PCB CONTAMINATION Tanapag residents poised to sue U.S.

Two Texas-based law firms have signified interest in assisting the residents in Tanapag in connection with the planned class action suit to be filed against the U.S. Department of Defense for the widespread contamination of polychlorinated biphenyls in the village.

Rep. Dino Jones declined to name the law firms pending the signing of an agreement with village residents. “We will be asking the people to sign the petition designating them as counsels for the case and also the fee agreement. The people will not spend anything while the case is ongoing,” he said.

He however assured the people that one of the two law firms has a wide experience in handling toxic waste litigation while the other one took charge of the tobacco litigation in Marshall Islands.

Mr. Jones, chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, said representatives of the law firms will be arriving here next month. House legal counsel Stephen H. Mackenzie met with them briefly in the U.S. mainland where they discussed the case.

“We are still hoping to resolve this issue without going to court because we don’t want to be confrontational,” Mr. Jones said.

Aside from seeking compensation for the lives of the people and their properties affected by the toxic waste, Mr. Mackenzie said the CNMI government may even recover the money it will spend in the medical evaluation that will be conducted among the residents to find out the level of PCB in their body.

Mr. Jones is asking all Tanapag residents and those who may have transferred to other villages to contact his office to discuss the planned lawsuit.

Health and environmental problems in Tanapag, a northern coastal village in Saipan, began when an unknown quantity of ceramic capacitors containing PCB oil were shipped to Saipan in 1960s by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Investigation showed that these capacitors were manufactured by Cornell-Dublier Electronics as part of the Defense Department’s Nike-Zeus contract for its ballistic missile early warning system radar installation.

Due to the failure of the Defense Department to clean up the village after the war, the electrical capacitors spread in the community as they were used as barricades, boundary markers, road blocks for driveways, windbreaks for barbecue sites and headstones.

Some capacitors were even found open as their phenolic linings were used to decorate rooftops and cemeteries in the village.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had claimed that the village is already safe and cleared of PCB contamination adding that the Lower Base Cemetery is the only area which remains unsafe. But the people in the community have questioned their credibility since it took them a long time to recognize the problem they have caused in Tanapag.

Despite lack of funding, Public Health Secretary Joseph Kevin Villagomez has assured Tanapag residents that the planned medical evaluation will push through.

A team of medical personnel from the government and the private sector will conduct a health evaluation to find out the local people’s level of exposure to PCBs. The first batch of village residents who will be asked to give blood samples for PCB examination would depend on their exposure history to PCB.