Minneapolis council member who beat rare cancer fights to protect others from harmful pollutants
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Late last month, the Minneapolis City Council unanimously passed a resolution calling for the closure of the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center, or HERC, in downtown Minneapolis. The council doesn’t have the authority to shut it down — Hennepin County oversees the HERC. Instead the council’s action urges the county to close the incinerator by the end of 2027.
For one council member — LaTrisha Vetaw — that vote was personal.
“I understand the real ramifications of those sorts of things,” she said this week during an interview at her Ward 4 office in north Minneapolis.
In 2006, Vetaw was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a rare form of cancer. Doctors found her case even more unique as it’s a cancer typically found in children and teenagers. However, Vetaw was 30 years old when she was diagnosed.
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Vetaw, now 48, said her physicians said the cancer was probably connected to her exposure to pollution.
Her doctor told her, “it was more than likely where I came from, where I grew up is where I got it, and I just had a really slow growing case of it,” she said.
However, the American Cancer Society says there are no known lifestyle-related or environmental causes of osteosarcoma.
Vetaw was raised for a time on the south side of Chicago, in a place known by some as the birthplace of the environmental justice movement.
“I grew up in what later became known as the toxic doughnut,” she said. “So the housing projects that I lived in was surrounded by land, fields, steel mills, Sherman Williams paint factory, just a lot of bad.”
By “bad” she means a lot of chemicals infiltrating the air surrounding the low-rise homes, officially known as Altgeld Gardens.
According to the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice, the housing project was surrounded by 50 landfills and 382 industrial facilities. Also, 250 leaking storage tanks were found underground. Toxicology tests performed since the 1980s found dangerous levels of mercury, lead and PCBs, the environmental justice site said.
Vetaw was 11 years old when her mother moved the family out of Altgeld Gardens to north Minneapolis.
“People thought she had lost her mind. She knew nothing about Minneapolis,” Vetaw said.
Actually, her mother had grown suspicious of the air they breathed, among other oddities and that caused their move, she said.
“My mom says she remembers the year that no one’s garden could grow, and that's when she realized something was going on in the community,” Vetaw said.
Residents of “The Gardens,” as Vetaw said they are commonly called, ended up suffering from an array of health issues including asthma, birth abnormalities and cancer. Those affected were still living at the Gardens or had left years before.
After council discussions about the HERC, Vetaw said she spoke with her mom, who still lives in north Minneapolis.
“I said, ‘All that work you did to get us out of the toxic doughnut and look where you brought us, … ‘ in a joking way,” Vetaw said. “She was like, ‘I couldn't smell anything over here. I didn’t see anything. It was better, right?’”
County: Energy center built to reduce emissions
The HERC was built in 1989. The waste which is burned there also generates steam, which turns turbines which generate electricity to nearby homes and buildings. County officials say the center has better air pollution controls and fewer air emissions compared to landfills which contain waste that continues to decompose and produce methane and organic compounds.
County officials also say the HERC has a 24/7 air pollution control system that captures pollutants. And they say the waste delivered to HERC is processed close to where it’s produced, which they say minimizes carbon emissions from trucks which haul waste to landfills outside the city.
In 2023, the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners directed its staff to create a plan to close the facility sometime between 2028 and 2040. Before shutting down, the county will need to make a plan for what to do with the trash that currently goes to the HERC. Plans could include ways to cut down on the amount of waste in the county through composting and recycling, or diverting trash to landfills instead of the incinerator.
About 230,000 people live within three miles of the HERC, according to the council’s resolution calling for the center’s closure, and are “disproportionately low-income and Black, Indigenous and people of color compared to the rest of Minnesota.”
During a public hearing held in front of a council committee last month, community members, some of them people of color, described what it’s like living near the incinerator.
Shiori Konda-Muhammad is a cardiovascular ICU nurse at North Memorial and vice president of the Minnesota Nurses Association. She told council members the HERC has placed additional burdens on the north side’s African American residents who have a higher incidence of cardiovascular diseases and asthma.
“But no matter how hard we work to get our patients back to the communities, if the root causes of the chronic conditions are not addressed, they are never going to achieve their best health,” Konda-Muhammad said. “The longer you let HERC operate, the more burden you add into the community that is already overburdened by economic and racial injustice.”
Following the hearing Vetaw thanked the activists who testified.
“I appreciate the advocacy,” she said. “I can just tell that you know this is the beginning, and you all will keep up the fight, and I'm here to keep up the fight with you.”
Vetaw’s vow to fight to protect her constituents rings true. She’s been cancer-free for 10 years.
“As someone who has been through that, who understands, like I fought through it, but everyone doesn’t win that battle with cancer, right?,” said Vetaw. “I don’t want that to happen to anyone.”
Editor’s note (Nov. 25, 2024): This story has been edited to include additional information on osteosarcoma from the American Cancer Society.
