A group of north Mississippians have filed a negligence lawsuit in federal court claiming that pollution their former employer released into the air, groundwater and soil near the Water Valley facility where they worked inflicted them with long-term symptoms such as cancer and Parkinson’s disease.
Plaintiffs Odester Andrews, Excell Vance, Josephine Martin, Eddie Foster, Billy Harris, Joan Berryhill, Patricia Camp, and Clayfers Walton all used to work at the carburetor manufacturer, now owned by North Carolina company EnPro Industries, Inc.
“It’s well known that this is a dangerous chemical, and yet we were exposed to dangerous levels, and they polluted the land and drinking water with it,” Vance, 69, said. “The harm that they caused to my life, my family, and this community is unspeakable.”
The lawsuit filed Tuesday says the business, at the time owned by Coltec Industries, used a “vapor degreaser” it bought from another company, Detrex Corp., to clean debris and oil from car parts. The degreaser contained a toxic chemical called trichloroethylene, or TCE, the complaint says, a substance the Environmental Protection Agency is now working to ban.
A map of the Coltec facility included in Tuesday’s lawsuit, showing the plume of TCE around the facility.
TCE has been around for decades, and is mostly used in degreasers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but is also an ingredient in “adhesives, paint removers, typewriter correction fluids, and spot removers.” TCE is a known carcinogen, the CDC says, and the National Cancer Institute specifically links prolonged exposure to TCE with kidney cancer.
The complaint lists EnPro, Detrex, and Italmatch Chemicals — an Italian company that bought Detrex in 2017 — as defendants. Mississippi Today reached out to EnPro for comment but did not hear back.
Coltec used the degreaser containing TCE from 1972 to 1986, according to state enforcement records. All except one of the eight plaintiffs worked at the facility during that time. The other plaintiff, Andrews, was exposed to TCE either through drinking water or from breathing vapors at the facility, the lawsuit claims. Seven of the plaintiffs have some form of cancer, and other diagnoses among the group include Parkinson’s disease and kidney disease.
Coltec, the lawsuit claims, did not have a plan for disposing its TCE waste. The complaint details an incident where Coltec told an employee to dump TCE waste in a ditch behind the facility and, the next day, an employee told their supervisor that they saw about 20 dead turtles in the same ditch. The lawsuit also claims the company told employees to spray TCE in the parking lot to kill weeds.
In 1988, Coltec and the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality sampled two water wells, one the company used and the other a “domestic” well near the facility, MDEQ records show. The samples revealed TCE levels above 5 parts per billion, or ppb, the limit set by the Environmental Protection Agency. Two years later, MDEQ ordered the company to investigate the extent of and then remediate its pollution of TCE into the nearby groundwater.
But for years the harmful chemical remained present in the nearby air and groundwater. Testing from 2017 at monitoring wells near the facility shows TCE levels as high as 13,200 ppb in the groundwater, shattering the EPA limit. Around the same time, TCE levels in the air inside the facility also surpassed the EPA action level, the Clarion Ledger reported.
Also in 2017, then-Attorney General Jim Hood filed a lawsuit against the company seeking repayment of cleanup costs incurred by the state. The two sides reached a settlement in 2020.
Last October, the EPA proposed banning the use of TCE in manufacturing. The agency said it’s suggesting an exemption to the ban for “battery separators” because they’re critical to the economy and don’t yet have a substitute for TCE.
Data from National Cancer Institute, which was cited in the lawsuit, show that Yalobusha County, where Water Valley is, has seen the biggest rise in cancer diagnoses over the last five years of any county in the state.
NCAA Super Regionals are this weekend, but Mississippi will not be represented for the first time in a while. Both Mississippi State and Southern Miss lost out in the finals of their prospective regionals. The Clevelands discuss all that, plus venerable Coastal Carolina coach Gary Gilmore’s parting words to college baseball.
An attempt to reform Mississippi’s lax, antiquated and jacked-up campaign finance laws went over like a lead balloon with lawmakers in this year’s legislative session, with Republicans and Democrats alike gutting and deriding the reform bill before killing it.
So, that leaves the Magnolia State where it was, right? Weak laws. Little transparency for voters or enforcement for wrongdoers. Our government susceptible to the corrosive influence of secretive big-money special interests.
No. It’s worse.
In her eleventh-hour hop onto the reform bandwagon, Attorney General Lynn Fitch, the state’s top law officer, publicly opined, in writing, that she can’t legally enforce the laws we do have. Oh, and that a $1,000 a year limit on out-of-state corporate donations to our politicians that everyone believed was law for at least the last 30 years is null and void under her new interpretation. She put that part of her press release in italics, for emphasis.
Fitch’s last-minute joinder of calling for reform was seen as deflection of the flak she was receiving for not enforcing what many, including Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, believed were flagrant violations of laws already on the books during last year’s statewide elections. Millions of dollars in dark money poured into Mississippi campaigns and some candidates appeared to thumb their noses at what rules we do have.
Many chalked up Fitch’s inaction on the complaints to not wanting to ruffle political feathers or sour relationships with potential donors for her own future political ambitions.
Despite Fitch lamenting, “We’re allowing out-of-state influencers to determine and to pick who the candidates should be in our state … (and) We’ve got to have enforcement …,” a Mississippi Today analysis of her own campaign finance reports showed a majority of her campaign money came from out-of-state businesses: about $727,000 of $1.27 million.
Also, Fitch appears to receive lots of money from out-of-state interests to whom she awards AG office contracts. Records show she signed at least nine AG contracts last year with out-of-state law firms that had donated more than $300,000 to her campaign.
There has never been traction in the Mississippi Legislature for “pay-to-play” campaign donation prohibitions like other states have enacted.
Fitch, the only official with clear legal authority to investigate and enforce campaign finance violations, in her Feb. 6 press release appeared to throw in the towel on her office enforcing current laws: “Last year, we were asked to investigate several instances of clearly unethical and immoral campaign behavior. But we discovered they were not criminal under our current laws.”
So, what now?
Secretary of State Michael Watson helped lead the push for reform along with Hosemann and Senate Elections Chairman Jeremy England, R-Vancleave. The three have vowed to continue that push next legislative session.
In the meantime, Watson said he will continue to forward suspected violations to the AG’s office, as the law prescribes. And, he said, he will continue to tell candidates there is (note the italics) a $1,000 a year limit on donations from both in-state and out-of-state corporations. He said this limit will remain in the written campaign finance guide the secretary of state’s office has provided candidates for decades.
It’s noteworthy that despite her Feb. 6 interpretation that no such limit applies to out-of-state corporations, Fitch appeared to think it did in August of 2023. After months of inaction on major campaign finance complaints, she announced then that she would investigate whether a PAC run by unsuccessful lieutenant governor candidate Chris McDaniel’s campaign treasurer tried “exceeding corporate contribution limits” by shuffling out-of-state money through PACs.
“We are going to continue along the lines we have practiced for years and years,” Watson said. “… And, we are not going to stop, we are going to keep pushing for campaign finance reform.
“I don’t have prosecutorial authority,” Watson said. “I can’t prosecute so I have to have a willing and able attorney general working with me.”
Watson could hand off suspected campaign finance violations to local district attorneys. But Watson’s office said that DAs typically would refer such misdemeanors down to county prosecutors, who don’t have the resources to investigate or prosecute such violations. Plus, such complaints are often about districtwide or statewide candidates, often running in areas that extend beyond the jurisdiction of a county prosecutor or DA.
Watson said he believes current statute and definitions and decades of practice uphold the $1,000 limit and that other campaign finance laws — while in need of an overhaul — could still be enforced by the AG. But he did question her comments early this year.
“That was an interesting statement on her behalf, perhaps to dodge a little,” Watson said. “… If folks rely on her position, I do think it opens the door for outside dollars to flow in.”
Lawmakers have not only been loath to strengthen campaign finance laws and increase penalties, they’ve not wanted to provide offices such as the secretary of state or the Ethics Commission clear duties on collecting finance and other reports and enforcing deadlines. Such laws have been piecemealed and tweaked over many years in the name of reform, but now they often conflict, with one part of statute giving Ethics a responsibility, another saying the same responsibility belongs to the secretary of state’s office.
Watson has said he’s not not seeking more power for his office, but last year said, “… when people do not do their jobs, I will stand in the gap for Mississippians,” which appeared to be a dig at Fitch and a call for someone to be responsible for campaign finance enforcement.
Also, lawmakers have shown they not only don’t want stronger campaign finance rules and enforcement, they don’t want the citizenry to even be able to clearly see who donates to candidates and how much.
Most other states, including all those surrounding Mississippi, have searchable campaign finance databases. One can, for instance, type in the name of a donor and see all the campaigns to which the person donated and how much.
Setting up such data would not require Mississippi candidates learn any real computer skills — they could simply type in donation information into fields in a form on the secretary of state’s website.
But lawmakers have shot down any effort to require such electronic campaign finance reports, including this year when Watson pitched it as part of his proposed reforms. Instead, Mississippi politicians can still file paper reports and hand-write them, which many still do with varying degrees of legibility. While Watson’s office puts reports online, they are PDFs — pictures of pages that a citizen would have to go through page by page to tally donations. Cross referencing donors across all campaigns or even inspection to make sure the reports were filled out properly would be a daunting task.
While lawmakers shot down England’s reform bill, with many voicing dismay at the inclusion of an online campaign finance filing requirement, the Legislature did approve $3.9 million for an overhaul of the secretary of state’s computer system. Watson said he believes he can still move forward on developing such a filing system, although he said he would still require legislative approval to make electronic filing mandatory.
“The (request for proposals) for that system is going out in June, and it will have a platform for online campaign finance reporting,” Watson said. “… I think we will get there eventually. I think we can educate (lawmakers) on how simple it will be to use.”
Watson said he knows campaign finance reform and strengthening laws and penalties is a tough sell in the Legislature, but he believes change will come eventually. He noted that despite England’s bill being shot down, “There were a large number of legislators who commented it was the right thing to do.”
He said eventually, campaign finance authority should be centralized, even if it’s not under his office.
“I have no problem with that whatsoever,” Watson said recently. “That’s what we told the Legislature — just centralize campaign finance under one roof. Mississippians deserve it. I don’t want more authority, but I want the law to be followed.”
Few observers, if any, would argue that of all the so-called major college sports, baseball has remained the least affected by money and greed. It has remained closest to the college ideal, meaning the least professional in nature. College baseball has had the most level playing field.
Baseball is the one sport in which small market teams such as Mississippi State and Ole Miss could win back-to-back national championships. It is the one sport in which a so-called mid-major school like Coastal Carolina could recruit and develop a team that could win a national championship as it did in 2016 — or in which another Sun Belt team, Southern Miss, could host back-to-back NCAA Super Regionals as it did in 2022-23.
Rick Cleveland
But we are watching the nature of college baseball change before our eyes.
This is not a good thing.
You don’t have to take it from me. Gary Gilmore, the retiring coach who led Coastal Carolina to that national championship, sounded an alarm over the weekend after his team lost to Clemson in the finals of an NCAA Regional. Gilmore should be considered an expert on the matter. He coached his teams to 1,369 victories, which computes to an average of more than 40 wins a season for 34 seasons.
Gilmore was asked about the state of college baseball, and he didn’t mince words.
“I’ll use this analogy, and this is what’s wrong,” Gilmore said. “If Major League Baseball, the NBA, and the NFL had a system where everyone was a free agent every year, do you realize what chaos there would be? It would go away. You wouldn’t have those three sports. If you did, in baseball it would be the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Dodgers, Texas, and the rest of the teams couldn’t compete because they would spend whatever amount of money they needed to do it. And that’s what’s going on right now. I mean, there’s not a level playing field. It’s just ridiculous to me.”
“There has to be a better way,” Gilmore continued. “It’s not just who can raise the most money and give it away. There has to be a better way because, like I said, professional sports would go in the toilet in a hurry if we used this system. I mean, me as a college coach, this is what I have to deal with. You can sign your returning players to a scholarship, which binds you to them, but they can come out in July and go, ‘I’m gonna go in the portal. I’m up at the Cape (League), and someone’s gonna give me a big NIL deal. You were held accountable, coach. You had to honor that scholarship you gave me, but now I’m going to go in the portal and leave you hanging.’ That’s a messed-up system. I hope somebody fixes it. I’m gonna be honest with you, that part I’m going to enjoy not having to mess with.”
We’ve seen this play out — almost precisely as Gilmore states — here in Mississippi. The prime example: In July of 2022, Hurston Waldrep transferred from Southern Miss to Florida during the last week of the transfer portal period. Scott Berry, then the USM head coach, was left high and dry with no time to replace Waldrep by with another pitcher in the portal. Berry thought he had his pitching rotation in place. He thought wrong.
So what happened? Well, Waldrep helped pitch Florida into the College World Series championship series. Southern Miss, on the other hand, came up one victory short of making it to Omaha. You could make a case that Florida would not have gotten to Omaha without Waldrep, and that he would have been the difference maker that put Southern Miss in the College World Series for only the second time in school history.
In his first season as USM head coach in a proverbial rebuilding year, Christian Ostrander replaced six everyday starters, an All American starting pitcher and an All American closer, and still won 43 games and a conference tournament championship and made it to a regional final. There’s no time to celebrate said accomplishments because Ostrander must now stave off poachers who would love nothing better than to steal some of the talent with offers of high-dollar NIL packages.
Every college athlete is now a free agent every year. Gilmore is right. It would not work in professional sports. It won’t work in college athletics. It is a system that is not sustainable.
Most Mississippi Republican politicians quickly took to social media this week to defend Donald Trump and to attack the New York justice system after the former president was convicted of 34 felony charges.
The former president was found guilty of charges related to falsifying business records to conceal that just before the 2016 election he paid off porn actress Stormy Daniels to conceal a sexual encounter.
Mississippi politicians, claiming the guilty verdict was politically motivated to harm Trump’s election chances, echoed some of the same attacks they used in 2020 after they falsely claimed, like Trump, that the presidential election was stolen. In 2020, many Mississippi politicians supported the former president’s effort to throw out votes cast by millions of Americans in order to reverse the outcome of the election.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, who twice was endorsed by Trump, said on social media: “The lawless conviction of President Donald Trump only reflects the desperation of President Biden and the corrupt methods he will use to steal this election. I am confident that justice will prevail, and the people of America will not reward the leftwing wannabe dictators abusing our justice system in November.”
Reeves falsely blamed the conviction on President Joe Biden, who defeated Trump in 2020. The pair will most likely face off again in November as both vie for a second term. But Trump was not convicted by the U.S. Department of Justice. The case was brought by state District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who was democratically elected by voters of Manhattan, where Trump has lived for most of his life.
State Sen. Brice Wiggins of Pascagoula, who did not attack the jury verdict, was an exception among Mississippi Republicans on social media.
“All jurors deserve thanks and respect. They are the foundation of the best judicial system in the world (though not perfect).” He added that the Republicans leadership “has a lot of soul searching to do.”
He also posted, “Thomas Jefferson wrote, ‘I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.’”
Some came to Wiggins’ defense on social media, but he was attacked by many for his defense of the jury system. Before being elected to the state Senate, Wiggins served as an assistant district attorney prosecuting criminal cases before juries.
Mississippi U.S. Reps. Trent Kelly and Michael Guest were also local prosecutors before they were elected to Congress, but it did not stop them from attacking the jury verdict.
Kelly, who served as district attorney in northeast Mississippi before being elected to the 1st District U.S. House seat, said on social media: “The verdict against President Trump is a travesty! This action moves us closer to less than a democracy. This political prosecution is a mockery of the American Constitution, and a miscarriage of justice.”
And Guest, who now holds the 3rd District House seat but was previously a district attorney for Madison and Rankin counties, offered similar comments.
“Former President Donld Trump was convicted today on charges that were politically motivated and the evidence presented against him did not arise to the level of reasonable doubt. All Americans are entitled to a fair trial brought by an impartial prosecutor. President Trump was not afforded these fundamental protections and his conviction should be overturned.”
U.S. Rep. Mike Ezell, a former Gulf Coast sheriff, who represents the 4th District in Congress, like Reeves incorrectly blamed the prosecution on federal officials.
“Today’s verdict—and this entire trial—was based in politics, not the law. The Biden Admin. and their allies continue to weaponize our justice system against their political enemies,” Ezell said. “I look forward to seeing this ridiculous, partisan verdict quickly appealed and overturned.”
State Auditor Shad White and state Attorney General Lynn Fitch, like prosecutors, often depend on juries as part of their job.
White said: “Democrats love to talk about how important democracy is, but today we saw a justice system weaponized to undermine democracy. What a travesty. Make America Great Again.”
Fitch said in a statement: “In a New York courtroom, the American legal system was manipulated for political gain and weaponized against former President Trump. The trial only emphasizes the profound partisan divide in the United States and the outcome sets a concerning precedent for future proceedings. I have faith in the rule of law and expect that on appeal justice will prevail even against this brash manipulation.”
In 2020, Fitch’s office joined in a lawsuit that tried to throw out millions of votes in an effort to overturn the election. That lawsuit was quickly dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Secretary of State Michael Watson said: “If they can do it to DJT, they can do it to you. As an aside, if any businesses are looking to get out of NY, our tax structure and regulatory reform measures have Mississippi on the rise. Come on down.”
Andy Gipson, the commissioner of agriculture and commerce, said: “Liberals are coming after conservatives, but I still stand with President Donald J. Trump. Join me in praying for him as he appeals the verdict from a rigged and politically motivated witch hunt of the New York trial. We the voters will have the last word.”
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said simply: “The election is in November. The voters will make the final decision on our president, who will be Donald Trump.”
And state Treasurer David McRae said: “I stand with Trump.”
U.S. Sen, Roger Wicker, who voted to certify the election in 2020 despite Trump’s objections, said: “This prosecution has been an outrageous perversion of our system of justice. Unless reversed, it could set a disturbing precedent in which our courts are weaponized by one party against the other. Today is a dark day for the rule of law.’
And junior U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith posted on X, formerly Twitter, the word “truth” in response to a statement of Senate Republicans criticizing the outcome of the trial.
U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, Mississippi’s highest-ranking Democrat and sole Black member of the state’s congressional delegation, said on social media: “Today’s verdict confirms what we have always known: Donald Trump is a criminal who thinks nothing of breaking the law, or our Constitution, to get what he wants. No one, especially an ex-president, is above the law.”
Thompson, who headed a select committee that looked into the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by those trying to stop the certification of the election and Trump’s role in that attack, added, “Justice has prevailed.”
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Ty Pinkins, who is challenging Wicker in the November general election, criticized the state’s senior senator over his defense of Trump.
“Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felonies,” Pinkins wrote on social media. “(Wicker’s) continued support for Trump is a betrayal of Mississippi’s trust. We deserve leaders who uphold justice and integrity, not those who enable corruption …”
Update: This story has been updated to include comments from U.S. Senate candidate Ty Pinkins.
Rick Cleveland, a columnist and correspondent for Mississippi Today, will be inducted into the Mississippi Press Hall of Fame during the 158th Annual Meeting on June 28 in Biloxi,.
Cleveland, an award-winning journalist who has spent decades chronicling sports in Mississippi, is the first sports journalist to be inducted. He has been recognized 13 times as Mississippi Sports Writer of the Year.
“Rick is one of Mississippi’s most treasured storytellers,” said Mary Margaret White, Mississippi Today CEO and executive director. “We are so proud to see his years of sports journalism recognized with this incredible honor by the Mississippi Press Association.”
A Hattiesburg native, Cleveland graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Southern Mississippi. He went on to work at the Hattiesburg American, Monroe (La.) News Star World, Jackson Daily News and Clarion Ledger as a reporter, editor and columnist.
After leaving the Clarion-Ledger in 2012, he served for several years as executive director of the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame. His work as a syndicated columnist and sports writer has appeared in magazines, periodicals and newspapers. He is the author of four books. His latest, the “Mississippi Football Book,” was published in 2023.
New federal funding announced in April will help bolster Mississippi’s efforts to track down potential orphan wells, the State Oil & Gas Board says.
Orphan wells, most of which were used for oil or gas production, are wells no longer in use but have no record of ownership or the company that dug them no longer exists. In an effort to ensure those wells have no oil or methane leaks, the federal government is spending $4.7 billion through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The U.S. Department of Interior announced $6.8 million for Mississippi on April 24, which is on top of $5 million the state got in initial funding.
“Many of these wells pose serious health and safety threats by contaminating surface and groundwater, releasing toxic air pollutants, and leaking methane – a ‘super pollutant’ that is a significant cause of climate change and many times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere,” an Interior Department press release said.
The state’s orphan well program has been around for decades, the Oil & Gas Board explained to Mississippi Today. Usually the board pays for the program with money it collects from the oil industry, but the new federal funds means the Board doesn’t have to wait to build up that pot of money. So far, the state has plugged 473 wells, according to the board’s database, most of which are in the southwest part of Mississippi.
While there are just seven known orphan wells the state still has to plug — three in Walthall County, three in Wilkinson County, and one in Wayne County — there are about 340 others that are potentially orphaned but are missing records, the database shows. The Board will use the federal funding to plug the known wells, as well as track down the others to make sure they were plugged properly.
Jess New, the board's executive director, said the federal grant gives the agency five years to conduct the work.
"With the funds provided, the (board) will seek to further identify, locate, characterize and rank orphan well sites, while continuing its efforts to plug, remediate and restore the locations on which those wells exist," New said in an e-mail.
To plug a well, New explained, the agency has to remove any piping or casing that was left inside, and then inject mud and a cement plug to seal it off. The new funding is also for "remediating" the wells by cleaning the sites and removing any old equipment that was left behind.
A photo from the State Oil & Gas Board of an orphaned well in Jefferson County.
David Snodgrass, lead geologist for the board, said that part of the process is finding exactly where the old wells are, including many that are in the Jackson area.
"Literally there's one underneath our building," Snodgrass said. "We can't do anything about that. When things get built on top of something, it is what it is at that point."
He explained that many of the older wells have coordinates shown on hand-drawn maps, but contractors with the right technology — such as a magnetometer, a ground-penetrating radar, or lidar — can find the wells as long as they know the general area.
