Seven members of Protect Gainesville’s Citizens Inc. met Thursday at Wild Iris Books to discuss their next move in the 27-year-long battle for a cleanup of the Cabot-Koppers Superfund site.
In early March, the environmentalist group applied for an Environmental Protection Agency Technical Assistant Grant in hopes of hiring one or more technical advisers to assess the industrial site on Northwest 23rd Avenue.
Kaya Ideker, 43, a member of Protect Gainesville’s Citizens Inc., said the site’s pollutants could eventually affect all of Gainesville’s drinking water if they seep into the Floridian Aquifer.
Despite the potential for even more harmful health effects, the site has been overlooked by the EPA because local groups “don’t know how to speak their language,” said Kate Ellison, who works at the Dragon Rises College of Oriental Medicine located near the site.
Ellison and the other members of the group hope communication with the EPA will be facilitated if they receive the $50,000 technical grant to hire advisers.
