Photo caption: Old Smokey trash incinerator
African American residents continue to suffer the consequences of the city of Miami’s infamous and toxic Old Smokey trash incinerator. The facility reportedly spewed 100 tons of smoke and ash 24 hours a day, 6 days per week over the Jim Crow segregated community from 1926 to 1970, despite years of residents’ demands for its closure.
The Downs Law Group reached out to Representative Danny K. Davis (D-7th) for assistance, and he has vowed his full support, having gone through and fought against a similar incinerator in Chicago that also emitted carcinogens.
Old Smokey was only shut down in 1970 by a judge after a wealthy neighbor in Coral Gables, Florida, complained about it. That was a long time ago, but today soil and land studies of the trash incinerator prove the soil still contains lead, arsenic, and barium.
In 2017, Louise Caro, co-counsel of Caro Law of the Downs Law Group, filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of West Grove residents who claim city of Miami officials were denying them medical care for illnesses they blamed on toxins emitted from the Old Smokey incinerator.
“I would be very supportive of that kind of effort,” Davis told the Chicago Crusader. “We had that same problem with the Northwest incinerator here in Chicago.”
He was referring to the Northwest incinerator that opened on North Kildare and Chicago Avenue in 1971 with the goal of reducing waste. It was shut down in 1996, thanks to the leadership of then-Alderman Davis; he completed the fight when he was a Cook County Commissioner, in 1996.
“We finally were able to convince Mayor Richard Daley and the City Council to stop burning the garbage because toxins were flying in the West end of Chicago, the Northwest, some Southwest areas but also directly over Oak Park, Maywood, Bellview, Broadview and the western suburbs.” Davis said.
“That was a fight that we took on when I was on the Cook County Board and was able to get it done,” Davis said. “I support the people of Miami because the incinerator is hazardous and it is obviously related to the causation of cancer in the area. I am all with the people of Miami and I support the lawsuit.”
In an interview with the Chicago Crusader, attorneys Elsa De Lima and Alex Blume said once the incinerator closed down, the city of Miami took piles of the waste ash and buried it across different locations on the West Side of Coconut Grove. “The city’s surreptitious actions have further infected the soil,” the lawyers stated.
“They buried all of that waste in parks where children played. The exposure period is still happening today, but our allegations are that the city of Miami and its remediation contractor never properly remediated,” said De Lima. “The city is saying there should be no medical monitoring, which is pretty egregious.”
The latest move on behalf of the city will abolish all the responsibility of medical attention and monitoring programs that allowed victims to receive free testing for latent cancer and other health issues owing to environmental contamination. This new move will deny citizens the right to file lawsuits against those harming the city with poison and toxic chemicals.
“Florida first adopted and established medical monitoring in a case handled by Miami local, legend and legal scholar, attorney Ervin Gonzalez, over 20 years ago and is an effective valuable tool for assessing the health of individuals exposed to harmful chemicals,” said Craig T. Downs, Esq., founder and principal attorney of the Downs Law Group.
“We should protect medical monitoring as a valuable tool to hold governmental entities such as city and state agencies accountable to their actions, which may otherwise be shielded from liability pursuant to sovereign immunity laws,” he said.
“Florida has neither rejected nor adopted medical monitoring against a sovereign governmental entity. It’s a gray area,” De Lima said, explaining the status of this case will rest with the Third District Court of Appeals. “The exposure is still ongoing because there has been no proper remediation,” she said even though Old Smokey was shut down in 1970.
Decades later, innocent people are still paying a medical, costly and deadly price due to the soot and ash that spewed out of the smokestack over this Black Miami community for decades. Residents have been diagnosed with various kinds of cancers, respiratory conditions, high blood pressure, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, the lawyers explained.
In October of 2022, the city of Miami’s Motion to Dismiss was denied allowing the lawsuit to proceed. The City promptly appealed.
The irony is that the Old Smokey incinerator didn’t even service Coconut Grove’s Black community. When it was active, the city’s Black residents could see the embers being belched into their environment, sometimes igniting fires in vacant lots and on rooftops. During Miami’s Jim Crow era, Blacks living in West Coconut Grove had no access to sewage or city drinking water. The actual site of the environmental racism was located at Jefferson Street and Washington Avenue.
But years after its demise, it was learned the seepage of Old Smokey’s trash toxins included arsenic and lead that became embedded in some of Miami’s major parks including nearby Blanche Park. Yet, while city officials reportedly knew about the toxins, they remained silent.
It wouldn’t have been politically correct to bring up such a hot-button issue. They didn’t want to stir up the pot of Civil Rights activism. Sweeping the toxic issue under the rug seemed to be better, the lawyers stated.
However, after 45 years of belching toxic ashes into the air, Old Smokey was shut down but only after a neighbor complained, the city of Coral Gables sued the city of Miami, and schools were finally desegregated and white students had to attend the nearby George Washington Carver Elementary School.
It was retired attorney Michael Tobin, the white father of a son enrolled in the nearby Carver School, and his wife, Arlyne Tobin, a part-time teacher there, who challenged a judge to visit Old Smokey. Judge Raymond Nathan did just that and ordered the incinerator to be immediately shut down in 1970.
By locating Old Smokey in the West Grove community, the city’s covert environmental racism and its toxic fallout cannot be disputed, because facts don’t lie, said the lawyers. The Black residents were victims of not just “Fly Ash” that was emitted from the incinerator but “Bottom Ash” that came from Old Smokey’s furnace as well.
According to the University of Miami, the Fly Ash and Bottom Ash contained pollutants, dioxins, furans, hydrochloric acid and heavy metals like arsenic, lead and mercury, all of which can cause cancer.
De Lima said the fight for justice will continue until the city takes accountability for the harm sustained by the West Coconut Grove residents.
