Coconut Grove residents came together Tuesday to express their frustration regarding the City of Miami’s attempt to eliminate medical care for “Old Smokey” toxicity victims.
Residents and protestors say the city of Miami’s latest move is to try to deny the residents of West Grove in Coconut Grove medical monitoring and compensation for almost 50 years of poisoning by the city’s trash incinerator, known as Old Smokey.
From 1925-1970, the city of Miami operated a municipal solid waste incinerator at 3425 Jefferson Street in West Coconut Grove.
After nearly 50 years of spewing ash and smoke in the neighborhood, Old Smokey was closed by court order in 1970 as a public and private nuisance in a lawsuit filed by the city of Coral Gables, according to a case study by the University of Miami.
After years of renovations, the facility opened in 1983 as the City of Miami Fire Rescue Training Facility.
Despite reopening, there had been “no formal effort to clean up the former site of Old Smokey or the surrounding areas since 2013,” the case study stated.
Victims and residents stood outside of a home in Coconut Grove Tuesday, just 100 feet from where Old Smokey once stood, and expressed their outrage for how the city has treated them.
“Hear our cries,” said Hollis Gaitor, an Old Smokey victim. “We’ve all been suffering in this neighborhood.”
Residents filed a class-action lawsuit against the city of Miami, saying the government forced them to live in a toxic environment for decades and then kept quiet after learning of widespread contamination.
Coconut Grove resident Thaddeus Scott expressed his frustration against the city and its latest move to try to deny the residents of West Grove medical monitoring and compensation.
“I grew up less than two or three blocks away from here, played on that field, would watch the smoke that would come out of there, and breathe the air that came out of there,” Scott said. “The city of Miami has come and remediated every other area, but they tell us that they can’t find any toxins in the soil here.”
Various studies by environmental groups have found the soil around where Old Smokey once stood still contains high levels of hazardous chemicals, including arsenic, barium and lead.
Gaitor believes the city’s decision to eliminate healthcare for Old Smokey victims is race-related.
“All around this neighborhood gets taken care of except the Black community,” Gaitor said.
The city’s latest move is a plan to abolish the medical monitoring program that is used by victims living in the affected areas to receive free testing for health issues and latent cancers related to environmental contamination.
The move would also prevent citizens from filing lawsuits against those who harm the City of Miami communities with toxic chemicals and poison.
Victims and residents told Local 10 News they need the medical treatment and cannot have it removed because the contamination issues in the area are far from over.
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