Also posted on sdnn.com, San Diego News Network.
Hope Goodwin moved to Valley Center to retire with her mother, Joye, two decades ago.
Together, the two raised championship horses and Great Danes, grew dozens of organic fruits and vegetables and were about to go into the business of farming organic garlic and Sea-buckthorn.
It was a return to a life of farming but a break from Joye’s previous life — a nurse for more than four decades, and founder of Children Having Children, a southeast San Diego non-profit that supports teen parents and works to prevent teen pregnancy.
But the Goodwins’ lives would forever change on Nov. 16, 2006, when an EDCO garbage truck lifting a dumpster in their back yard ruptured a hydraulic line, spraying fluid on to the ground, into the air and across the property.
Joye, who was gardening outside and already had trouble breathing, may have inhaled some of the fluid.
“We could smell the fumes in the house for weeks,” Hope Goodwin said.
The mature cottonwood trees near the spill would eventually die, as well as fruit trees and crops planted in the ground farther away. The Ice Man, a 23-year-old Irish-bred thoroughbred, had to be put down. Another horse lost 300 lbs. Alraune, a German-bred Holsteiner, may have had cancer.
Finally Joye’s health deteriorated. She died in the morning hours of March 20, 2009, the first day of spring.
“All we wanted them to do in the beginning was to clean up and put things back the way they were,” Goodwin said.
She wants to leave the property but claims no real estate agent will list it. Her lawsuit against EDCO — for the depletion in property value and emotional damages for the waste collection company allegedly failing to finish necessary cleanups — is set to go to trial in March.
Goodwin still doesn’t know exactly what was in the potentially toxic hydraulic fluid she, her mother, the plants and animals were exposed to. Anywhere from 15 to 36 gallons of hydraulic fluid was spilled; the actual amount is disputed by both sides.
Cleaning up the mess
After the spill occurred, an EDCO cleanup crew came to the house and worked two hours that afternoon and six the next day.
In all, 400 pounds of contaminated soil was removed from the property, EDCO vice president Jeff Ritchie said in an e-mail. He added that EDCO contends the alleged change in property value to be without merit.
