By Audrey Peterman
News that the Fort Lauderdale City Commission voted May 18 to pay the Durrs Neighborhood $18 million to settle their lawsuit is a welcome break in the fight for environmental justice. As a writer on environmental issues for the Westside Gazette since the 1990s, I know something of the pain that the people of this neighborhood have suffered over the years.
The high incidents of cancer, the early deaths, the learning and other disabilities suffered from years of exposure to the toxic ash raining on their homes from the City-operated incinerator in Lincoln Park can in no way be made right by money. But I’m grateful that City Commissioners had the conscience to try to make the survivors’ lives a little less uncomfortable.
The 33311 zip code seems to have been uniquely overburdened in South Florida with a proliferation of toxic sites and industries. Not two miles away from the Durrs neighborhood, the former Wingate Landfill and Incinerator operated by the City of Fort Lauderdale and Waste Management for 24 years, (1958-1974,) spewed toxic ash and fumes onto the homes of Black Americans “red lined” into that neighborhood in the 1950s.
As we document in our 2009 book Legacy on the Land, the people of the Wingate community thought they’d gotten relief when the plant closed in 1978 after failing to meet standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency. In 1989 the EPA designated it as a Superfund site, identifying it as one of the most polluted in the country. When the other shoe dropped in 1984, the people learned that five different types of cancers were rampant among them at a rate FOUR TIMES HIGHER than other communities in the State.
Today requires a shout out to the strength and tenacity of community leaders such as Mickey Hinton and his wife Joan who are striving to get justice for their community helped lead to the City’s settlement proposal. The Bass Dillard Neighborhood Issues and Prevention Inc. formed by the formidable community leader Leola McCoy strove valiantly to get justice for the people of Wingate. Mrs. McCoy has since passed away, God rest her soul. In the late 1990s Broward County signed a consent decree over the community’s objections, permitting the site to be covered in plastic a little thicker than tarpauling.
In the era of Covid-19 and the pandemic that is highlighting the tremendous rate of death in Black communities partly resulting from the environmental injustice to which they are regularly exposed, I celebrate the relative triumph of the Durrs Neighborhood.
I’m also forced to ask: what about the people in the Wingate neighborhood? I’m hoping to be enlightened because I don’t know.
