Attorney Dave Altman represents the citizen groups. This is really about the people who are the victims of Ohio EPA's failing to implement the law, Ohio citizens who are entitled to have the law enforced, and who have to live with the results, in many cases every day, of not having the law enforced. Jodi Griffith, a mother and resident of Marion, Ohio, hopes U.S. EPA will act to revoke Ohio EPA's authority. Griffith, her husband and later their son attended the River Valley High School, which was located on top of a military toxic waste dump. Parents in Marion feel that a recently discovered cluster of leukemia cases is linked to the contamination at the school.
Kids are still there at school today with acres of the property roped off.
Yet the groundwater has some contamination and the soil is grossly contaminated. When the investigation began, Ohio EPA had a work plan that included year-long air monitoring at the school to assure there were no pathways from the chemicals to the children. A year later we started another school year with no air monitoring, but we were being assured there were no pathways of exposure for the kids. Brief air monitoring was done in March 1999, but the Griffiths withdrew their son from the school and enrolled him elsewhere. Griffith and Altman are asking U.S. EPA to hold a fact-finding hearing in Ohio during their investigation to collect legal evidence about Ohio EPA's failure to enforce federal laws involving a number of polluting facilities in Ohio.