Jamison struggled with the temptation to settle too. He says lawyers for Kerr-McGee offered him $3 million to drop the lawsuit he brought on behalf of his church and not tell anyone he thought the tarry substance was harming people and properties around the plant.
'God's Love'
"I said, I'm a preacher. I preach God's love," he recalls. "How can I preach that to people and know they are in harm's way and not tell anyone?"
Jamison says lawyers then offered $4 million. He turned that down. By then, he'd seen the 1983 movie "Silkwood," starring Meryl Streep. The film showed Silkwood's suspicious death in a 1974 car accident as she was driving to meet a reporter and go public with her story that Kerr-McGee was exposing employees to plutonium through poor safety standards. Jamison says he was afraid of what a company that powerful might do to someone who had damaging information.
"So I called a press conference and told everyone what I had found," he says.
Jamison has hit roadblocks since. His first frustration arose in proving where the creosote came from and that there was enough to cause injuries. He and his lawyers eventually paid for tests to show creosote existed at the church, while Kerr-McGee disputed what chemicals were present in what concentrations, he says.
Sarcoidosis And Cancer
He has had to resubmit his lawsuit at least twice. In 2005, as Kerr-McGee was preparing the spinoff into Tronox, it said a unit called Kerr-McGee Chemical Worldwide LLC was the correct target. After the spinoff, the defendant became Tronox. When Tronox entered Chapter 11, Jamison had to move his case to federal bankruptcy court in Manhattan.
Jamison says creosote is still damaging Columbus because the soil remains saturated. People are sick and their medical bills have surpassed their settlements, he says.
Connie Davis says her mother, Hattie Baldwin, has sarcoidosis, which formed nodes in her lungs and has left her using a portable oxygen tank. Davis, 63, lost a 19-year-old son to cardiac arrhythmia. Ann White, in her early 50s, is surviving breast cancer. The breast cancer rate in Columbus was 2.65 times the national average, according to a 2006 report by Patricia Williams, a coordinator of toxic research labs at the University of New Orleans.
'Mississippi Still Burning'