Ujima Village residents believe hazardous waste from ExxonMobil is responsible for their health challenges.

The parking lots of Ujima Village are littered with trash; the bedroom windows are shattered; the lawns are overgrown with weeds; and the gray and teal exterior paint is peeling from the rotting foundation. Like ghosts, 24-hour security patrols the site behind the padlocked fences.  The once thriving apartment complex for working-class African American families now lies vacant and waits to be demolished.

In its hey-day, Ujima Village was a 300-unit apartment complex with one- to four-bedroom apartment homes. It had a state-of-the-art fitness center, and former Los Angeles Lakers player, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, had invested $10,000 dollars into the complex’s computer lab.

“It was nice,” said Navaline Smith, 54, as she remembers her former home of 23 years. “I had a nice backyard. I could go in the back and relax. We had a garden, there were seniors, and children running around. It was a nice place to raise your family.”

Yet, for Smith and many of her former neighbors, Ujima brings back bittersweet memories and uncertain futures.

Most former residents and surrounding community worry about their health, as many more people are being diagnosed with cancer and a myriad of other health problems.

So far, there have been 38 deaths surrounding Ujima Village, which former tenants believe were caused by the toxic substances found in the soil below their homes.

Before Ujima Village existed, ExxonMobil operated an oil tank storage facility at the site from the 1920s to the mid-1960s. The former Athens Tank Farm was a petroleum products distribution center and consisted of two large crude oil reservoirs.

However, when the new owners began building Ujima Village in the early 1970s, they didn’t realize ExxonMobil had failed to remove all of the hazardous waste, which was buried deep underground.

Still, residents easily set “roots” at Ujima with their families. There was a community garden, sports teams, and community center. The Earvin “Magic” Johnson Park next to the complex hosted weekend barbecues and fishing excursions at its two lakes.

Most residents described the community as an actual “village” where everybody knew everybody.

Yet, by 1990 Ujima had fallen under severe disrepair due to neglectful management and insufficient maintenance. By that time, HUD had taken ownership and promised to restore the complex to its former glory days.

Then in 1995, HUD sold the property to Los Angeles County for $1.

L.A. County let Ujima fall into further dilapidation, and by 2004, the complex needed $20 million in renovations.
That same year, the County tried to sell the property to two developers. The developers ran soil and groundwater tests on the site, revealing contamination from crude oil and gas.

The developers decided not to purchase the property.

Once word got out, L.A. County tried to reassure tenants that there were no health risks at Ujima. But tenants had already begun questioning the high occurrence of miscarriages, respiratory problems, and cancer within their complex and throughout the surrounding neighborhood.

In 2007, the California Regional Water Quality Control Board began its own investigation at the site, which indicated benzene (a carcinogen) levels exceeding acceptable California health screening standards.

In March 2008, the California Regional Water Quality Control Board ordered L.A. County to close down the complex; for ExxonMobil to run more tests, and to clean-up the site.

By November, L.A. County officially closed down the apartment complex and began relocating the residents. Yet, the last resident didn’t move out until August 2010.

Today, 1,019 former Ujima residents and neighbors have filed a class-action lawsuit against L.A. County and ExxonMobil, demanding environmental justice for themselves and their families.

Donald Brown, a 57-year-old retiree, is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Brown was diagnosed this year with stage-four colon cancer which has spread to his liver.

Brown moved into Ujima Village in 2003 with his three daughters and was an active member in his community.

“A lot of the kids didn’t have fathers, so I took them fishing across the street,” said Brown. “Or when UCLA professors came to the Village to help them with their homework, I would make sure that the ones who really needed it were back there waiting for them.”

Brown was also a basketball and football coach to some of the young teenagers at the complex and helped to get them in shape.

“Those same young men now have respiratory problems,” said Brown at a recent community meeting.

Brown’s own children are also suffering from various health problems, which they believe are related to the contamination at the apartment complex. His 21-year-old daughter developed a skin rash while living at Ujima, and her 3-year-old daughter has developed the same rash from her neck to her toes. Brown’s oldest daughter has asthma as well.

Brown was one of many who attended a community meeting, hosted by Second District Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas on Nov. 30 at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Public Health in Wilmington, Calif.

County officials were clearly overwhelmed by the number in attendance. The conference room, meant to hold only 150 people, quickly became overcrowded. When seats ran out, people stood along the walls, and when that space was filled more people stood outside in the cold, peering through the conference windows. It’s estimated that more than 350 people showed up.

Most former residents wanted to know why the County Department of Public Health had failed and still fails to assess the health of Ujima’s former tenants and neighboring community.

Smith, who suffered from severe migraine headaches until she moved out of the Village in 2010, said the answer is clear.

“We’re not in Beverly Hills,” said Smith. “If we had been in Beverly Hills, even the dog and the cat would have been tested.”

Girshriela Green, 44, also questioned why the Department of Public Health didn’t do something about the contamination sooner.

“I remember at the age of 12 being pulled out of the sandbox by some people in white suits, telling us the sandbox was contaminated,” said Green. She said shortly after the incident, all of the sandboxes were filled with cement.

Green’s aunt was the second person to move into Ujima Village, where Green lived with her family for 32 years, long before developers ran tests on the soil in 2004.

Yet, Angelo J. Bellomo, County Director of Environmental Health, told the Ujima residents that based on the county’s investigation, “There is no current health risk to people in the area or surrounding neighborhood.”

According to the most recent investigation, commissioned by the Regional Water Quality Control Board, test results indicate that while there are elevated levels of petroleum hydrocarbons and benzene at the site, they exist so far below the surface, that it is “unlikely to come into contact with anyone.”

Indoor and outdoor air test results also revealed elevated levels of benzene, but indoor air samples were comparable to outside air samples commonly found in polluted, urban areas.

However, test results from the Earvin “Magic” Johnson Park investigation did reveal high levels of chemicals that would have a negative effect on human health in the park’s lakes, fish, and sediment samples. Consequently, warning signs have been posted throughout the park prohibiting swimming, fishing, or eating of the lake’s fish.

News like this worries several residents, who frequently went fishing and cooked the fish they caught at the park.

“We used to eat the fish! Fish from the water,” said an emotional Green to Supervisor Ridley-Thomas. “What kind of answer do you have for me?”

Another issue of concern is the daycare center currently operating right across the street from Ujima Village. An environmental investigation has been conducted at Honey’s Little Angels Daycare Center, but all test results have found no detectable levels of harmful chemicals within the daycare, in the crawlspaces underneath the building, or in the soil.

Yet Ujima residents refuse to believe that their health problems are unrelated to the oil tank site. Supervisor Ridley-Thomas agrees that the daycare center needs to be moved as soon as possible.

“We don’t need to let excuses further delay this,” said the Supervisor. “This is a major and immediate concern for my office.”
Although a timeline for the daycare’s relocation has yet to be determined, it has been agreed upon that ExxonMobil will pay for its relocation.

All former residents and neighbors can do for now is wait. Brown hopes that change will come to his community once this ordeal is over.

“The main thing is making sure the area is safe,” said Brown. “And that nobody has to go through or lose relatives because of something the oil companies did.”