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency is investigating whether Freeport Electric's Plant No. 2 violates the 1990 Clean Air Act, after Merrick and Freeport residents recently raised fears that the plant's diesel emissions may cause cancer in people and damage the ozone layer.
Mary Mears, EPA spokesperson in New York, said, "We are reviewing [the plant's] permit to ensure that it follows the correct requirements of the federal Clean Air Act. We have only just begun that review and have not come to any conclusions."
The Clean Air Act sets limits for air-pollution sources throughout the United States, providing "all Americans [with] the same basic health and environmental protections," according to the EPA Web site.
States are charged with carrying out the act. They can pass stricter air-quality regulations, but never less stringent measures. In New York, the Department of Environmental Conservation governs the Clean Air Act.
The EPA's probe into Plant No. 2 comes in addition to an examination by the state Attorney General's Office. That investigation, which also recently got under way, has reached no conclusions either.
The reviews began with Joseph Kralovich of Merrick, 48, a retired New York City firefighter who is battling to shut down Plant No. 2 or have pollution controls installed atop its two smokestacks. The stacks have no such devices now, making them what Kralovich called "open pipes."
The Merokean, who is president of the Old Lindenmere Civic Association, recently penned a six-page letter to the EPA and attorney general, calling on them to investigate the plant because of health and environmental concerns. "Within a quarter-mile of Merrick homes, and yards from those in Freeport, the plant is a constant threat," he wrote.
According to the EPA, diesel exhaust is a suspected carcinogen, meaning that it may cause cancer.
Combined, the plant's two 1968-vintage, 10,000-horsepower ship engines can burn from 1,400 to 1,800 gallons of diesel per hour. That's the equivalent of 140 to 180 18-wheel tractor-trailers driving 60 mph. Prevailing winds off the Atlantic Ocean often blow fumes from Plant No. 2 into Merrick, particularly the nearby Lindenmere section during summer when the plant is most used, said Kralovich.
In his own four-page letter to the state attorney general, Hubert Bianco, Freeport Electric superintendent, argues that Plant No. 2 is needed to supply electricity to Freeport Village and avoid the power shortages seen in California today. "All generation [of electricity] is currently necessary in order to avoid blackouts," Bianco stated.
Kralovich and other local residents contend that Freeport isn't running the plant to meet its own energy needs, but to sell electricity. And in the process, they say, Freeport is violating state environmental regulations.
Subhead: Contradictory reports
According to its 1999 Public Service Commission Report, Freeport Electric ran Plant No. 2 to meet the Long Island Power Authority's energy needs, not the Village of Freeport's, say Kralovich and Vincent Greco, 75, a former Freeport civic president and boatyard owner.
In 1996, Freeport Electric built a $14-million substation on Sunrise Highway, enabling the village to buy electricity from the New York State Power Authority upstate and on the open market.
From 1996-1999, Plant No. 2 got little use, Kralovich said. Then, in the summer of 1999, Freeport Electric fired it up again. Kralovich says he was told that the village was hit hard by brownouts owing to high electric use, making the plant necessary again.
Kralovich and Greco say, however, that the electric company's Public Service Commission reports contradict that assertion.
According to its PSC report in 1998, Freeport Electric generated almost 98,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity at Plant No. 2 that year. In 1999, Plant No. 2's output suddenly jumped to 1.2 million kilowatt-hours, because of need, officials were reported to have told Kralovich and Greco.
Freeport's 1999 Public Service Commission report states that the electric company sold 1.3 million kilowatt-hours to the Long Island Power Authority for $135,000. That means it didn't have to run Plant No. 2, except to sell electricity to LIPA, Greco said.
In a January 1997 article in the Freeport Leader, Bianco said that Freeport's ability to buy electricity from the state power authority would enable the municipality to sell the electricity it generates.
In his recent letter to the attorney general, Bianco wrote, "The village's hydroelectric power from the Niagara Project is limited and does not meet all our needs all of the time. Further, changes as a result of deregulation have limited firm transmission capability into Long Island."
hed: Particulate violations
Freeport Electric officials say Plant No. 2 complies with state environmental regulations, but Kralovich and Greco say they're wrong.
Bianco wrote to the attorney general: "The Village of Freeport utility is owned by its consumer ratepayers. As a municipal utility, the village has an obligation, and believes that it succeeds in, providing both environmentally sound and cost-effective services to its consumer owners."
In 2000 and 2001, the plant passed inspections by the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Mark Lowery, DEC spokesman, said however: "Understand that there are not a lot of standards to inspect."
One of Kralovich's biggest concerns is particulate emissions from Plant No. 2. Particulate, which is suspected to cause lung cancer, is the fine soot released during diesel combustion.
Lowery said, "There are no standards for particulate" emitted from a power plant such as Freeport's. "If the EPA were to promulgate regulations to set a standard, that might someday affect these types of plants," he said.
Kralovich and Greco, however, challenge Lowery's statement. They say there are state regulations on the books for particulate emissions from electric plants. And, they contend, the Freeport plant has violated those standards since the early 1970s.
They cite Section 227-1.2 of state Environmental Law, which regulates particulate from "any stationary combustion installation," such as an electric power plant. The law limits particulate to 0.10 pound per million Btu heat input.
They also cite a 1975 DEC report that examined diesel emissions at Freeport's Plant No. 2. Tests in July 1974, "which were conducted in strict accordance with established EPA guidelines, showed violations of the allowable particulate emissions limit of 0.10 pound per million Btu," according to the report.
Kralovich and Greco note that the DEC conducted the tests using diesel fuel with a 0.17-percent sulfur content, lower than the 0.37-percent sulfur content allowed under Plant No. 2's current DEC operating permit.
A higher sulfur content would increase soot emissions from Plant No. 2. Therefore, if the plant failed particulate tests with 0.17 sulfur fuel, it must fail them with the higher sulfur content, Kralovich and Greco say.
Bianco wrote to the attorney general: "Power Plant No. 2 is a permitted air emission source, and like all such sources in New York, the Village [of Freeport's] plant is subject to scrutiny and regulation by the Department of Environmental Conservation. The village complies with the Title V operating permit authorized by the DEC."
Subhed: LIPA deal gone sour
In the summer of 2000, state Sen. Charles Fuschillo Jr. (R-Merrick) arranged a meeting between Bianco and Long Island Power Authority Chairman Richard Kessel, in hopes of resolving residents' issues surrounding Plant No. 2.
Kessel offered to provide Freeport with the electricity it needed at low cost, as long as the village shut down Plant No. 2. Freeport refused the deal.
Bianco said, "Unfortunately, the energy prices quoted to Freeport were generally higher than market prices, so the village bought off the market or generated the energy itself, depending on which of the options was less costly to its consumer-owners."
Kralovich said in response: "LIPA offered lower-cost energy, but Freeport would not sign anything that limits operation of Plant No. 2."
