Letter to Henry Waxman From Injured Workers and Family Members On The Downey Toxic Dump Site

Open Letter By Downey Injured Movie and Kasier Workers To LA Congressman and Democratic House Chair Of Energy and Commerce Committee Henry Waxman

August 24, 2009

Congressman Henry Waxman

Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, United States Congress

8436 West Third Street Ste 600.

Los Angeles, CA 90048

Dear Congressman Waxman,

We are a group of movie and Kaiser workers who have worked at the former military/NASA dump site in Downey, California. In the past, a number of us have sent your office a large amount of material showing that this site was not properly cleaned up by the developer Stuart Lichter and that there is a pattern of workers becoming injured and sick as a result of the failure to properly clean up the site.

We have also been in touch with your former counsel Robin Applebery who is a counsel on the Super Fund issues and was with the Government Operations Oversight Committee you were formerly chair of. She also was provided with substantial information about the failure of the clean-up and the continuing health and safety dangers at the sight and also the transfer through cost shifting of the developer and insurance industry costs to the State and Federal government. We are calling for an immediate NIOSH epidemiological study on all workers and community people who have been on the site or lived near the site. At a recent press conference we held a movie actor who was recently on the site this June had pimples and many of the symptoms similar to the many other workers who have been made ill by this site. The Los Angeles Times has also recently covered the systemic health problems of a group of workers who worked on different movie production and were sickened by the same conditions some of which are known as the "Downey Flu". You can find this at http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-downey2-2009aug02,0,5980999.story if you have not read the article we suggest you take a look at it.

We still want the opportunity to meet with you to go over these issues and are asking for Congressional Hearings on the privatization of Superfund US/Military sites into "Brownfield" sites and possible criminal prosecution of developers like Stuart Lichter who are violating their agreements to properly clean up the toxic dump sites before they are developed.

We also ask that you as chair of the US House Committee On Energy and Commerce request from all insurance companies in the United States workers compensation and personal insurance claims that have been made by workers and community people at toxic dump sites, the acceptance or rejection of these claims and how many of there workers and people in the community are now having their healthcare costs being paid for by SSI or other US government agencies. We believe this would provide extensive evidence of the cost shifting by the developers and insurance companies at these "Brownfield" and Superfund toxic dump sites onto the US government.

We believe that in your present position as Chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee of the US Congress allows you to hold hearings on this issue for the people of Los Angeles as well as people of the United States where there are many other toxic dump sites that have similar conditions.

Please let us know when we can meet with you and provide you with our stories for action by your office.

Sincerely yours,



____________________________________________________

LEONARD JAMES MARTIN (Downey Studios Movie Worker)

http://letsintroduceourselves.us/wordpress/

Endorsed by

Gail Shephard, Steve Basile, Skye Ashley, Bruce Norrbom, Steve Kline, Jeff Ostray