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Gob Story

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State health officials advised that children in the area should not drink from water wells that tested high for manganese. "In children, the effects you might expect -- this is from long-term exposure -- might be muscle weakness, poor coordination and behavioral disturbances," Webb explains.

Tests of the Timmermans' well revealed arsenic levels five times higher than federal drinking-water standards. Webb sent the couple a letter in April recommending they not drink their water because the amount of arsenic in it could increase their risk for cancer.

The Timmermans' well was the only one in which high levels of arsenic were found, but people living in the area still are concerned about the possibility of heavy metals contaminating the groundwater. Buscher of the EPA says arsenic in the Timmerman well may be from naturally occurring sources.

Lynn Dunaway, who works with Buscher at the EPA's water bureau, believes it's unlikely that metals are leaching from the waste pile into the aquifer, because pH levels in the groundwater have been found to be neutral. "Water with low pH is more likely to leach metals from the refuse," he explains.

Though state health officials could not determine whether the coal-waste pile was the source of the private wells' high manganese levels, they recommended that a public water supply be built for residents near the site. A September 2003 Department of Public Health report says the agency also could not determine whether the cancer rate was higher for people living near the gob pile, because the population around the site "is too small to be statistically valuable."

In its agreement with the state, ExxonMobil does not admit that it contaminated the aquifer at all, and Buscher says underground contamination has not spread beyond the 800 acres owned by the mine. "There is no correlation," he asserts, between high levels of manganese in private wells and ExxonMobil's contribution of $1 million to a community drinking-water system.

Jerry and Lana Korte check in with a teenage boy who's selling eggs at their farm on Illinois Route 161 near Germantown. The Kortes operate an egg and produce stand, as well as a silage business and a used-car lot on 40 acres located three-quarters of a mile north of the coal-waste pile.

Two days before Christmas, plenty of people have stopped in to buy eggs for their holiday feasts. Inside the chicken house, the smell of dung is overwhelming, but at least it's warm. In the summer the Kortes grow and sell asparagus, strawberries, pumpkins, tomatoes and popcorn and make homemade jam and wine. Today white kittens follow Jerry and Lana around as they walk from the chicken house to the equipment shed. Jerry's breath hangs in the cold air as he points to the faded paint on the side of their barn and paint chipping off the rotting windowsills of their house. He sticks a knife into the soft wood that holds up his shed. "Everything is rotting away," he says. "[The coal dust] has stripped all the paint from the barn."

Though their businesses are still here, the Kortes no longer live at the Germantown farm where Jerry grew up. In 2002 they decided to move fifteen miles west to Mascoutah, after water the color of coffee flowed from their kitchen faucet. When they had the water tested by an independent lab, the lead content was 30 times higher than federal drinking-water standards.

In the kitchen of their new house, Jerry pops a videotape into the thirteen-inch TV that's perched atop a white, 1960s-era Kelvinator refrigerator. "This was a dust storm in September 2001," he explains as the tape begins. "It went on for twelve hours." On the video, horses graze in the foreground as a wall of black dust hovers behind them. It looks as though smoke is rolling across the prairie. "Unbelievable. That's what we're breathing," he declares.

Jerry says the dust storms got worse after the mine closed in 1996. Because Exxon was no longer pumping water into the gob pile, the fine materials in the slurry began drying out. When the wind howls across the flat farmland of Clinton County, it picks up the coal dust, swirls it around and spits it out onto crops, barns and houses.

In 2002, after years of complaints from residents, the state EPA cited Exxon for violating air-quality laws. Inspectors did not fine the company, however, because "they were actively working to solve the problem," agency spokesman Mark Britton says.

Last March the Kortes filed a $50 million lawsuit against Exxon, alleging that their health, businesses and property have been injured because of air and water pollution associated with the coal tailings.

Lana Korte, who is 46 but looks much younger, describes migraine headaches that left her incapacitated for days. "I couldn't handle lights or smells. I'd stay in the house on the couch with a blanket over my head," she says.

Jerry Korte says he began overheating in the summers and hated working outside because his skin became blistered. He believes that high-sulfur coal dust was combining with his sweat to form an acid that burned his arms, face and eyes.

"I would get up in the morning and cough for four hours," recalls Korte, who is 50. "From 6 to 10, I'd sit in the chair with Kleenex."

After the Kortes moved, they say, their health problems disappeared. But they're worried about the future. "Am I afraid I'm going to develop cancer?" Jerry asks. "Yeah. And I'm afraid my wife will develop cancer."

At just after three in the afternoon, Germantown schoolchildren are walking home bundled in their coats. They pass cozy Victorian houses in this bedroom town of 1,100 that boasts Cardinals Hall of Famer Red Schoendienst as its favorite son. Inside the two-room city hall, ten people, including the town's mayor and road commissioner, have gathered to discuss the state's plan to clean up the waste heap on the edge of town.

"That gob pile -- that's all we got out of the whole mine," says road commissioner Don Langenhorst.

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