Fort Lauderdale residents express concern about shuttered Wingate landfill, its impact on their health
FORT LAUDERDALE -- Residents who live near the old Wingate Landfill were expected to voice concerns Tuesday night during a city commission meeting about concerns about the closed Wingate landfill.
Sharon Alexander and April Young live near the landfill site off NW 31st Avenue just north of Sunrise in Fort Lauderdale and they said they are concerned about what happened during the closure process.
"This site has not been cleaned up properly and we need to have this cleaned," said Alexander, who fears it was not fully decontaminated when it closed in 1978. "I want the city to come out, bring the proper people out here to test the soil to clean up the soil, the homes the families that surround the area to make sure they got proper testing make sure they get adequate care for all of their health crisis as a result of this being here for 72 years in the community."
>>>EPA database on Wingate site: Click here
The residents said they planned to bring photos and death certificates of neighbors and family who have passed away,
They tell us they want to put a face to health issues they believe stem from the landfill.
"On my street this year alone we've already lost four residents all due to cancer or cancer-related illnesses (that were) unknown to them until it's pretty much too late," Young said.
Todd Hiteshew, environmental compliance manager for the city of Fort Lauderdale, said: "Clean up was completed in 2002 based on EPA oversight of the site.
"The EPA had oversight, doing monitoring for decades," he said. "We've been able to get to the point where we don't have to monitor anymore for groundwater. EPA has signed off on that."
Hiteshew said a cap was placed over the landfill, under two feet of dirt, keeping rain water off the ash in the landfill, meaning there will not be contaminated runoff. Now the land is set to be home to a new movie studio.
"They're going to redevelop the site into a movie studio complex which would be a reuse of the property, which is the ultimate goal for super fund sites to get them to be reusable basically in the community," Hiteshew said.
Sharon and April said they plan to continue to push for more clean-up, monitoring and health care.
"Our infrastructure system needs to be updated for quality of water for our people, as well as the quality of air and the quality of our soils," Young said.
Hiteshew said the EPA still checks out the site every five years and the next inspection is due in 2026.