NAACP Legal Defense Fund : Defend, Educate, Empower

Dickson County appears to be an idyllic, rural community of rolling farmland in north-central Tennessee. But decades of toxic dumping at a landfill have poisoned the groundwater, and left three generations of a local African-American family who live next to the landfill searching for justice.

LDF has represented 11 members of the Holt family – an African-American family with deep roots in the area – since 2007 in their suit against government officials and several private companies for polluting the family’s well water with cancer-causing chemicals. The Holt family claims that government officials intentionally discriminated against the family by failing to inform them of the dangers more than a decade after notifying other families in the area.  Their complaint alleges that the Holts received assurances of safety for nearly fifteen years after officials first knew the water was poisoned, while other affected families, who were white, received immediate and urgent warnings to stop drinking the water.  

The Holts believe that government officials knew as early as 1988 that their family's well water was contaminated with cancer-causing toxins that had leaked from an adjacent landfill into the water supply, at levels approaching thirty times the standard set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But, they say, rather than take steps to warn and protect the Holt family, government officials did just the opposite - they informed the Holts that the well water was safe for consumption. It was not until 2000 that the Holt family was hooked up to the municipal water supply. By then, they charge, it was too late - every member of the family has in recent years developed serious health problems, including cancer.  Harry Holt himself died of cancer in January 2007.

In January 2009, one of the private defendants, which had filed for bankruptcy since the case was first filed, agreed to settle with the Holts for $2.6 million.  In March 2009, the trial court ruled against the remaining government defendants on their motions to dismiss the Holts’ personal injury, property, and discrimination claims.  The case is now proceeding toward trial.