DIXON, TENNESEE COVERS UP TOXIC THREAT ON THE POOR SIDE OF TOWN

Dixon, TN 2006 - For over sixty years, the bosses of Dixon, TN have dumped the small city's garbage out by Eno Road where the suspiciously non-white people live. Of the small city's 12,000+ population, fewer than 5% are black. But they get to live next to 100% of the toxic waste: all garbage dumps, landfills, and toxic waste sites in the county are located in the area of rural black landowners.

A 1967 Dickson County Health Department Sanitary Survey Report described the city "landfill" site as "only a little more than an open dump. The refuse is burned periodically causing smoke, odor, soot, ashes and leaving a residue highly susceptible for fly and mosquito breeding." The report goes on to state "the fact that the refuse disposal site is isolated is probably the only reason it has been tolerated." The fact that the "city dump" was also located in the middle of a mostly black community could also account for why it was "tolerated" by the Dickson Mayor, Board of Aldermen, and the larger white community. The Town of Dickson operated the landfill up until 1977 when it was taken over and operated by Dickson County.

ONGOING LAWSUIT
Many of the real-life casualties of the pollution are members of the Holt family, black landowners that have deep roots in the Eno Road community. The family has a disproprotional number of cancer and other ailments, which they believe are caused by illegal dumping of cancer causing agent trichloroethylene or TCE by a now defunct tire valve plant. In a pending lawsuit filed in 2003, the family claims that the Scovill-Shrader Automotive factory transported its waste containing the cancer causing chemical TCE to the county landfill where it leaked into ground water wells.

There is no shortage of documentation. The company's wastes are known to have contained acetone and paint thinner. In 1970, Dickson County ordered Scovill-Schrader to discontinue dumping at the landfill. But there was no cleanup at the Eno Road dump, but instead, contaminated waste material was cleaned up from other areas in mostly white Dickson County and trucked to the landfill in the mostly black Eno Road community.

For example, Ebbtide Corporation (Winner Boats) removed material from an on-site dump and transferred it to the Dickson County Landfill for disposal. The company disposed of drummed wastes every week for 3 to 4 years. A 1991 EPA Site Inspection Report notes that soil containing benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes, and petroleum hydrocarbons from underground storage tank cleanups were brought to the landfill. In 1988, the Dickson County Landfill accepted 275 to 300 cubic yards of solid waste from the CSX White Bluff derailment cleanup.

Government records posted on the EPA Region IV website show that trichloroethylene (TCE), a suspected carcinogen, was found in the Harry Holt and Lavenia Holt wells, located less than 500 feet from the landfill, as early as 1988, the same year the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation issued a permit to Dickson County for operation of the facility as a sanitary landfill. Two years later, government tests also found 26 ppb (parts per billion) TCE in the Harry Holt well. This is five times above the established Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) of 5ppb set by the federal EPA.

Further, the Dickson County Landfill has a long history of noncompliance related to groundwater and leachate violations since at least 1983. It has received numerous unsatisfactory operational notices. The landfill received five notices of violations (NOV) from July 18, 1988 to April 12, 1999, including inadequate daily cover, violation of Groundwater Protection Standards, cadmium detected in ground water and springs at concentrations exceeding the MCL, and violation of inadequate depth cover and pooling of water on landfill cover.

Because neither the federal or Tennessee state EPA advised the family of the danger, the Holts drank water from the contaminated well for twelvesyears after the 1988 tests.

Test results from the Harry Holt well in October 9, 2000 again registered 120 ppb TCE and a second test on October 25, 2000 registered 145 ppb—24 times and 29 times, respectively, higher than the Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) of 5ppb set by the federal EPA. It was only after the extremely high TCE levels in 2000 that a Dickson County Landfill official visited the Holt family home informing them that their wells were unsafe. No written reports were sent to the Holts explaining the 2000 test results. The Holt family was placed on Dickson City water on October 20, 2000—twelve years after the first government tests found TCE in their wells.

The lawsuit, Harry Holt et al. v. Scovill, Inc. aka Saltire Industrial, Inc. et al, was filed agains the city, the county and the company that operated the automotive plant. It is neither surprising nor unusual that the company has changed it name several times and filed bankrupcy in order to avoid the liability of cancerous Afro-Americans.

The lawsuit is pending. In 2004, Dickson County, which polluted the Holt's free well, stopped paying for their city water.

June 2010 Update on this story .