Best of 2015: A Dark Bayshore High School Reunion

BRADENTON – Every town carries some shame, but sooner or later the embarrassments eventually come home to roost. Prosecutors will tell you that the cover-up is often far more criminal than the crime. That might be the case in southwest Manatee County where denial seems to have been the only tool used to fix groundwater contamination. Meanwhile, without answers, graduates of Bayshore High School's original building are left to wonder what role their exposure to the school's environment played in 73 deaths and a multitude of other diseases that are plaguing its alumni at an alarmingly high rate.

Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Budgets are moral documents." I guess the same goes for priorities as well. We all have a list of what means most, what's closest to our hearts and which goals we embrace. We live, knowing full well that life isn't a wishlist.

But there are far too many people from the Bayshore area in southwest Manatee County, who worked at or attended the old Bayshore High School, united in their wishlist for answers as to why family members died from cancer at a rate many times the national average.

Last May, TBT's Dennis Maley wrote a column describing the eerie circumstances that surround the unthinkably high cancer rate associated with Bayshore High School alumni who attended school at the old building.

Many of the alumni believe their relatives and co-workers who have died from similar cancers, and those who still suffer from the same diseases are associated with leaking underground fuel tanks on the old BHS property. Those tanks include some found to be leaking at the county's former Vo-Tech school and community college, abutting the property.

Many of those affected didn't have any family history of the rare cancers that were killing them, and many died before the connection to each others' sickness could be made. There are still many questions to how those circumstances took so long to be recognized and whether there might have been a deliberate effort to cover them up.

In fact, the anomalies (missing records, missing tanks, missing receipts, missing work orders, insufficient testing and missing memories) surrounding this 12-year search to find the truth, continue to escalate.

Coincidence or environment?

The gripping number diagnosed with cancer, an anomaly that first started getting the attention of family members a decade and a half ago, quickly became a piece of a puzzle that drew a clear picture; what they all had in common was their attendance or employment at BHS during the years prior to it being demolished in 1999.

In 1999, Terri Leigh Lumsden Jewell died of Myelogenic Leukemia. Jewell graduated from BHS in 1979, but it was soon discovered Terri's disease was not a rarity.

In 2003, Cheryl Lumsden Jozsa, Jewell's sister, heard about other cases and looked into the possibility of a connection. One of those was Bruce Bell, who died of Myelogenic Leukemia. He too was a 1999 BHS Alumni; it was at this point Jozsa's search for the truth began.

School board documents pertinent to the when and where contamination was found were missing. Some board meeting minutes had been recreated, while others were scanned in from originals. Supplemental school board minutes that were stored on the school microfiche were missing completely for the years 1995-99, (the years multiple tanks at BHS, Vo-Tech and MCC were removed after discovered leaks). Questions as to why were typically met with either silence or contradicting explanations. When files are reported missing, and they were in this case, the policy is to submit this form. There wasn't any report found for missing school board records.

It seems no one in the county knew where BHS was getting its potable water supply from prior to 1998. Documents later revealed there were wells on the property. Were students drinking water and taking showers from groundwater wells that could have been contaminated? Were sprinklers delivering it onto the grass where they played? Again, instead of answers, Jozsa routinely was met with information that only raised more questions.

As Jozsa's search continued, other revealing documents began to surface.

¥ There is an 8/31/1995 inter-office memo from Forrest Branscomb, Risk Manager for Manatee County Schools, stating that Ed Ponder informed him that the 10,000 gallon underground storage tank at Bayshore High School was leaking and should be removed as soon as possible.

¥ On 11/9/1995, Branscomb (who is deceased) sent a letter to the Manatee School Board stating that he and Beth Andrews conducted a walk-through inspection of the Vo-Tech (later re-named Manatee Technical Institute), It stated, "Items that must be corrected immediately because they put us in a non-compliance posture with DEP and may result in monetary fines or penalties É Immediately label all containers stored in this area as to what they contain so they can be properly disposed. If a container has an unknown material, mark the container with the words, "Unknown". A waste oil contractor should be contacted immediately to pick up used oil and petroleum product drums." As if none were familiar with the protocols.

In 2007, then State Representative Bill Galvano (now a state senator), was convinced to get involved with the BHS contamination issue. He met with some of the Bayshore group, asked them for medical records, convened a town hall meeting and said he wanted to get to the bottom of the issue.

Galvano later requested soil tests, and when the results were in, he said nothing was conclusive, but that he wanted to look further into the issue. He assured the group he would compile a database and look for answers.

That was the last time any in the group heard from Galvano, according to the members I spoke with. Galvano didn't respond to my attempts for a interview, but his assistant returned my call and said the Senator couldn't get many of the medical records from those in the group, and that they were being represented by a lawyer who told his clients not to hand over their medical records.

Whether or not that was a reason to let the case go cold, Galvano (or any other interested public official) could still request a broader, more comprehensive exploration of the property. Someone could insist on tests out to the property perimeter, far beyond the small, restrictive area around one of the tank sites that was used for the 2007 soil tests, which Jozsa suspects captured mostly fill dirt used to replace the hole left after the tank was excavated (the depth of the samples were no more than six feet). The nearby trees could also be cored for toxic substances.

Addressing the 'Cancer Cluster' puzzle

When an area is suspect to possibly being what is called a cancer cluster, the qualification is not decided by using a select number of people within a suspected area; it encumbers everyone within a proximity which is dictated by the circumstances of the area and disease/diseases.

There were not any mailers sent out by the district or the county's health department to the present and past alumni, and thus far, the results have been limited to self-reporting, making it even harder to know the true scope of the anomaly. This seems odd, given the incident rate and rarity of the cancer cases, assuming those looking for the answers really wanted to find them.

I could find no evidence of notices having been put in the mailbox of local residents either, alerting them to the possibility of contaminated groundwater. People seldom know when they actually have contact with carcinogens, and it takes years for repercussions to manifest, which is also the reason it is so easy for those who would be responsible to throw up their hands and ask, how can we be sure it was actually our toxins that caused the effect?

It would be ludicrous for anyone to believe it is possible to accurately assess the percentage of those stricken by a disease without knowing the proper number of those exposed and being tested for that disease. What does seem abundantly clear, however, is that no one in any official capacity seems to have been particularly eager to get to the bottom of this toxic mess.

All clusters start out as one

There are 283 entries of death, sickness and various maladies in the BHS group's stats database, including 73 cancer deaths, 121 cancer illnesses, 46 auto-immune disorders and 44 rare birth defects among offspring of the alumni, not to mention how many might be included were they to know more than what has been self reported, or about those who lived in the adjacent neighborhood or went to the other two schools (Vo-Tech and community college) that abutted the property. It appears public officials didn't want to connect the dots.

The inaccuracies, omissions, miscalculations and blunders that surround this issue are nothing less than an embarrassment that continues to shame us all. Local government officials–particularly the school board–as well as others who know that more time has been spent dodging the responsibilities to this tragedy than in protecting those that have suffered most owe these citizens along with their families and loved ones much more.