Continued
The question, of course, referred to an “expert panel”
convened on March 29 at UC San Francisco by the California Department
of Health Services (CDHS). The panel was to discuss the future of
Willits—and what the City should do about health problems associated
with those nagging heavy metals that Remco, the chrome plating plant
now owned by PepsiAmerica, dumped into the City’s air and soil
for years. Doctors, community members and lawyers attended the meeting.
They talked for over eight hours.
On June 12, Willits City Council listened to City consultants who
attended that March meeting and, based largely on their testimony,
decided to take a $4 million deal that, if approved by Federal Judge
Susan Ilston, would absolve Pepsi from paying future damages for Remco’s
poisonous mess. The consultants said that the panel decided that medical
monitoring would be useless. The City agreed. That was that.
Unfortunately, the public was also told the audio from that March
meeting had been destroyed.
Rachaud
Reed, owner of Aeon Events, the company hired by CDHS to record the
public meeting, said in a letter to CDHS that an “equipment
malfunction” destroyed the audio. Yet in an interview, Reed
said that he advised CDHS to use one of his techs to record the meeting,
but CDHS cited budget constraints and declined to shell out $350 to
hire Reed’s tech for the day. Instead, he said, the agency decided
to record the meeting on its own.
“We
warned them,” said Reed. “I said they should have a tech
there, and they said they didn’t want one. It was too much.”
After
Reed’s tech got the recording started, the tech left. At some
point after the first disc was recorded, the CD burner failed, and
the subsequent seven hours of recordings were lost. Reed said that
he’d encountered such problems in the past, but didn’t
tell CDHS. He also said that these problems were usually due to “user
error”—though he stopped short of blaming CDHS for the
snafu.
CDHS
declined to verify any of these details, and simply echoed Reed’s
letter in blaming the equipment.
If
Reed’s observation holds true for CDHS, it’s a blow for
both the schlubs at the State Health Department and the public. Because
CDHS was either too damn cheap or didn’t have the money to hire
Reed’s tech,
Willits
residents who couldn’t make the trek to San Francisco in March
never had a chance to hear what was actually said at the meeting.
The City contends that the panel decided medical monitoring would
be a waste of time, while Dr. Robert Harrison, the UCSF professor
who chaired the meeting, said that medical monitoring—as well
as evaluation and education—was necessary. Either way, the City
didn’t wait for the panel’s report, which will be released
in the fall, before taking the deal.
Without
the recording, the meeting’s details are nearly lost—except
for the 30 massive flip charts housed three hours south in CDHS’s
three story, prison-like headquarters in Richmond. Many of these charts—which
consist of notes recorded at the meeting—are nearly unintelligible,
and the purple, brown and red magic marker chicken scratch only makes
so much sense without the audio. There are occasional moments of clarity,
such as one doctor’s assertion that “something bad happened”
(presumably in Willits), or another’s revelation that, “for
legal reasons, we are not evaluating.”
Many
of the notes are questions, such as: “Is hex chr. dust still
present in houses? Thinks this is still unanswered.” Others
sound like wishful thinking. “Need capability to do broader
eval. and education,” says one. Provide service with notification…great
value to be able to go to clinic/specialty consultant plus general
medicine,” says another.
This
is largely the tone of the notes. There are more questions than answers,
more confusion than insight, and Dr. Harrison’s observations
seem more on point than the City’s.
Either
way, the public took another blow when the Willits City Council decided
to fast track the $4 million deal. Pepsi probably would have squashed
the offer, but the Council should have showed some backbone. They
should have told the folks at Latham and Watkins that they would just
have to wait until the report was released.
They
didn’t, of course, and all the citizens of Willits have to show
for it is 30 pages of chicken scratch and two dimwitted decisions.
