Community Corner

Wildomar Residents Meet With Feds, State Officials Regarding Alleged Toxic Homes

Wildomar residents who claim they were being poisoned in their own homes are not backing down in their fight to get answers.

A group of residents who have resided in the city’s Autumnwood housing tract met with various state agencies in Sacramento this week to plan out the next steps in the ongoing investigation into possible environmental contaminants in their homes that they say have made them very sick.

The meeting was held at the state’s Department of Toxic Substances Control headquarters and included representation by officials with various other state and federal agencies, including the California Department of Public Health, Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, the Environmental Protection Agency (Region 9), and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

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“The meeting went very, very well,” said Penny Newman of the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, a non-profit organization that advocates for citizens impacted by environmental hazards.

The meeting was hosted by DTSC director Debbie Raphael, who has visited the Autumnwood site, and featured top-ranking officials, Newman said.

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“These are the people who can make decisions. It was an indication of how serious the agencies are taking this,” she said.

“We had a room full of professionals who did not dismiss this,” she added.

Newman and some Autumnwood residents have been pushing to get further testing in the Wildomar neighborhood. Air, water and soil tests have now been conducted by investigators representing various governmental agencies, and Newman said the results show something is very wrong in Autumnwood.

Test results show higher levels of various chemicals -- including chloromethane  in some of the homes’ subslabs and higher levels of Total Dissolvable Solids in water, Newman said.

“There’s a combination of situations and conditions. It’s not just air, water or soil. There’s something unique to this tract,” she said.

Newman contends there are a lot of volatile organics that just shouldn’t be that high in Autumnwood.

“There are some very strange chemicals that you shouldn’t find in anyone’s home,” she said.

Seven current or former Wildomar residents were at this week’s meeting, including Xonia Villanueva. She said she moved out of the tract after her family became sick.

She continues to seek answers because she doesn’t want others to become ill.

“There are families relying on those false assurances who continue to be in harm’s way--we have to give them answers,” she said.  

Over the next several weeks the various state and federal agencies will be reviewing the test findings and residents’ testimony, working to determine next steps, Newman said.

“Once we were able to get the appropriate people to come down and actually go into the homes there is no denying a problem exists,” she added.

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