KINDER MORGAN WATCH

Thanks to Reno Gazette-Journal and Falloncancercrisis.org

http://www.falloncancercrisis.org/

May 1991: Rachel Posey is diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) two weeks after moving from Fallon to Michigan.May 1991: Rachel Posey is diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) two weeks after moving from Fallon to Michigan.

November 1992: Matthew Minnis, a former Fallon resident, is diagnosed with ALL in Florida.

1997: A Fallon child is diagnosed with ALL. The diagnosis isn’t unusual, as ALL strikes about three children per 100,000.

May 1998: 6 months shy of his fourteenth birthday, Eric Heavens is diagnosed with ALL.

April 1999: Fallon resident Dustin Gross, 3, is diagnosed with ALL. Another Fallon child is diagnosed later in the year.

July 1999: Stephanie Sands diagnosed in PA with ALL. Her case is later recognized as the 10th confirmed case.

March 30, 2000: Sareynah Rivers, 3, is diagnosed with ALL.

April 2000: Assemblywoman Marcia de Braga, D-Fallon, becomes alarmed after hearing that at least four cases of childhood leukemia have been recently diagnosed in Fallon. She requests a state investigation.

May 2, 2000: Eric Heavens, 15, dies of leukemia.

June 17, 2000: Giselle Garcia, 4, is diagnosed with ALL in Fallon.

June 27, 2000: Nevada health officials announce they are investigating multiple suspected cases of childhood leukemia in the Fallon area. They said the cases involve children ages 3 to 18.

July, 2000: Annastacia Warneke, 6, is diagnosed with ALL.

October, 2000: A 2-year-old Fallon girl is diagnosed with ALL.

November 10, 2000: Zac Beardsley, 5, is diagnosed with ALL.

December 2000: Another child — a 5-year-old boy — is diagnosed with ALL, bringing the total confirmed cases to nine since 1999.

January, 2001: State officials say a preliminary investigation based on a 32-page questionaire given to the patients’ families doesn’t reveal any similarities except that all the families lived in the Fallon area. But the health officials withhold information that three of the families lived in the same state-owned Fallon apartment complex. The 10th and 11th cases in the cluster are confirmed later in the month.

February 12-14, 2001: A Legislative committee chaired by deBraga hears testimony about the leukemia cases and pollution in the Fallon area. The lawmakers call for environmental testing and de Braga asks for $1 million in state funds to investigate the cluster. But the appropriations bill, introduced March 15, dies in the Legislature.

February 23, 2001: Fallon hires a public relations firm for $6,500 per month to deflect negative publicity and provide information about the cluster.

March 3, 2001: State officials confirm a 12th case of leukemia related to Fallon.

March 8, 2001: State officials release an “expert panel report” that says the leukemia cluster probably isn’t random and could be caused by environmental pollutants or a virus.

April 12, 2001: Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, hold a Senate committee hearing in Fallon to investigate the cluster. Committee members and Nevada lawmakers — including Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev. — call for a nationwide disease registry. Reid asks the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to investigate the Fallon cluster.

April 18, 2001: The Reno Gazette-Journal obtains a 1994 federal report documenting radioactivity in the shallow and intermediate water wells in the Fallon area. State investigators were unaware of the report even though copies had been sent to their offices in 1994. Reid and Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., ask the U.S. Geological Survey to resume well tests in the Fallon area.

April 26, 2001: Hailey Johnson, 3, whose parents left Fallon in August 2000, is diagnosed with ALL. She becomes case number 13.

May, 2001: A girl diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia (AML), brings the Fallon cluster total to 14 cases, including the 1997 case. Ten of the Fallon patients go to Disneyland, courtesy of Reno businesses and Rusty Humphries, host of a KOH radio show.

May 13, 2001: A Reno Gazette-Journal investigation of the 44-year-old jet fuel pipeline that runs beneath Fallon shows that above-ground safety features such as electronic testing stations and vent pipes are vandalized or destroyed. Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, the pipeline’s owner, quickly repairs the surface features mentioned in the newspaper’s story. The firm says the pipeline is safe and the above-ground damage has no relation to what’s beneath the soil. The company officials say that the jet fuel pipeline isn’t connected with leukemia or any health-related threat to Fallon.

May 26, 2001: The Reno Gazette-Journal reports that three of the leukemia patients’ families lived in the same state-owned, low-income apartment complex in Fallon. Critics of the state investigation tell reporters the probe is bogged down in politics and bureaucracy.

June 3, 2001: Adam Jernee, 10, a former Fallon resident included in the cluster investigation, dies of leukemia while being treated in Southern California.

June 5, 2001: State health officials hold a public meeting in Fallon to explain their response to the leukemia cluster. They say testing protocols for Fallon are being developed in “weeks instead of months or years,” but critics, including some of the patient families, say investigators have no sense of urgency.

June 6, 2001: Dr. Al Levin and his wife, Dr. Vera Byers, claim that DNA tests can identify which Fallon children are at greatest risk of contracting leukemia. The couple, who worked on a leukemia cluster investigation in Woburn, Mass., continue to insist that the proposed tests are valid, despite criticism from top state officials.

June 7, 2001: Internal memos from the State Health Division obtained by the Gazette-Journal show state officials considered genetic tests, but the proposal was abandoned.

June 10, 2001: State environmental officials fly over and walk along the route of the jet fuel pipeline that runs through Fallon. They see no surface signs of leaks. Tracer Research, a firm hired by the pipeline’s operator, also performs tests using a tracer chemical and pronounces the pipeline intact. State officials accept the finding.

August 2001: Federal health officials gain approval of testing protocols, more than a year after the tests were proposed.

September 1, 2001: Stephanie Sands dies in a Pennsylvania hospital after a two-year battle with ALL.

October 2001: Federal health investigators are scheduled to begin collecting environmental samples in Fallon. The samples include blood, urine and DNA from patient families and control families in Fallon.

October 3, 2001: Tests by the USGS indicate that Fallon wells contain radioactivity and arsenic but no man-made chemicals, solvents or fuels. The results replicate the findings of a 1994 report.

December 23, 2001: The State Health Division confirms a 3-year-old boy is the 15th case of leukemia in Fallon. The diagnosis is the first since May.

December 30, 2001: A Reno Gazette-Journal investigation shows the Nevada Cancer Registry reports less information that it did 10 years ago, even though the registry’s budget has increased nine-fold. Although the registry was initially set up to detect clusters, it is now useless for that purpose and merely collects data without analyzing the statistics, the newspaper’s investigation shows. The state admits the cancer registry probably never would have detected the Fallon cluster.

December 31, 2001: Dr. Mary Guinan resigns as Nevada’s State Health Officer, a move announced in November. The post remains vacant.

January 9, 2002: The Fallon cancer cluster is a topic on the television program “60 Minutes II.”

January 26, 2002: A USGS report reveals that 8 out of 10 Fallon wells exceed the federal standards for arsenic.

January 29, 2002: Mark Witten, a researcher from the University of Arizona, says he is trying to find a link between the Sierra Vista, Arizona childhood leukemia cluster and the Fallon cluster. He suspects JP-8 jet fuel may have something to do with both epidemics.

February 2002: Kennametal-NV, located eleven miles north of the Fallon city limits, smelted tungsten ore in an open air kiln without pollution controls for more than 20 years. The company installed pollution controls in 1994. Tungsten has not been widely studied, but no adverse health effects have been associated with the naturally-occurring heavy metal. Scientists express concern that tungsten from an anthropogenic (unnatural, man-affected) source may indeed be causally linked to the leukemia cluster. Kennametal-NV is also charged with releasing acid wastewater into the desert for 21 years, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency documents. The outflow rate is reported to be 243 gallons per minute.

February 9, 2002: Arizona officials confirm Sierra Vista leukemia cluster has seven patients, one of whom has died. The total would be eight if a girl who moved to Fallon from Sierra Vista (Anna Warneke) and was then diagnosed with leukemia had been counted as an Arizona, not a Nevada, case.

March 22, 2002: Senators Reid and Clinton propose a national disease tracking network to detect and investigate cancer clusters.

April 3, 2002: The Desert Research Institute submits a proposal to do lake sediment studies to detect pollution in Fallon. University of Arizona researcher Mark Witten wants to do tree-ring and genetics studies in conjunction with DRI, but the projects lack funding. Witten says that he will proceed on his own and hopes to get a federal allocation.

May 2, 2002: A District judge in Carson City decides to keep a blank copy of a health questionnaire secret even though the document is subject to the state’s open records law. Randy Todd, the state epidemiologist, argues that disclosure of the blank questionnaire would harm the agency’s investigation of the cluster. He says releasing the blank document would create “bias” in the minds of people whose children have not yet contracted leukemia, but who may have to fill out the form if their children are afflicted in the future. Todd testifies that the cluster may only be beginning and the epidemic may last for years.

May 3, 2002: Dr. Al Levin of Incline Village files a lawsuit designed to make the city of Fallon, the US Navy and companies associated with fuel spills and the jet fuel pipeline that runs through the town pay for genetic screenings for the town’s children. He says the screenings could help predict children at risk for leukemia, a theory rejected by state health officials.arrow
May 10, 2002: Fallon is a topic on “Kids and Chemicals” on national PBS TV, hosted by Bill Moyers.

May 14, 2002: The EPA announces it will study Fallon’s arsenic levels to determine if the metal has affected the health of residents.

May 26, 2002: The Reno Gazette-Journal reports that internal memos from the Nevada Health Division obtained by the newspaper indicate the managers at the division were bickering among themselves at the height of the leukemia cluster investigation and were worried about political pressure.

May 29, 2002: The federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry gives the jet fuel pipeline a clean bill of health, saying the 44-year-old steel pipe has never leaked, is not leaking and doesn’t present a future health danger to the people of Fallon and Churchill County. The agency did no independent research and based its verdict on information supplied by the suspected polluter, Kinder Morgan Energy Partners (KMEP). State Epidemiologist Randy Todd accepts the report and says the investigators will now “put the pipeline to rest.” The Fallon pipeline is a 63-mile stretch of a 3,100-mile product pipeline system that KMEP purchased from Santa Fe Pipeline Partners in 1997. Richard Kinder and William Morgan, former CEOs of Enron, purchased these energy assets to take advantage of the stable, distributable cash flow of a master-limited partnership (they own pipelines and terminals, but not the product that flows through them; they are shielded from the oil market’s instability). In 1996, Enron contracted an out-of-town company to perform some repairs on the Fallon pipeline. All repairs were to be finished before Santa Fe Pipeline Partners, a subsidiary of Enron, finalized their sale of the entire product pipeline system to KMEP in 1997.

June 22, 2002: Mark Witten and his team take tree ring samples in Fallon after taking similar samples in Sierra Vista, Ariz. Still without funding, Witten spends $2,000 of his own money to cover the expense of the probe.

July 28, 2002: The Nevada State Health Division announces a 2 1/2-year-old child is the 16th patient in the Fallon cluster.

August 2002: A 22-year-old man, the oldest surviving Fallon leukemia cluster patient dies in a California hospital.

February 2003: The Nevada State Health Division, CDC and ATSDR hold a town hall meeting in Fallon. They announce that their investigative efforts have failed to find the cause of Fallon’s sixteen cases of childhood leukemia.

March 2003: Fallon parents decry arsenic-tainted water in the schools, but school officials deny parents’ request to provide children with bottled water. The children continue to drink tap water containing arsenic levels ten times the EPA safety standard.

June 2003: Richard and Pilar Jernee, parents of deceased Fallon leukemia victim Adam Jernee, are plaintiffs in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Reno attorney Cal Dunlap. Defendants include Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, Kennametal Inc., the City of Fallon and Speedway gas station.
August 2003: Floyd Sands, father of deceased Fallon leukemia victim Stephanie Sands, is the plaintiff in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Cal Dunlap. Defendants are the same as in the Jernee case.

August 2003: The lawsuit filed on May 3rd 2002 is in the discovery phase.

October 2003: Fallon resident Adriana Perez, an infant, is diagnosed with ALL.

December 2003: With the help of Sen. Harry Reid and former state assemblywoman Marcia deBraga, Fallon parents acquire bottled water for Fallon schoolchildren.

February 2004: The Nevada State Health Division, CDC and ATSDR hold a town hall meeting in Fallon. They announce that they will partake in no further investigation of the Fallon leukemia cluster. State Epidemiologist Randall Todd reiterates that state and federal investigative efforts, made between 2000 and 2003, failed to find the cause(s) of Fallon’s epidemic.

December 2004: A toddler is Fallon’s seventeenth case of childhood leukemia diagnosed since 1997. Expert panel says the new case cannot be linked to the other sixteen until "the causes of leukemia are better understood."

March 22, 2005: A 14 year old Fallon resident, Rebecca Rau is diagnosed with ALL. The NV State Health Division refuses to acknowledge her case, citing various excuses, but no reasons. Rebecca was born in Fallon and has lived there all of her life. She is currently undergoing treatment in Las Vegas, NV. The decision by Mr. Randall Todd, the NV State Epidemiologist and creator of the failed Fallon, NV childhood leukemia cluster "investigation", prohibits and denies Rebecca and her Family from receiving financial assistance from the Fallon Families First Foundation. This Foundation’s stated mission and goal is to provide financial relief to those Families fighting Fallon leukemia.