Bridgette Kinard remembers the men in the "white suits." They came to her apartment in the B.W. Cooper housing development in the 1990s, wrapped head to toe in specialized clothing to protect them from hazardous materials.
Standing in front of the vacant and blighted Moton Elementary School on Abundance Street, Arturo Blanco listened as several people peppered him with questions. But he had few answers to offer the remaining residents of the Agriculture Street Landfill.
More than 5,000 people who lived and worked in a community the city of New Orleans allowed to be built on top of a toxic waste dump were recently awarded $14.2 million as part of a class action lawsuit.
"The people who are responsible for the Agriculture Street Landfill have never apologized, have never said, 'We're sorry you guys lived here and you didn't know and some of you have health problems.' You never hear nothing from nobody that knew that this landfill was toxic and it was cancer.”
Many now see the attorneys as the enemy. They accuse their legal representatives of getting rich off the shattered remains of their lives and the corpses of their departed loved ones.
