The Calhoun County Health Department will announce today a model program, funded by the Centers for Disease Control, to assess environmental health concerns, including PCBs, for the entire county.
Regional public health administrator Donald Bain said Tuesday he feels the program is long overdue, especially with regard to PCB contamination in western Anniston and the local waterways.
Bain will announce the program to community activists and officials during a 10 a.m.-noon meeting today at the health department in Anniston, headquarters for the regional public health office. He will hold a second meeting this afternoon to discuss the program with officials from state and federal agencies, including the CDC and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
"It's taken lawsuits and a lot of press just to get (PCBs) on the radar screen," Bain said Tuesday.
He said the program will be funded by the CDC at a cost of $141,500.
Bain said his goal for the two-year program, is to launch a dedicated team of community leaders who will respond to any environmental health concerns that develop in the county - whether it be smoking, poor nutrition, incinerator emissions, agricultural pollution or toxic chemical exposures.
"All communities should have something like this," Bain said.
The program is called the Protocol for Assessing Community Excellence in Environmental Health (PACE-EH), and it has been used by public health agencies in nine communities across the United States. The function of the program is to:
Characterize and evaluate local environmental health problems.
Identify populations at risk for environmental hazards.
Identify and collect environmental health data.
Set priorities for local activities to address the problems.
Although the program will have staff support from the county health department and funding from the Centers for Disease Control, it will be led by a group of 12 or more community leaders and activists. PCB litigants will not be excluded from membership, Bain said.
"The community needs to pick the people to represent them," he said.
Local activist Shirley Baker said she plans to learn about the program today and then go back to the people who are involved with her western Anniston group, Community Against Pollution, "to get feedback."
CDC spokeswoman Susan McClure described the program as a "tool for helping local officials work with the public to assess and improve the environmental health status of their communities."
While it has never been used at a PCB-polluted site before, she said the program will help "standardize efforts and provide guidance" for the community regarding the various activities by agencies, community groups and industries that address environmental health issues in Anniston.
Bain said he wants the program to delve into potential environmental health risks that haven't yet been resolved by the regulatory PCB cleanup process and the ongoing litigation.
"We are going to be stuck with this for years," he said. "What it boils down to is, we are the ones who live here."
