crystal city, missouri - night 1 and day 2

Shani and Lakai's Wedding: Brooklyn, NY

Summer in Norman

Camp Minny

My good friend, Minny and her husband Jimmy hosted a party for all of us ICP PJ kids from last year at their home in New Jersey.   Kind of looks like we don't get out of the city much. 

Superfund 2 - More photos from the neighborhood of Well Quarters in Columbia, Mississippi. See story below.

Jingling Creek, where Reichhold chemical workers say they were instructed to dump chemical waste; located near the entrance of Well Quarters

A friend checks on Lutie the morning after he'd gotten into a fight

Treadmill in Juanita's kitchen

Regina with her daughter, Briana.  Regina has breast cancer and they've also found pre-cancerous cells on one of her kidneys.

Juanita's tree

Fred and Georgia, Juanita's aunt and uncle who lived in the same house she lives in now.  Fred died of lung cancer at age 61, Georgia died of complications of diabetes at age 51.

Juanita gets some fresh air

Juanita walks down the road to the stop sign with help from her cousins, Bo and Charlotte.

Gladis in the yard next to her HUD apartment.  On the other side of the wooden fence is the abandoned chemical facility.  The apartments were built in 1995, five years before the EPA declared the site remediated.  Gladis had breast cancer in the 1990s.

An abandoned church near the entrance of Well Quarters.

Juanita, Columbia, Mississippi

I'm working on a new project about a small neighborhood in Columbia, Mississippi.  The neighborhood abuts a former Superfund site where most of the residents are experiencing health problems more than 10 years after the site was remediated by the EPA.  Knock on any door in the neighborhood and at least one occupant will have an illness; everything from cancer to cardiac disease to strange purple-ish rashes that itch and burn.  The site was a wood treatment plant in the 50s, and in the 70s a company called Reichhold Inc. was using every sort of chemical imaginable, including all the chemicals used in Agent Orange.  The plant was abandoned and shut down after an explosion in 1977, but not before chemicals leaked into the groundwater and a creek than runs alongside the small neighborhood.  Many of the residents received settlements in class action lawsuits, but for paltry amounts considering the destruction of their quality of living.  They will never be able to sell their homes, and will in all likelihood develop major health problems or even die from the exposure.  One woman received a settlement of $169, then died of cancer two years later.  Above is Juanita who is in the final stages of ovarian cancer.  She is 50 and has lived in this neighborhood since the plant explosion in 1977.  Her cousin, Charlotte, is a Pentacostal pastor and was praying for her.  

(Most of the work is in film, so I won't be posting additional photos for another week or so.)

Jack and Alice Frances