Anne G. Chacon, 1942-2018

Dissident, Fearless Environmental Activist, Great Friend

Anne Chacon, long-time resident of 138 S. Marquette St, passed away in her Monona apartment the weekend before Thanksgiving, after struggling with liver disease for a long time. A Celebration of Anne’s Life will be held Saturday, Dec. 8, 3-4 pm at Gunderson East Funeral Home in Monona, with visitation beforehand (see link for details).

Anne and I starting working together as environmental activists around 1999, and in recent years we shared many long phone calls and lunches and frequently traded environmental articles, documents and books. Anne was a kind and supportive friend. I will miss her so much.

Anne was fiercely intelligent, strong-willed, and had passionate and well-informed opinions on many environmental and political issues. She was an excellent writer and articulate speaker, and was not afraid to speak-out publicly on issues she cared about. She read voraciously on a wide range of topics and listened to public radio incessantly, frequently calling in with educated and insightful questions and comments. She loved the mystery writer Sarah Paretsky. She had a great sense of humor.

Anne fearlessly fought the powerful local Goliath, Madison-Kipp Corporation (MKC), and incessantly demanded that government agencies do more to protect people from Kipp’s toxic pollution–even when at times people around her didn’t support her.

Anne was one-of-a-kind. She inspired me and many others in the community.

Anne the fearless environmental activist & researcher

Anne moved to Madison in 1978 with her young son to pursue her Masters in linguistics at the University of Wisconsin. In 1981, she bought her house on S. Marquette St., feet from Madison-Kipp Corporation. While raising her son as a single-mom, she was instrumental in many community efforts to fight excessive noise and toxic pollution emitted from MKC.

At times the air pollution from Kipp was so bad that Anne slept in her basement with a gas mask on (the cover image below from a 2004 Wisconsinite article about citizen struggles with Madison-Kipp, was based on her experiences).

Anne was a tenacious and persistent researcher who paid careful attention to details. She spent many long hours in DNR offices photocopying documents related to MKC—and then poring through thousands of pages of these reports to better understand what kinds and levels of toxic pollution people in the neighborhood were being exposed to. She dug up scientific papers and environmental regulations, uncovering MKC regulatory violations and sharing what she learned with neighbors and other activists. On many Kipp toxics and regulatory issues, she knew more than government officials. And all of this was before the Internet age!.

She helped organize community petitions and wrote numerous letters to public officials (see here and here and here) about Kipp’s noise and toxic emissions, demanding that they do more to stop them. She talked to current and former Kipp workers and encouraged them to write comments about their experiences working there and submit them for public meetings. Even while often being treated with disdain by government agencies—and repeatedly targeted and threatened by MKC officials and attorneys—she doggedly kept going.

Around 2007, she researched the deeper political history of Madison-Kipp Corporation, and presented it at Café Zoma in the Atwood neighborhood. Her presentation described her own experiences living next to Kipp, and the long-standing right-wing connections of the Coleman family that owned and operated MKC: “McCarthyism, Pollution, and a Madison Corporate Family

Jim Powell and Anne Chacon at the 2004 Atwood Community Festival: In 2000, a group of us (including Anne) started Clean Air Madison, which Steve Klafka took over when we moved to Madison’s Northside in 2005.

 Anne’s work was prescient

Anne’s work in the 1990s was remarkably prescient. She found DNR reports supporting the complaints about toxic fumes spewing from Kipp’s open doors and windows. She discovered DNR documents (see here and here) reporting extremely high levels of toxic volatile organic chemicals (VOCs, including tetrachloroethylene or PCE, trichloroethyelene or TCE, and vinyl chloride) along stormdrain routes from the site and in groundwater. She uncovered a a 1987 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article about PCB barrels found at Kipp in the early 1980s. (Years later, the DNR told citizens they didn’t know about PCBs at Kipp until 2012).

She wrote a long and detailed letter to her neighbors about this and other Kipp pollution problems, and also made fliers and posted them around the neighborhood. The fliers were quickly removed–by Kipp employees, Anne believed. Working to deflect concerns about this issue,  DNR and local public health officials sent a letter to neighbors assuring everyone that the risk of exposure to the neighborhood was “quite low.”

This letter was dated Dec. 21, 1999, the same day of a DNR public hearing on Kipp’s air pollution issues. The meeting was packed; about 200 people attended. Testimonies were passionate, and most verified Anne’s research and experiences in the previous ten years.

These testimonies show that many in the community were very concerned, if not outraged, about Kipp’s air pollution, which could often be seen and smelled. Sadly, though, many in the immediate Kipp neighborhood ignored Anne’s warnings about the invisible soil and groundwater VOC contamination beneath their homes, instead accepting government assurances in the Dec. 21 letter. Some ridiculed Anne for raising false alarms.

In 2000-2001, Jim Powell queried DNR about Kipp’s VOC contamination, but was told there was nothing to worry about. We moved out of the neighborhood in 2005 and the issue faded to the background as people continued to focus on air pollution.

About twelve years after she first warned the neighborhood about Kipp’s groundwater VOC problems, Anne was finally vindicated. In 2011, when some Atwood residents asked about potential contaminant threats to Well 8, MEJO did a DNR file review and found documents showing continued high levels of VOCs in soils and groundwater under the neighborhood. Steve Klafka posted them on the Clean Air Madison website and we shared them with the media. Chicago attorneys eventually saw this coverage and initiated a class action lawsuit against Kipp. In 2013 Kipp paid out over $7 million dollars to neighbors whose homes had VOCs seeping into them from below for decades.

Anne’s warnings about PCBs were also correct. During excavations prompted by the lawsuit, high levels of PCBs were found all over the Kipp site, including stunningly high concentrations of PCBs–up to 20,000ppm under the factory. To this day, Kipp’s PCBs continue to slowly seep from the northern edge of the site into the raingarden on city property along the public bike path and also from stormdrains into Starkweather Creek and Lake Monona.

Anne argued that Kipp was making her neighborhood sick–and was targeted by Kipp’s attorneys

A non-smoker, vegetarian, and non-drinker in the years I knew her, Anne was convinced that her health problems—like the numerous health problems reported in the neighborhood over the years– were caused by the toxic pollution from Madison-Kipp Corporation. Her convictions were based on the many articles and books she read about toxic pollution and health. She was diagnosed with liver problems some time in the 1990s, and at times included statements from her doctor in her letters to public officials supporting her concerns about effects of toxic pollution on the liver.

But Anne wasn’t concerned only about her own health. With the help of neighbors, she began compiling and researching health complaints in the neighborhood, and bringing these complaints to public officials and government meetings. Kipp got wind of this and their attorneys at Michael Best & Friedrich (Michael Best) were paid to discredit her and scare her and other citizens away from activism.

Anne received a letter in spring 1994 from Michael Best attorney Bill White (who lives to this day in the Atwood neighborhood in an expensive home along the lake). The letter stated: “Please be further advised that your public comments, whether written or oral, will be carefully reviewed by this office to determine whether or not any characterizations you have made or may make of Madison-Kipp or any of its personnel may be actionable as defamation.”[i]

In August that year, Michael Best submitted an open records request to the Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS) asking for “All documents concerning complaints from neighboring residents arising out of Madison-Kipp’s operations at the Atwood Avenue/Waubesa Street location relating to noise, odor, or air emissions or other environmental or health concerns, including, but not limited to  correspondences, complaints, investigations, health surveys, test results and facility inspections for the period from January 1, 1993 to the present.”[ii]

Despite overt threats from Kipp’s attorneys, Anne was not deterred. On September 19, 1994, she testified about Kipp’s pollution at a City of Madison Committee on the Environment (COE) meeting. She talked about her own health problems and noted that “people on my street have died of kidney disease and liver disease and have had double mastectomies and hysterectomies and all kinds of tumors…our health isn’t being protected…our lives aren’t being protected.” People have been moving away, taking children from their friends, even leaving Madison, because they don’t think they will be protected, she continued.[iii]

Kipp followed through with its threats. After reviewing the COE minutes, Kipp’s attorney Bill White wrote a letter to the COE Chair accusing Anne of “misleading and false statements.”

Again, Anne was unintimidated—and many of her claims were right. Kipp stack tests in 1994-95 showed that Kipp’s emissions were above the permit exemption levels, and DNR air modeling suggested there could be air quality problems in the backyards of homes next to Kipp. But DNR didn’t investigate these problems further, Kipp disputed emissions results, and in 1995, Kipp received an “after-the-fact” construction permit from DNR for the chlorine demagging system, with higher emission limits.[2]

In 1996, Anne and other citizens regrouped as the “Atwood Clean Air Committee,” and in July 1996, the group picketed outside Kipp. In the Capital Times article about the protest, Anne argued that emitting the unfiltered pollution out the roof wasn’t enough; Kipp should also install filters and scrubbers, as well as taller stacks. “They’ve been telling us for six years that they were here first, and if you don’t like it, move…Those are the words of a bully,” Anne added.

Anne’s ongoing file reviews at the DNR and public health department also supported her claims about health problems in the neighborhood. Her 1999 letter to neighbors included this paragraph:

“Citizens’ complaint files regarding Kipp’s air pollution (obtainable at DNR’s Air Management Bureau, Southem District, Fish Hatchery Road facility) contain hundreds of health complaints over the past decade. we have copied many of them. Although Kipp’s executives have portrayed complaints as coming from only one person, or a very small group, DNR files show that many neighbors have complained about problems experienced near Kipp’s operations, including strong and unpleasant smells, nausea and vomiting, shortness of breath, chest constriction and chest pain, headache, sore throat, runny nose and eyes, stinging and irritation of mucous membranes and skin, speeding, pounding, and irregular heartbeat, dizziness and difficulty in concentrating, deep coughing, repetitive sneezing, liver and kidney problems, cramps, diarrhea, asthma, and miscarriage. A disturbing amount of disease including cancer, birth defect, disabling arthritis, and liver and kidney failure (eventually resulting in death) has occurred in the area adjacent to Kipp in recent years. (A small-sample Madison Health Department survey in 1994 reported that short-term problems tended to disappear away from the Kipp area.)”

Eventually, around 2000, the Madison/Dane County public health department and State Department of Health Services decided there were in fact enough health complaints in the neighborhood to pursue a health study. But it never happened. In a convoluted series of decisions—heavily influenced by Kipp attorneys and consultants–the health study was dropped–see more here and here.

Health problems in the Kipp neighborhood continued, but many stopped sending complaints to agencies, feeling that there was no point since they were ignored. More concerned people moved away. Meanwhile, Kipp and government agencies were quietly documenting toxic VOC vapors behind homes in on S. Marquette Street. Neighborhood residents were in the dark about this until 2011 when the VOC groundwater contamination in the neighborhood was finally made public.

By 2013, when the lawsuit settlement was being finalized, Anne was so convinced that Kipp’s toxic emissions caused her liver problems—and had such a strong conscience—that she refused to sign the lawsuit settlement agreement required to receive the lawsuit settlement money. To be included in the settlement, and receive the award, plaintiffs had to sign a claims form agreeing that they “are not presently aware of any sickness, disease, or physical injury caused to them by MKC.”[3] After much indecision, she decided that she couldn’t sign it because it wasn’t honest. So she didn’t receive any of the settlement money.

Sharon Helmus, who lived down the block from Anne right under Kipp’s aluminum stacks, was also convinced that her three cancers were caused by Kipp’s pollution—and wrote numerous emails to government officials demanding that they do more to protect the neighborhood. Sadly, Sharon died in March 2018 from complications after surgery for colon cancer.

Why didn’t Anne move away from Kipp, as many of her friends suggested (concerned about her health)? For one, she was determined not to let Kipp win. She also agonized greatly about selling her house to anyone knowing what she knew about Kipp’s pollution and its effects on her health.

Kipp toxics and liver disease

Based on my own research about Kipp’s toxic chemical emissions and their health effects, I also believe that Kipp’s pollution played a significant contributing role in her liver disease. Medical experts I’ve consulted with, such as Dr. David Carpenter at SUNY Albany, agree.[4]

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of published scientific articles on the associations between the kinds of chemicals emitted from MKC—especially PCBs, but also VOCs and dioxin –and liver disease. See here and here (or just search for “PCBs, liver” on PubMed). See here and here and here for more about associations between PCE and liver disease.

Anne was exposed to Kipp’s air emissions, toxic vapors, contaminated soils

Local and state public health departments, Kipp and DNR have repeatedly claimed over the years that Anne and other people on S. Marquette St. were not exposed to Kipp’s toxic chemicals. This is an absurd assurance. During the decades she lived at S. Marquette St., Anne breathed PCE, TCE, vinyl chloride and other VOCs that were seeping slowly and invisibly into her home from below—along with a slew of other chemicals emitted from Kipp’s stacks behind it.

Once the lawsuit was initiated, a new neighborhood exposure ensued—excavations of contaminated soils at the Kipp site and throughout the neighborhood. During repeated soil excavations, and residential backyard excavations, Anne and her neighbors inhaled toxic vapors and dusts stirred up into the air—dusts that were also entering their homes and depositing on surfaces.

Beginning in 2012 and through 2013, a series of excavations of highly PCB and VOC contaminated soils behind Anne’s house and elsewhere in the neighborhood began. These soils often spilled over onto her back yard—I saw it first hand on several occasions.[5]

Further, right behind her house, unbeknownst to her, the soil vapor extraction (SVE) system installed in February 2012 was spewing out PCE, TCE, vinyl chloride, and other VOCs found in Kipp’s groundwater and soils. DNR assured Anne at the February 2012 public meeting that nothing would be emitted from the SVE system after filtration, but this was false. The system always emitted some level of VOCs—and at times they were elevated above emission limits.[6]

At the end of May 2012, one of Anne’s friends observed that her skin was looking yellow (jaundice)—a classic sign of liver failure.  Doctors had told her many years previously, when she started to have health problems, that she had elevated liver enzymes—also an indication of liver disease. But this was the first time she had turned so obviously yellow. When her yellow coloring didn’t go away, in June she went to the doctor who said she had auto-immune hepatitis (a type of liver disease).

In mid-August 2012, air beneath Anne’s home and inside her house was tested for VOCs for the first time.[7] The PCE level beneath her house was just under DNR’s “action level.” Anne was not offered a mitigation system because DNR wanted to confirm the test results with a 2^nd round of testing. In October, PCE just under the “action level” was again found under her house. Government agencies and Kipp lawyers claimed this meant vapor intrusion was not occurring at Anne’s home. This claim flies in the face of vapor intrusion guidances (including DNR’s), which clearly say that one or two vapor tests are not adequate to assess vapor intrusion—several tests need to be throughout all seasons, especially in winter when the highest levels can occur (none of the homes in the Kipp class action were tested in the winter, with perhaps one or two exceptions).

Eventually, as a result of the lawsuit negotiations, a mitigation system was installed in Anne’s home sometime in 2013. Did this mitigation system prevent harmful levels of VOCs seeping into her home? Nobody knows. Despite citizens’ demands that they do so, neither Kipp nor government agencies charged with protecting public health ever measured after the mitigation system was installed to see if her system and others in the neighborhood were working properly—to confirm that VOC levels in homes were reduced to safe levels or eliminated (see more below).

In late 2012 and early 2013 Kipp excavated approximately 670 tons of highly PCB contaminated soils behind Anne’s house, in an area that had up to 2000 ppm PCBs (the current residential RCL for PCBs is 0.2 ppm) . As with earlier excavations, Anne noted that soils were left behind her house for many weeks, sometimes uncovered, and often spilled over into her backyard.

Anne at the children’s splash pad across from Kipp’s toxic raingarden in July 2015

In August 2015, just after the above photo was taken, Anne started turning yellow again. Her legs blew up to many times their usual size due to edema, another classic symptom of liver disease. After several weeks, friends convinced her to go to the hospital, where she stayed several days. Medications eventually helped reduce the edema and she began to feel better.

Government agencies charged with protecting public health aren’t doing their jobs

After this, we continued to raise concerns with government officials that Anne and others in the neighborhood weren’t being protected from vapor intrusion—but we were ignored. Eventually we consulted Lenny Siegel, a vapor intrusion expert from the Center for Public Environmental Oversight in California to get his assessment. For about a year, from fall 2016 to fall 2017, Mr. Siegel reviewed Kipp contaminant documents about the vapor intrusion in the homes around Kipp and the Goodman Community Center.

Mr. Siegel’s report, published in September 2017, concluded that the vapor intrusion assessments around Kipp were inadequate and recommended that vapor levels in homes around Kipp be measured to make sure home mitigation systems in the Kipp neighborhood were working properly. He also recommended that the Goodman Community Center be assessed for vapor intrusion.  Dr. Lorne Everett, a highly credentialed national vapor intrusion expert, agreed with Mr. Siegel’s assessment. Siegel came to Madison in summer 2017 and met with citizens and several alders to discuss his report and recommendations.

But upon learning of the report, City of Madison engineering staff and Public Health Madison Dane County (PHMDC) officials worked together with DNR and Madison-Kipp to discount it. The DNR dismissed the need to test vapor intrusion at the Goodman Community Center. After the Wisconsin State Journal publicized Lenny’s report, Madison-Kipp Corporation’s CEO, Tony Koblinski, wrote a petulant “open letter” to the State Journal attacking the coverage. The letter was probably written by Kipp’s attorneys.

Having dismissed Mr. Siegel’s report, government agencies did nothing to assess vapor intrusion at the Goodman Community Center or make sure mitigation systems in homes near Kipp were eliminating VOCs (or at least reducing them to safe levels) by testing the indoor air contaminant levels.

So to this day, people in the Kipp neighborhood cannot—and should not—assume that their mitigation systems are working adequately to protect them and their families from VOCs. Since Kipp, DNR, and our public health agencies have refused to test VOC levels in homes to make sure they are safe, the only way Kipp neighborhood residents can verify that levels are safe is to pay to have their air tested on their own.

Anne finally gives in and moves away from Kipp

By 2016-2017, Anne decided she could no longer be exposed to Kipp’s toxic emissions, moved with her two cats to a small apartment in Monona, and began making plans to remodel and sell her house on Marquette Street (she finally sold it in 2017).

For a while after that her liver problems were stabilized, but in the last few months they worsened again on and off. Medications helped, but in recent weeks, her yellow coloring returned, and eventually the edema did as well, her legs swelled up, and she passed away.

I had lunch and tea with her in October. She was alarmingly thin, but in good spirits, as lively and passionate as ever. We ranted and laughed about Madison-Kipp, the Trump administration, and various other political issues of the day. I was worried about her, but didn’t think it was the last time I would see her. She didn’t return my phone call to her in the week or so before she died. I feel terrible about not calling her again to make sure she was OK.

The community has lost a major force. Thank you Anne for all the great work you have done on behalf of your neighbors, public health, and the environment. Thank you for being a great friend.

Kurt Gutknecht and Anne at the Clean Lakes Alliance/Rayovac Pirate Protest, Summer 2015

[1] In 2015, after the lawsuit was settled, Reed Coleman sold major shares of the company to Tony Koblinski and an equity firm from Texas, Trive Capital, but as of 2017 he was still on Kipp’s Board of Directors.

[2] It wasn’t until 2007 that DNR finally addressed high air pollutant concentrations in the cavity next to Kipp’s buildings and around nearby homes.

[3] This would effectively preclude the residents who didn’t opt out of the lawsuit from ever suing Kipp based on claims that their health was damaged by Kipp’s pollution. To this day, few of them will even say anything publicly about Kipp’s pollution. In this regard, the lawsuit was a victory for Kipp.

[4] I spoke with Dr. Carpenter about Anne’s situation and also exchanged numerous emails about it. Dr. Carpenter’s research and expert testimonies (see here and here) show that PCBs can be inhaled and cause health effects via this exposure route.

[5] The soils testing in Anne’s back yard did not find PCB levels over the RCLs. However, this testing, which was limited was done before most of the soil and building excavations were done. Though the SVE trenching was done in early 2012, the area with 2000ppm, right behind her house, was excavated from Dec. 2012-Jan. 2013. Other excavations continued for years, with contaminated soils piled behind her house and spilling into her yard. None of this was tested.

[6] On June 4 Michael Schmoller at DNR wrote to Kipp’s consultant saying “The SVE effluent concentrations are elevated. Have plans been made to replace the carbon unit to control emissions?”

[7] Government agencies—with heavy influence from Kipp and its attorneys—only considered levels of PCE in assessing health risks, ignoring the numerous other chemicals there, including trichloroethylene (TCE, much more toxic than PCE) as well as petroleum VOCs.