Best of 2015: A Dark Bayshore High School Reunion: Part Two

The first part of A Dark Bayshore High School Reunion identified some of the omissions and blunders, the missing records and memories and the alleged dereliction of duty by those who are paid to protect us from toxic environments like the one that may have taken the lives of countless students and staff of the old Bayshore High.

"It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are responsible." – John Baptiste Moliere

Further investigation into the circumstances of this case reveal more deaths possibly related to Bayshore, while connecting the Vo-Tech school, community college and local residents. All of these properties have recorded leaks in the many underground tanks that each used, and the schools are known to have shared the water supply wells.

In a report on the former Bayshore property, David Woodhouse, P.G., CPG of Woodhouse Geosciences, advised, "Liquids such as oil, diesel fuel, and any unknown chemicals stored at the former Bayshore High School (BHS) or nearby buildings in the area that include the Vo-Tech School, and the Manatee County College will migrate from any leaking tank."

More from Woodhouse:

"A well at the BHS or the other nearby schools will develop a cone of depression which will suck in water and any contaminants. The intrinsic velocity of the water is exacerbated by any well. The size of the cone is a function of both depth and the amount of precipitation available. The limestone in the area is porous and fractured and acts as a conduit for the migration of contaminants to the environmental receptor which in this case is any person consuming contaminated water. Benzene, as an example of a chemical present in oil and gas, is a Level A carcinogen."

One well in question for contamination lies under the tennis court. It is a six inch well that wasn't brought to the attention of Earth Systems, a geological consulting firm that was brought on in 2007 to test the ground where the 10,000 gallon fuel tank was removed in October 1995.

This tank was reported leaking (1995 inter-office memos from Forrest Branscomb), and ordered to be removed ASAP. When I recently talked to a senior representative at Earth Systems, he had no idea there was a well underneath the tennis court on school property; nor why anyone would seal a very expensive six-inch well with a tennis court.

On November 15, 2007, Earth Systems spoke with Todd Henson, Director of Maintenance for the Manatee County School District. Henson indicated the school had two wells used to irrigate the athletic fields: one six-inch diameter well located beneath the tennis courts, and one four inch located just east of the current fence line in the vicinity of the former school.

Records also show Earth Systems contacted Mike Pendley, Executive Planner for the Manatee County School District, on November 13, 2007. Mr. Pendley indicated Bayshore High School was connected to Municipal portable water before 1998, but he didn't have an exact date.

Woody Clay of the Manatee County Public Works Department indicated Bayshore High School was connected to public water, sewer and solid waste during April 1998. The high school was connected to reclaimed water during October 2005. Clay said he didn't have any information relating to what water source the high school was using for irrigation prior to 2005 or drinking water prior to 1998.

But testing top-soil in 2007 for contamination that happened prior to the 1995 removal of a leaking tank–especially considering imported fill dirt was used to plug the 10,000 gallon tank hole–may have been pointless; unless of course one's intent is to prove a negative.

Most of those diagnosed with the variety of cancers that have plagued the BHS alumni were first diagnosed in the years 1995-2009. It would be logical to assume that if contamination led to the ailments, their exposure would have been somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 15 years prior. Many from the 1979 BHS class were determined to have advanced cases of cancer from 1995-2009; and then later died.

In the six weeks I spent researching this series, at least three people with ties to the property have died. Manatee School Board Member Mary Cantrell passed away July 12, from bone cancer. Dr. Cantrell was the head of the district's vocational school (formerly Manatee Vo-tech and Manatee Technical Institute, now Manatee Technical College) and spent nearly two decades on the campus. Ryan Silverman passed away June 1, from Ewing's sarcoma, and on July 15, Elaine Appel Lasher passed away from leukemia.

Lasher, like so many others who have passed away, was a graduate of the BHS class of '79. Many of the 73 who have perished had one of these three rare diseases; and that's just of the ones we know of. In fact, when Lasher was diagnosed in 1995, she was one of only 75 in the entire United States with that kind of cancer.

More from Woodhouse: "All contaminants in the body have a target organ and suppress the body's immune system causing uncommon and rare diseases normally fought off by the body. The number of affected persons at the BHS is significant and in my opinion is indicative of a cancer cluster. I further conclude that the BHS well is either sucking in contamination from a source at the BHS itself or from leaking tanks in the area including the former Vo-Tech and County College."

To date, there have been a total of 15 underground tanks found at the three properties, all within a stone's throw of each other; three known to have stored gasoline (two at Vo-Tech and one at Manatee Community College). When removed, two at the Vo-Tech were reported to have holes drilled in the bottoms.

In the 1962 records, it speaks of an eight-inch well being installed, but that could not be found in any other documents. It remains suspect to contamination, as does the six-inch well under the tennis court. Locating those wells and testing residue might tell a story.

Reasons as to why the Manatee School Board ordered the old BHS building to be demolished in 1999 could not be found. It was in the years 1995-99 that cases of cancer started to appear at an alarming rate, coinciding with the removal of underground tanks along with the capping of wells (tennis court). One could easily imagine that during this period, dialogue about all of these occurrences dominated the discourse at school board meetings.

Coincidentally, all of the microfiche transcripts of the school board meetings for that same time period are missing, without the required forms for lost documents.

Of the more than 1,400 pages of documents (consider hundreds are missing from the files) examined for this series, too many have been rewritten, missing and otherwise recreated, to make any accurate assessment that determines why so many could have gotten so sick and so few did so little about it.

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. All of these are off the map in comparison to national averages.

Nowhere did any public official initiate a coordinated effort to connect the dots and find out what was really going on; no searching cancer databases, public announcements or notification to the possibility of contaminated groundwater. This challenges environmental laws as well as common sense.

Budgets are moral documents, and I believe it would be unconscionable to do anything less then serve these families with what should have been available to them as soon as the numbers of deaths started to zoom by the national average. More simply stated, public officials ought to want to know what happened at BHS as much as they want a rowing park.