Cancer cases raise worry in Pittston neighborhood

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Turin By Andrew Staub (Staff Writer)
Published: May 21, 2011

It seems everybody who lives near Chuck Meninchini is sick.

The radius of disease circles Mill Street and Carroll Street in Pittston, Meninchini’s hometown.

In a one-block radius on the streets five people have brain cancer, Meninchini said. And there’s more. Fifteen people in the area, Meninchini said, suffer from esophageal cancer.

“How rare is that?” he said.

All told, more than 80 families include somebody who is battling cancer, Meninchini said. He’s one of them, diagnosed with lymphoma in February.

Meninchini believes there’s a connection. Namely, the Butler Mine Tunnel. It was built before the 1930s to provide mine drainage for the maze of underground coal mines that run under the small city, but eventually became an illegal dumping ground for millions of gallons of oil waste collected by a nearby service station.

The Butler Mine Tunnel runs near Meninchini’s homes on 200 Carroll St., eventually discharging into the Susquehanna River. Meninchini believes whole-heartedly the sludge that has built up below caused his cancer and the diseases of those around him.

“You’re talking two streets. It doesn’t make sense to me,” Meninchini said. “If something wasn’t going on, prove me different. Show me where it’s coming from.”

Meninchini’s doctor, he said, told him exposure to benzene caused his cancer.

According to records from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency the Pittston Mine Tunnel spewed an oily discharge into the Susquehanna River on July 30, 1979. Contaminants from the oil slick stretched from shoreline to shoreline, the records indicate, and drifted 60 miles downstream to Danville.

Responding to the emergency, the EPA installed booms on the river and collected 160,000 gallons of oil waste. The booms also collected 13,000 pounds of dichlorobenzene, a chemical used to make herbicides, insecticides, medicine and dyes, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry.

The particular type of dichlorobenzene found in the river has not been tested to see if it can cause cancer, according to the agency. Another type of the chemical, though, “could play a role in the development of cancer in humans, but we do not definitely know this,” the agency concluded in its public health statement about dichlorobenzene.

In 1985, after heavy rains associated with Hurricane Gloria, the Butler Mine Tunnel spewed another 100,000 gallons of oily waste into the river and prompted another boom cleanup.

While the EPA has not connected the rash of cancer to the Butler Mine Tunnel, Meninchini wonders if chemicals eventually worked their way into the soil and into the vegetables people ate, he said. He wonders if he was exposed to any chemicals while working as a plumber in the city.

Answers – which Meninchini said have been tough to extract from government officials – might come next week.

State and federal officials have scheduled an open house for Tuesday to discuss the Butler Mine Tunnel. Representatives from the EPA, the Pennsylvania Department of Health and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, among others, will attend the event at the Martin L. Mattei Middle School on New Street in Pittston.

The open house runs from 4 to 6 p.m. with a presentation and follow-up session afterwards. Postcards detailing the event were mailed to about 1,500 homes in the vicinity of the tunnel, and Meninchini expects plenty of residents to show up. A woman from Connecticut, he said, even called him about it.

Until then, Meninchini continues to fight his cancer. The lymphoma, which originally riddled his stomach, pancreas, liver and spleen, has been beaten back in some places, but Meninchini said he was recently diagnosed with colon cancer and faces surgery.

Meninchini can’t work anymore, and he’s blown through his savings and cashed in his 401(k) to fund the thousands of dollars of medical expenses not covered by insurance.

Meninchini doesn’t want to get rich by publicizing the cancer outbreak – he just wants people’s health expenses financed, he said.

This week, friends and family have organized a “night-at-the-races” fundraiser to offset some of Meninchini’s health care costs – it runs from 2 to 7 p.m. Sunday at the Italian Citizens Club in Pittston and includes food, drink and a wager.

An EPA official who oversees the Butler Mine Tunnel did not return a phone call seeking comment.

astaub@citizensvoice.com, 570-821-2052