‘Motivated’ Tallevast unveils new plan to bounce back from decades-long contamination

After over 20 years of challenges caused by environmental contamination and nearby development, Manatee County’s Tallevast community has launched a new vision for the historically Black neighborhood.

With the support of experts at the University of South Florida, community leaders say they have a clear plan for Tallevast’s revitalization, which calls for contamination cleanup, local redevelopment and addressing health concerns.

In 2003, Tallevast residents formed FOCUS (Family Oriented Community United Strong, Inc.), to save their community and to fight for its well-being. The group is a direct response to a 200-acre plume of contamination caused by a leak from a former defense plant.

For years, residents continued to use contaminated water for cooking, drinking and bathing because the historically Black village was the last to learn about the pollution, the Bradenton Herald previously reported.

According to a plan approved by the Florida Department of Environmental Regulation in 2011, cleaning the contamination is estimated to take between 50 and 100 years.

Some days, the environmental and health challenges faced feel insurmountable, residents say, but Tallevast leaders recently achieved a milestone to guide the neighborhood to a successful future.

Revitalizing the community

FOCUS has pulled off what the group’s attorney, Jeanne Zokovitch Paben, calls a “trifecta of the vision, the website, and the Conference Tallevast@20.”

Tallevast@20 was a one-day conference held in April at USF Sarasota-Manatee to share the outcomes of 20 years of research on contamination, health concerns, the cleanup process and redevelopment planning.

With recent funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Tallevast community is now organizing for change.

The new FOCUS web page, www.FOCUSonTallevast.com, pulls together for the first time the history of the disaster, collects documents relating to the contamination, shares the vision and role of FOCUS, names its partners, posts links to news and opinion and provides contact information.

The vision plan acknowledges residents’ intent to remain rooted in their community. They also plan to organize and advocate for its long-term growth, stability and environmental health.

The word “stability” acknowledges that Tallevast needs to grow to be healthy and to have a buffer from encroaching growth, including from an Amazon distribution center, a United Natural Foods, Inc. facility now under construction and a 355-unit apartment complex proposed along U.S. 301.

The subtitle of the document, “Planning To Stay – A Long-Term Strategy for Growth and Stability” reflects Tallevast residents’ desire to remain in place and strengthen the area as a legacy community.

The Tallevast Vision Plan is a community design document that:

▪ Imagines Tallevast as a more holistic and healthier neighborhood enclave that, despite its environmental challenges, will endure well into the foreseeable future. It reflects residents’ preferences on how they would like to see the community evolve and prosper for current and future generations.

▪ Provides a long-term outlook for physical growth, social and environmental sustainability and stormwater management.

▪ Identifies opportunities for infill housing, enhanced public safety and improved community visual character. Other neighborhood features could include more neighborhood commercial, a healthcare center, an assisted care living facility and a new community center and park.

Tallevast finds motivation in new plan

“The conference was great. It motivated people. It motivated us,” said FOCUS co-executive director Wanda Washington. “There were tons of ideas.”

The conference also spurred the community to revisit long-term health effects from the spill, and how it might try to bring county officials and FDEP to the table.

Manatee County Government and FDEP are widely seen as non-responsive to the Tallevast community concerns, residents say.

Manatee County Commissioner George Kruse was the only local official to attend the April 20 conference.

“I talked to as many people as I could to get their stories. They are feeling squeezed,” Kruse said, adding that he came away impressed with the 50-page vision statement.

The Bradenton Herald asked Manatee County administration about its perceived lack of concern for Tallevast.

“Manatee County staff is doing work that matters to ensure the health and safety of residents in the Tallevast area daily,” Logan said. “We are working on getting some further background on the completion of the Tallevast sewer project and how will the sewer system completion be paid for.”

A reason to keep fighting

Laura Ward, co-executive director, said she wants to see a revitalized Tallevast, one that is not only healthier but has more amenities and a better quality of living.

“I do not feel comfortable putting someone with small children in a house over contamination,” Ward said.

“I don’t feel safe with all the contamination. You see all the health concerns. You can only think it came from exposure to that plant,” Ward said of the former Loral Corporation’s American Beryllium Company site, which contaminated Tallevast’s groundwater.

“They still haven’t found the edge of the plume. It continues to expand,” Ward said.

FDEP has not been responsive to inquiries from Tallevast residents or the Bradenton Herald.

In February, the Herald reached out to FDEP asking about the current status of cleanup efforts, how much work remains before cleanup is completed and how the plume’s size and shape compare to when cleanup began.

Other than receiving an email that FDEP was working on an answer in February, the state agency has not responded to follow-up emails and phone calls.

“We just don’t feel safe from the groundwater and the soil,” Wanda Washington said.

While there are 12 to 15 families who would leave Tallevast today, most residents want to stay, Ward and Washington say.

Looking ahead

One of the participants in the Tallevast@20 conference, Christian Wells, director of the USF Center for Brownfields Research & Redevelopment, came away optimistic for the future.

“For the first time, Tallevast has the tools to assess and clean up the contamination and get the community shovel ready for development,” Wells said.

The Environmental Protection Agency has provided about $500,000 for Brownfield site assessment to test soil to determine if it has been contaminated.

“There are always questions about the soil,” Wells said, adding that those concerns have been heightened by cratering in some parts of Tallevast because of Lockheed Martin’s pumping and treatment of groundwater.

The groundwater contamination is large and deep, extending down to the Floridian aquifer, he said.

A contractor is now identifying areas for soil sampling. Sampling should begin by late summer, Wells said.

The Tallevast story has lessons well beyond Manatee County.

It is now incorporated into an environmental justice class at USF. Students have interviewed residents and published their conclusions in a research paper.

“We focus on the case of Tallevast, Florida, where the local groundwater has been contaminated with chlorinated solvents for over 60 years and where cleanup is estimated to take another 100 years. In addition to concerns about health and wellness, we find that residents are also concerned about household displacement and the disruption of social networks, failed governance at the local and state levels, and financial stress from rising healthcare costs and declining property values,” according to the abstract.

Even though the Tallevast environmental disaster has been in the news for more than two decades, Wells learned that many of the participants in the Tallevast@20 conference knew little about it.

“The more people that know about it, the more they can do to help,” Wells said.

For Tallevast residents themselves, many wanted to leave when news first broke about the contamination.

But as years passed and they grew older, they realized they loved their community and wanted to stay, Wells said.

‘Hurt long enough’

Trent Green, associate professor of architecture and urban design at USF, was among those who met with Tallevast residents on the vision plan for their community.

“It was very clear to us they intend on staying,” Green said.

“We also recognize Tallevast needs to be stable from a community design point of view. It needs a lot more rooftops. It is a small community with not a whole lot of residents,” he said.

With the addition of more development on vacant land and infrastructure improvements it can become a more stable community, he said.

The vision plan seeks to unify Tallevast, now divided into quadrants by Tallevast Road running east and west and the Seminole Gulf Railroad running north and south.

Traffic from all the new industry is a problem. The plan seeks to unify the quadrants and to create a barrier between the residents and the encroaching development in the area.

Among redevelopment approaches could be modeling the approach of the community land trust and finding a way to combine resident resources, which is primarily land.

“They need to pull a lot of strings in a lot of places,” Green said, including with Lockheed Martin and the Manatee County Commission.

“This community has been hurt long enough,” Green said.

Tallevast Community Center battle continues

Even though the Tallevast vision plan calls for the development of a new community center, many in the community would like to reopen the now-closed Tallevast Community Center, which was built in the 1970s.

Through a quiet title lawsuit in 2019, Centers for Success with Melissa Robinson as principal officer, took possession of the community center. The lawsuit claimed that Centers for Success had for more than 25 years paid the property taxes for the center and used it for farming, cultivation and gardening.

The lawsuit also claimed that Fred Perry, who died in 1989, was the only other person listed as owner of the property.

In September 2019, the Manatee County Commission unanimously voted to defund children’s programs at the Tallevast Community Center after hearing reports of nepotism, a lack of community access and other issues.

The Centers for Success quiet title lawsuit did not go unchallenged by members of the Tallevast community.

In a letter dated July 14, 2022, The Concerned Citizens of Tallevast requested Melissa Robinson change the name of the corporation from Centers for Success, Inc., back to Tallevast Community Association.

The Concerned Citizens group also requested the property be deeded back to the Tallevast Community Association and that Robinson relinquish any position that she might hold in Centers for Success and the Tallevast Community Association.

In August, Circuit Judge Edward Nicholas issued a final default judgment recognizing Centers for Success as the owners of the community center property.

Carretta Williams, a former Tallevast resident, started a GoFundMe drive to collect money to challenge Centers for Success’s ownership of the community center.

“We want our youth to get it back. The children don’t have any access. Instead of playing basket at the center, they are playing in the street,” she said.

“We don’t understand how she was able to get that center and then shut it down,” Williams said.

To date, the GoFundMe page has raised $2,171 of a $20,000 goal.