Residents want out of industrial ghetto Exit: Surrounded by 20-plus chemical plants, families in Wagner's Point want industry and government to buy homes made nearly worthless by pollution.

For 25 years Jeannette Skrzecz fought City Hall, the Environmental Protection Agency, the chemical companies that surrounded her home, and anyone else she suspected of polluting or neglecting tiny Wagner's Point, the Baltimore neighborhood where she lived since age 3.

Late Friday, Skrzecz, 56, lost a battle she couldn't win, against cancer of the liver and colon. Fifteen years ago, she beat breast cancer, the disease that killed her mother. Doctors say the disease that killed Skrzecz was caused not by pollution, but genetics.

But Skrzecz didn't believe it. She was one of at least three people stricken by cancers in the 3800 block of Leo St. in the past year. John Regiec, 78, has terminal leukemia. Judy Vance, 36, is lucky -- her breast cancer is in remission.

While Skrzecz lay dying at Mercy Medical Center's hospice, grieving residents of Wagner's Point said that after 40 years of living in an industrial ghetto, they want out.

People in this working-poor South Baltimore enclave say that for years, they've endured insults no wealthy neighborhood would tolerate: noxious smells from the sewer plant and oil refinery in their back yards; sudden terrors when the warning siren sounds one of the 20-plus chemical plants near their homes; nagging fears about the abnormally high cancer rates in the 12-square-block cluster of rowhouses.

Skrzecz's sudden illness galvanized most of the 96 families of Wagner's Point as never before.

Residents want the city, state and the industries that surround them to move them out of the path of a planned "ecological industrial park," paying them top dollar for homes now rendered worthless in their eyes. And they're getting some powerful backing. The Center for Environmental Health and Justice, a national environmental group formed to help communities fight industrial pollution, has taken up their cause. The University of Maryland Environmental Law Clinic is acting as their unpaid counsel. And some local politicians say they'll go along with whatever the residents want.

There may be money to spare: Wagner's Point sits smack in the middle of an industrial empowerment zone, the largest of six Baltimore neighborhoods eligible for $100 million in federal economic development funds, plus assorted tax breaks. Plans drawn up by the city and blessed by the EPA call for showcasing the latest in environmentally friendly manufacturing. Practically all the residents of nearby Fairfield are gone, bought out by the city 20 years ago. But so far, there's no such provision for Wagner's Point.

Public health officials say the people of Wagner's Point have legitimate reason for worry. Three cancer-causing chemicals are the neighborhood's air at levels up to 30 times higher than those the EPA considers safe. And three types of cancer are reported in Wagner's Point and two adjacent neighborhoods "at rates that are significantly higher than the citywide average, which is higher than the state, which is the highest in the nation," said Baltimore Health Commissioner Peter Beilenson.

"Tell the media about my funeral. I want those chemical companies there," Skrzecz told her daughter, Karen Youngbar, before pain-killing morphine sent her into a deep round-the-clock sleep. "I want those bastards to see what they did to me."

Business executives deny that they are responsible for cancer or ill health. While they would not oppose a buyout, they say the companies won't offer financial support.

"We're all concerned about the people in Wagner's Point, and I have 350 people working here for me I'm worried about," says C. B. "Buzz" Melton, a former city fire battalion chief who is now an executive at FMC Agricultural Chemicals. He stressed that he was expressing his own views, not necessarily the company's. "But we're not responsible for these health problems.

"I'm unaware of any scientific evidence that means we should relocate them. To allay fears, yes, I can see relocation as an option. To reduce risk -- it won't accomplish that."

Robert Shank, plant manager of Central Oil Asphalt Corp., is uneasy about the claims. "It makes me angry, to tell you the truth, to hear people now say they got sick because of us. I mean, I've watched tanks explode down here for 20 years, and these people never batted an eye. Suddenly there's an empowerment zone, and a chance to get big money for their houses, and now I'm supposed to believe there's a problem?"

Loss of dynamic leader

Residents say it's not the prospect of a fat payday that has them talking about moving, but the loss of Skrzecz, the neighborhood's dynamo.

"It's changed the whole mood around here," says Rodney Sterry, 47, a factory worker who has lived on Leo Street for 20 years. "Here is Jeannette, this energetic person who becomes one of the victims of what she's fighting against. People are thinking that if it can happen to her, it can happen to me."