'I was slowly poisoned:' The CBS 2 Investigators dig into a growing number of cancer cases in a suburban village
UNION, Ill. (CBS) - Fear grows as more people from a northwest suburban village battle cancer - they blame two companies for contaminating land with toxic chemicals and not telling neighboring residents.
Brenda Boeldt gets emotional when she thinks about growing up in the Village of Union, located in McHenry County.
"They picked on our small little town, and think that they were going to get away with it. They should be held accountable for it," said Boeldt. "It's not fair."
Memories of playing in the fields around her grammar school, Evergreen Park Academy, are now tainted.
"It was a meeting ground. We all hung out there," said Boeldt. "We didn't know that they were doing it. We didn't know it was bad for us."
She and her family did not know toxic chemicals were being dumped by neighboring companies for decades.
"We didn't know it causes cancer," said Boeldt. "I don't think we thought anything was wrong."
She is the latest to come forward accusing factories near homes and a local grammar school of endangering an unknown number of lives by spewing waste from cleaning solvents like trichloroethylene (TCE) into the ground during the 1970s and 1980s.
"For a small town, there's a lot of people who have cancer and have died," said Boeldt.
In April, the CBS 2 Investigators revealed how eight people with cancer filed lawsuits against the companies. Now there 15 lawsuits filed, and plaintiff lawyers say there at least 25 people who believe their cancers are connected.
Boeldt, who lives out of state, made the connection when she watched our report online. She recognized a familiar face - Dana Harper. The two had been classmates.
In 2017, Harper found a lump on her neck near her collarbone. She was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and went through grueling treatments.
Her mother Donna Gahl also had cancer, multiple myeloma, and died in 2003, at the age of 65.
Harper and Boeldt share a concern for those who live in Union or once lived there and have moved away.
The plants accused of dumping include Southern California Chemical Company, which became Phibro-Tech before it shut down. The other was called Techalloy - now named Central Wire.
As we first reported in April, Scott Karr worked as head of maintenance at Techalloy. In sworn testimony, he said dumping chemicals outside was a weekly assignment.
"They would take 800-gallon vats and dump them on the ground," said Karr during a deposition related to a lawsuit filed by Dana Harper.
Both companies enacted cleanup plans in the 1990s, when the Environmental Protection Agency got involved. And a pumping station was put in to clean contaminated groundwater.
"I believe for 20-plus years, I was slowly poisoned," said Harper.
"After I saw Dana's story, I kind of put things together," said Boeldt who grew angry and filled with pain.
She believes she has finally found an answer to a haunting question about the source of the cancer cases in her family.
"My dad suffered so bad - he didn't want to die that way," said Boeldt.
Her father, Ervin Boeldt, had a brain tumor and died in 2017.
"He couldn't walk, couldn't talk," said Boeldt. "It was really hard to see that."
It also was hard to see her brother Ken suffer. His cancer was found in multiple spots including his liver. He died last year.
"All the chemo and surgeries. He ended up having to have a colostomy bag," said Boeldt. "To die at the age of 54, was way too young. And he died on my birthday."
If that was not bad enough, her best friend and Evergreen classmate Lynn Alvarez also got cancer.
"My heart sank," said Boeldt.
Mike Grieco is one of the attorneys at Romanucci & Blandin suing the companies on behalf of both women and others.
"I think we have to assemble our own cancer-cluster study," said Grieco.
He says groundwater testing done years ago through monitoring wells showed toxic chemicals, at levels 19 times higher than safe drinking limits, migrated to the field next to the school. Grieco wants a list of everyone who attended Evergreen since in 1970s.
"We're interested to know what illnesses and what cancers have caused; have been caused by Phibro-Tech and Techalloy over there," said Grieco.
In another deposition related to Harper's lawsuit, Chris Wiernicki - Phibro-Tech's highest ranking official in charge of cleanup efforts after the plant shutdown - said he did not believe the school was impacted by the chemicals.
"I did not do a specific risk assessment on the school because it hadn't reached there," said Wiernicki.
He also said he did not think the school children were in danger because the kind of testing done found chemicals so deep in the ground there was no threat to the public.
"Even though they're above the drinking water standard, those levels are very conservative," said Wiernicki. "And they do not translate directly into inhalation exposure. The kids are not drinking that water."
Residents were not drinking from well water. But the people suing are still worried about what they might have breathed in, decades ago, because these buried chemicals can turn to toxic vapors.
"I just want justice done and I want somebody to be held accountable," said Boeldt - who shared her biggest fear. "It's going to happen to me, not if, but when."
The families' lawyers say testing near the school, as recently as 2016, showed contamination underground.
After our reporting in April, the school district conducted its own tests, and said they did not find any contaminants on school grounds.
Neither company responded to our attempts for comment. In court filings, each denied contaminating the area and causing any illnesses. Phibro-Tech stated they did not use TCE and PCE. Central Wire, which bought Techalloy, said it complied with safety standards.