Diabetes and Neuropathy Treatment in Tallevast, FL

It’s been a long, hard fight for Tallevast residents as they seek to put their community right after the 2000 discovery of an underground plume of contamination covering more than 200 acres.

Even though property owner Lockheed Martin discovered beryllium and other dangerous contaminants in the soil when it put the property up for sale, Tallevast residents weren’t informed until 2003.

The pollution was traced to a former Loral American Beryllium Company plant. Lockheed Martin assumed ownership of the property at 1600 Tallevast Road in 1996 and shut down the plant the same year.

In 2005, Lockheed Martin reported to Manatee County commissioners that it had determined the extent of the plume and that it proposed a remediation program to clean up the contaminated groundwater.

That did not sit well with the commissioners, who demanded that Lockheed relocate residents from the historic Black community. Many residents were still using groundwater for drinking, cooking and bathing.

“Lockheed Martin needs to step up to its corporate responsibility and move these people out of the community,” former Manatee County Commissioner Amy Stein said in 2005. “Anything short of that is totally irresponsible.”

Despite the commission’s insistence on the relocation of Tallevast residents, it did not happen.

“Yes, we do have that option,” Bill Kutash, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s project director for the Tallevast cleanup, said of a possible relocation in 2005.

“But it is fairly extreme and has never happened in Florida,” Katash added.

In 2008, Lockheed, paid the motel bills for 244 Tallevast residents for about one month, while buildings were removed from the former beryllium plant.

In 2010, both Lockheed and residents confirmed a settlement had been reached in a lawsuit brought by 270 Tallevast residents. Neither side has ever commented on the terms of the settlement.

In late 2013, Lockheed started treating the groundwater with its remediation plant and a system of more than 100 wells. Once contaminants are removed, the treated water is released into the county sewer system.

Ten years after the start of Lockheed’s remediation efforts, there is a growing feeling of discontent among Tallevast residents, who say that the cleanup effort has failed and that the plume has actually grown.

Moreover, much of Tallevast continues to be without a connection to sanitary sewer, while big business expands onto former farm land with little communication with residents.

In addition, Tallevast residents say officials at Lockheed Martin, Manatee County Government and the Florida DEP are unresponsive to their questions and concerns.

In an Oct. 21, 2022, letter to Tallevast’s nonprofit FOCUS group (Family-Oriented Community United Strong), RES Florida Consulting offered concerns on Lockheed’s plume stability analysis report.

Assessments of the plume have shown that it is “much larger than initially defined and accepted,” RES reported.

“Over time, data collected through Lockheed Martin’s remedial action effectiveness monitoring confirmed our concern that the plume was not delineated but also that it was not being contained and recovered by the approved remediation system. Valuable time was lost as the plume continued to spread unaffected by the remediation system,” RES said.

The RES report concluded by saying: “We note that due to the social and economic detriment suffered by the community by the widespread migration of the contamination plume, we feel that the Florida Department of Environmental Protection should provide a higher degree of scrutiny to ensure the rights of all the protected parties and the public are met and protected.”

Jeanne Zokovitch Paben, an attorney for FOCUS, said that the withdrawal of groundwater for treatment also had an unintended consequence.

“It has now also been shown that this massive artificial groundwater withdrawal is exacerbating geologic depressions within the community on private properties,” Paben wrote in a Jan. 28, 2023, letter to the DEP.

“Although FDEP is under resourced, we are hard pressed to believe that FDEP staff does not understand how such massive artificial fluctuations in the groundwater could be causing destabilization of the surface. Nonetheless, FOCUS, on its own, engaged in a study of this and this research supports the hypothesis that the artificial groundwater withdrawal is destabilizing the ground surface,” Paben wrote.

The Bradenton Herald reached out to Lockheed Martin and asked about the spread of the plume and status of the cleanup.

“We have a longstanding commitment to conducting groundwater remediation at the former American Beryllium Company facility in accordance with all applicable federal and state requirements. We remain committed to meeting all applicable public health and environmental standards,” Lockheed said in an email.

“All remediation activities are subject to the review and approval of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP). Any further inquiries should be addressed to the FDEP,” Lockheed said.

The Herald also reached out to the FDEP, but the agency did not provide a statement by deadline.

Due to the groundwater contamination problem, FOCUS co-executive directors Laura Ward and Wanda Washington say that it’s important that all Tallevast residences be connected to the county sewer system.

Currently, residences west of the railroad tracks that run through Tallevast are connected to the sewer. Residences to the east of the tracks, however, have not been connected.

FOCUS conducted its own sewer survey of Tallevast residents after the results of a previous survey by Manatee County Government showed little support for the improvements.

“Based on the results of this survey, it is clear that the residents of Tallevast desire and deserve to have Manatee County follow through with its multiple promises of bringing sewer infrastructure including covering the connection fees,” Paben wrote to commissioners.

“As Manatee County itself recognized more than 40 years ago, even prior to knowing about the increased concern of contaminated shallow groundwater from ABC (American Beryllium Company), this is a critical threat to the health and safety of all area residents which must be rectified. We look forward to working with you to achieve this,” Paben wrote.

To date, county officials have not responded to inquiries about Tallevast sewer from Paben or the Bradenton Herald.

While Tallevast struggles with a massive contamination problem, it sees its quiet, rural lifestyle disappearing with big-time growth.

Amazon opened a 321,244-square-foot distribution center on 55 acres at 2200 Tallevast Road in 2021, and Tallevast residents say the truck traffic never ends.

In addition, United Natural Foods, Inc. announced in August that it was breaking ground on a new distribution center within the SRQ Logistics Center, a 300-acre master-planned business park south of Tallevast Road.

Tallevast was founded in the late 1800s by the children of formerly enslaved people and migrant workers.

Now, residents see the control of their destiny slipping away.

“We’re sitting ducks now. They have taken over the community,” Laura Ward said. “We are disturbed by all the building around us, the truck traffic and the air traffic. We don’t have a place to be relocated to.”

Adds Wanda Washington: “The county commission is the No. 1 complaint for me. They are allowing these people to come in and run over us.”

Relocation of the Tallevast community didn’t happen after the plume of contamination was discovered nearly a quarter century ago.

And it doesn’t look like it will happen now, said Paben.

FOCUS is in the midst of a visioning process and plans to take the concept to the Manatee County Commission.

A reimagined, revitalized Tallevast community could see new residences added, a county park, a community center and more.

A way forward for Tallevast and better lines of communication with county government, Lockheed and DEP could go a long way to a better future, Ward and Washington said.

“It feels like we’re still at ground zero, Washington said. “If we had a relationship, it could clear up a lot of things. There is no option but to fight.”

The Bradenton Herald reached out to County Administrator Charlie Bishop and Manatee County Commissioner Mike Rahn, who represents the Tallevast area, for comment on the Tallevast situation. Neither county official responded immediately to the Herald’s request for comment.

This story was originally published February 27, 2024, 5:50 AM.

OPINION AND COMMENTARY

Editorials and other Opinion content offer perspectives on issues important to our community and are independent from the work of our newsroom reporters.

The impacts industrial pollution on the natural resources of Black and Brown communities have been well documented in scholarship and the media, but what is transpiring in the unincorporated, Gulf Coast community of Tallevast is particularly remarkable.

A historically Black community that sits just north of the Sarasota/Bradenton Airport, Tallevast is enduring a coordinated onslaught of environmental assaults. Manatee County government has rendered the community as an inevitable sacrifice for generating commercial revenue.

First, and most publicized, was the contamination of the community’s groundwater by the Loral Corporation’s American Beryllium Co. (ABC). For more than 50 years, ABC machined toxic beryllium at a facility in the center of Tallevast.

Although monitored by local and state agencies, ABC’s production process emitted toxic dust to the air and its cleaning process seeped trichlorethylene (TCE) into the groundwater. While Lockheed Martin, which acquired ABC when it purchased Loral Corporation in 1997, has directed remediation efforts in Tallevast for close to a decade, residents remain distrustful of their safety, a belief that is increasingly justified as rates of cancers and other illnesses exceed that of other Black communities in Florida.

Tallevast residents would have been better protected against direct exposure to the contamination had the county fulfilled the terms of its 1980s Community Development Block Grant. Called the “Tallevast Comprehensive Improvement Grant,” the funds were supposed to bring all of Tallevast’s properties onto Manatee County water and sewer lines. The county claims the funds were exhausted before homes in the eastern half of the community were connected.

After the contamination, Manatee County finally brought all residents onto water lines, but homes that were not connected to sewer during the 1980s renovations remain on septic tanks. In the past few months, the county, dismissing its obligations to its 40-year old improvement plan, has shamelessly proposed to Tallevast residents a gravity sewer project. If it progresses, they will be required to connect to the Manatee County sewer service at a cost nearly totaling $20,000 per home.

Despite Tallevast’s vulnerability to poisons left by a now-vanished industrial plant, a new wave of industries has encircled the community and threatens its already vulnerable environment.

Manatee County commissioners, in another act of dismissal, authorized the construction of bus depot that opened in 2016. Across Tallevast Road from the depot lies a 55-acre Amazon distribution facility. The commissioners rezoned the land for the warehouse Amazon now occupies, despite protests from Tallevast residents who were concerned about environmental impacts. Manatee County officials refuse to collaborate with Tallevast residents to support a road infrastructure that will accommodate the increased traffic on Tallevast Road, which inconveniences residents and diminishes air quality.

These dismissals affirm that Manatee County has already relegated Tallevast to the status of industrial site. The community’s land carries tremendous commercial value as a gateway for air and train transportation, despite the environmental hazards posed to residents.

As the Sarasota-Bradenton Airport continues its expansion efforts, Tallevast residents must endure air, noise and light pollution as well as the dangers of living adjacent to a busy airport. Earlier this year, two planes nearly collided while in airport space when one was cleared for takeoff from a runway on which another was authorized to land.

The Seminole Gulf Railway, nearly as old as Tallevast itself, also continues to endanger the community. Last March, a train derailed on tracks just steps away from Tallevast homes. The cargo aboard included 30,000 gallons of liquid propane gas intended to be used by Manatee County. The airport expansion, the proliferation of warehouses and the still unfinished remediation form a coordinated environmental attack on Tallevast.

Still, the dismissals continue. In November, the Governor Ron DeSantis Park opened less than two miles from Tallevast. That the park, with its green fitness trail, pickleball courts and playground is named after DeSantis belies a sweeping, statewide movement of commercial real estate development that now encircles Tallevast.

This movement is buttressed by directing public education toward seemingly benign, apolitical civic knowledge. However, these initiatives gloss over the business interests that dismiss the histories and experiences of those whose lives are needlessly sacrificed in the name of economic progress.

Put another way, Tallevast’s story needs to be elevated, not only for Florida’s historical memory, but also because when we remember it in years to come, we will realize that it told us Florida’s future.

James Manigault-Bryant, Ph.D., is chair and professor of Africana Studies and faculty affiliate in anthropology and sociology and religion at Williams College. Mafoudia Keita is a Mellon Mays Fellow, majoring in environmental studies, with a concentration in Africana Studies at Williams College.

This story was originally published December 30, 2023, 10:36 PM.

There was a time when Walter Schmid & Son Guernsey Dairy was the primary neighbor of Tallevast, a quiet, secluded Black community founded in the late 1800s by the children of former slaves and migrant workers.

But Tallevast is no longer so isolated. The historically Black neighborhood is barely hanging on, residents say, having endured “death by a thousand cuts,” as attorney Brett Paben put it.

Fast-growing Sarasota Bradenton International Airport is just to the southwest, and Manatee County has a new transit facility to the east, near a huge Amazon delivery center that opened in late 2021.

The latest cause for concern is “Project Woodworking,” the code name for a massive project planned for one of the largest remaining undeveloped parcels between Tallevast Road and University Parkway.

Developers have filed paperwork with Manatee County Government seeking construction plan approval for more than 1 million square feet of warehouse-distribution space on the former dairy land, just to the east of the railroad tracks that splits Tallevast.

Neighbors have no clue about what’s coming, and county officials say that information is protected under nondisclosure agreements per state statute.

The way the project has been handled is the latest example of the community being blind-sided, residents say.

“We understand that progress has to happen, but we’re right in the middle of it. We’re not happy about what’s going on,” said Laura Ward, president of FOCUS, a group created more than 20 years ago to protect the health, environment and quality of life of the Tallevast.

Tallevast residents opposed rezoning the parcel in a 2020 petition and said the change should have been part of a larger discussion about the future of the community.

“Tallevast residents were made aware of this project (the rezoning) for the first time less than a week before the proposed Planning Commission hearing by receiving a notice via our post office boxes, since none of the residents in Tallevast are allowed to receive mail at their homes via the U.S. Postal Service. This late notice was compounded by the fact that it was just before the Labor Day weekend, decreasing the time that we could engage with the county and the applicant,” the 2020 petition said.

“Further, the County is required to encourage neighborhood outreach by the applicant, and, in fact, the County could have required the applicant to conduct a neighborhood workshop,” the petition said.

The timing also was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, limiting residents’ ability to prepare in person and creating a “chilling impact” on their ability to participate in a public hearing, the petition said.

Caleb Grimes — a Bradenton attorney who represented the property buyer, Peak Development Partners of Tampa, during the rezoning — said in 2020 that property owners wanted to work with Tallevast residents and pledged landscaping, setbacks and buffers to reduce impacts.

Developers also acknowledged a contamination problem on the site, Grimes said in 2020.

“We are going in with our eyes open,” he said, pledging that the development would not worsen or spread the contamination.

Manatee County Commissioners approved rezoning of approximately 301.5 acres west of U.S. 301, north of University Parkway and south of Tallevast Road on Oct. 1, 2020, to take the property from its former agricultural use to light manufacturing uses.

The rezone changed 226 acres from suburban agricultural, and 56.1 acres from heavy manufacturing, to light manufacturing. Approximately 19.2 acres of the site already had light manufacturing zoning.

The rezone, at the request of Peak Development Partners, allowed the first phase of development to commence.

That first phase turned out to be a 321,244-square-foot Amazon distribution center on 55 acres along Tallevast Road. The Amazon facility opened in October 2021, near where a vine-and-rust-covered silo, a reminder of the site’s dairy history, once stood.

At the time of the rezoning, county commissioners knew that a Fortune 100 company was ready to locate there, but they did not know it would be Amazon. They also knew that rezone held the potential for job creation, and that the site had a controversial history.

Jeanne Zokovitch Paben, who represented Tallevast residents in the rezoning with Brett Paben, said the community has experienced a history of procedural injustices since its founding as a labor camp for turpentine manufacturing.

Tallevast residents banded together more than 20 years ago to create FOCUS after belatedly learning that industrial contamination had polluted the groundwater that supplied their drinking, cooking and bathing needs.

The former American Beryllium Co. plant at 1600 Tallevast Road had been leaking solvents and other contaminants for years. The pollution created an underground plume that spread from the American Beryllium plant underground and to nearby dairy property.

The plant first opened in 1961 as Visioneering Company Inc. and for more than three decades, under various owners and various names, made high-tech electronics gear.

Part of that process involved piping a stream of used process water to treatment and holding ponds on the east end of the five-acre property.

Lockheed Martin bought the plant in 1997 as part of a larger corporate acquisition and shut it down.

Two years later, Lockheed put the Tallevast site on the market, and after finding a buyer in 2000, agreed to test for pollution and clean up any that might be found.

Beryllium was discovered in the soil around the ponds, at nearly three times what the state considered acceptable. Petroleum was found at 50 times maximum levels.

Perhaps most worrisome were solvents found in an underground plume of contamination that spread 200 acres, the Bradenton Herald previously reported.

County and state officials knew about contamination on the site but did not immediately notify residents.

Not until 2003 were residents informed that there was a problem — after wells had been sunk to track pollution. The monitoring and cleanup of the plume continues to this day.

In 2008, Lockheed paid the motel bills for 244 Tallevast residents for several weeks, while buildings were removed from the former beryllium plant.

Returning to houses sitting atop a toxic spill was like a double tragedy, Wanda Washington, vice president of FOCUS, said in 2008.

“You live here fearing for your health, and then you go to a safe haven, and then you are thrown back again to this toxic dump,” Washington said.

In 2010, both sides confirmed a settlement had been reached in a five-year-old lawsuit brought by 270 Tallevast residents against Lockheed Martin. Neither side would comment on terms of the settlement.

The last of the Loral American Beryllium Plant was dismantled and removed in 2011.

Decontamination efforts continue today and there is no indication when it might be completed.

Another potential problem residents see is Tallevast Road itself, which the county eventually plans to four-lane.

“All of the houses along Tallevast Road would be taken out. It would mean those residents would have to be relocated,” Ward said. “If they do anything else with this road, we will lose the community completely.”

The irony is not lost on Tallevast residents that while their community is a coveted location for business, they are some of the last Manatee County residents to receive basic services such as phones and treated water. One third of Tallevast still lack sanitary sewer, although county funding has been approved to extend sewer to the rest of the community.

Tallevast residents remain understandably wary about changes in their neighborhood.

“They haven’t been able to live the lives they want because of fear,” Brett Paben said.

Wanda Washington says there is not one family in Tallevast that has not been touched by cancer.

“We have been completely surrounded by industry, and so many families have left and won’t come back,” Washington said.

Although it has not been announced who the tenants of the proposed warehouse distribution facility might be, what is known is there will be up to 14.6 acres of wetland impacts and that over 30 acres of wetland mitigation area would be set aside.

The plan includes space for passenger vehicle parking for employees and tractor-trailer parking and loading spaces for semi-delivery trucks.

A sign posted near the property lists Peak Development Partners of Tampa and a Toronto-based commercial real estate company Avison Young, with a brief description of the planned SRQ Logistics Center.

Plans posted online for SRQ Logistics Center show several building options, including one for a 1,000,350-square-foot building and a 504,440-square-foot building on opposite sides of a planned spine road.

The spine road would be built down the center of the property so that the industrial park would have access to Tallevast Road, University Parkway and U.S. 301.

The Peak Development-Avison Young sign posted along 301 Boulevard East lists three options for potential clients: 125,000 to 1 million square feet of space available, build-to-suit and building(s) for lease.

Ward said she is hopeful that there will be a meeting with the developers to update residents on project details.

Added attorney Jeanne Zokovitch Paben, FOCUS members hope the meeting can determine ways to mitigate the impacts of development.

“I’m looking at the back of Amazon from my front door now,” Ward said. “What am I gonna look at from my side in a few months when this comes in?”

This story was originally published June 17, 2022, 5:50 AM.