"I can throw a rock and hit it," she said Friday.

The railroad-tie plant has been polluting the air and water for as long as she can remember, and the pollution has caused her numerous health problems since she was 18 years old, she said.

"It's contaminated up here where we live," she said. "You can't smell nothing except what comes from that plant."

Several months ago, researchers came to her house and asked to dig in her back yard, Townsend said.

"I couldn't grow nothing back there," she said.

The researchers must have found something, Townsend said. She is among 12 Somerville residents named in a class-action lawsuit filed against Pittsburgh-based Koppers Industries Inc., the owner of the railroad-tie factory that has provided jobs to the tiny town for more than 100 years.

But Townsend said it doesn't really matter to her.

"They aren't going to give us nothing. It don't make me no difference," she said.

By all accounts, the small town has been divided by the numerous lawsuits filed against Koppers and BNSF Railway, which sold the plant to Koppers in 1995, and by the overwhelming media coverage.

At least 86 lawsuits, including the class-action suit, have been filed against the two companies in Burleson County, Fort Worth, Chicago and West Virginia, contending that toxic chemicals at the tie plant have caused abnormal amounts of cancer and birth defects in the town of about 2,000 people, according to plaintiffs' attorneys.

The class-action lawsuit, which was filed in Caldwell by Houston attorneys in October, would require Koppers and BNSF to relocate the entire town and pay punitive damages. Houston attorney Grover Hankins, from one of three firms representing the plaintiffs in that suit, says the cost to the two companies could be over $80 million.

The first of the lawsuits to go to trial, one filed by Linda and Donnie Faust against BNSF Railway, just finished its second week of testimony in Fort Worth.

Linda Faust, whose husband still works at the plant, has stomach cancer and blames the dangerous chemicals Donnie Faust brought home on his clothing from the tie plant, she said.

The plant, on about 200 acres at the corner of Texas 36 and F.M. 1361 on the northeast edge of Somerville, was built in 1906 by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Co., which later became Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, according to court documents.

Hankins and the Fausts' lawyer, Jared Woodfill, said researchers they hired found shocking amounts of toxic chemicals in the town.

But many Somerville residents said they were skeptical of the link between cancer and the tie plant.

'Just didn't add up'

Bryan radiologist Ron Rust said he worked summers at the plant while growing up in Somerville.

He hadn't heard anyone talk about the plant being linked to cancer, he said, until he read a newspaper article in December.

"I think it's just absolutely bogus," Rust said, adding that he knows of no one who died under unusual circumstances in Somerville. "I was shocked when I read the story."

The article, which stated that many residents considered cancer the most common cause of death in Somerville, made waves across the one-stoplight town.

Rust's father worked at the plant for 39 years and died of stomach cancer when he was 83, he said.

"It just didn't add up," he said of the story. "If he was going to die of stomach cancer from being [at the plant], he would have died 20 years earlier."

BNSF Railway and Koppers officials said last week that the plant has caused no harm to the community.

Koppers has emphasized the jobs the plant provides to the town and the facility's commitment to safety, citing state and federal studies that have shown no abnormal rate of cancer and no significant amount of poisonous chemicals being released into the town.

"We do continue to believe that this litigation is based on junk science. There's no reliable proof that the plaintiffs were exposed to dangerous chemicals," BNSF Railway spokeswoman Sueann Lundsberg said.

In the 1980s, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality found that BNSF had disposed of wastewater in an unlined pond, contaminating the underlying aquifer, TCEQ spokesman Terry Clawson said.

Both companies have been working to clean the water since then under TCEQ's remediation guidelines, he said.

The agency hasn't conducted complete testing of the town because landowners haven't given access to their property, he said.

"However, we are confident that the bulk of the contamination is on-site and is being remediated," Clawson said in an e-mail.

A survey published in 2006 by the Texas Cancer Registry, a division of the Texas Department of State Health Services, showed no elevated rates of cancer among Somerville residents between 1995 and 2003.

But the lawyers dispute those and other government-conducted toxicity tests, saying they are incomplete.

"Just because the government tested it does not mean it was tested appropriately," Hankins said.

Woodfill has represented Somerville clients in litigation against BNSF Railway since 2000 and said researchers from the Texas Cancer Registry have told him the 2006 survey wasn't conclusive.

"The reality is this company has built its stock price on the backs and the lives of the people of Somerville, and they need to be taken care of," he said.

Looking for the truth

Amid residents' confusion, the Somerville school superintendent and school board have taken the lead in finding an unbiased source to perform toxicity testing.

Superintendent Charles Camarillo hired a team of Texas A&M University researchers to test Somerville schools to determine whether they are safe for the students, officials said.

The results of those tests are expected this week, according to Tony McDonald, a toxicologist in the School of Rural and Public Health who is one of the three independent researchers working on the project.

Somerville residents, school board members and lawyers for both sides said they were eager to see the results.

"I don't have an answer. I don't think anyone does," McDonald said. "We just kind of went out there to help somebody."

School board President Bryan Crook said the board had not yet discussed what action to take if the school tested positive for dangerous chemicals. He declined to say whether the board would consider evacuating the schools, as a researcher for the plaintiffs' lawyers has suggested, but promised "aggressive action" if necessary.

"We are completely neutral on it," he said. "Our main concern is to try to stay away from the emotional side and to really remain neutral. If we see that there is a problem, then I guarantee you we will definitely be picking sides then."

Camarillo did not return calls last week.

The feeling on all sides is that the tests may be the first conclusive word on whether Somerville is toxic.

Covered in creosote

In the meantime, all eyes are fixed on the Faust trial, which some have said will set the precedent for future personal injury lawsuits against the two companies.

Linda Faust said the company's negligence contributed to the stomach cancer she developed in 1998. Doctors removed her stomach when she was 40 years old.

Although Linda Faust never worked at the plant, her husband has worked there for the past 33 years, she said.

Donnie Faust would come home covered in coal tar creosote, which the company used to treat railroad ties, she said. For years, he brought home the chemicals on his clothing, which she washed in their washing machine, Linda Faust said.

After Faust's surgery in 1998, doctors told her she did not have long to live. Ten years later, Faust said, she often feels sick.

The couple is seeking $6 million in damages, according to court documents.

This is the second time the Fausts' case has gone to trial. A judge declared a mistrial in August when the other cases that had been filed against the defendants were mentioned in the courtroom.

Linda Faust said she no longer cares about the outcome of the case. She believes the plant was negligent toward its employees and the town's residents, but no one can take back what she's been through, she said.

"I just want it to be over. It's been hard to stick it out, but I don't regret it," she said. "I just want the truth; I just want to know if its safe to live there."

Faust said she's concerned about her daughter and four grandchildren, who also live in Somerville.

The battle lines

Whether or not they believe the plant causes cancer, all residents interviewed by The Eagle last week said they just wanted to know the truth about whether the town was safe.

Somerville's mayor, Tommy Thompson, has acknowledged that the lawsuits have divided the residents and that the future of the town hangs in the balance. But Thompson, who is Faust's brother-in-law, has remained mostly quiet about the issue. He did not return phone calls last week seeking comment for this story.

Christine Campbell McCorkle and her brother, Jack Campbell, are skeptical that the plant has caused an unusual amount of cancer, they said.

McCorkle, who lives less than two miles from the plant, thinks the lawsuits are merely an attempt to make money, she said last week.

"It's just frivolous BS," she said. "I don't believe in frivolous lawsuits."

The town has been covered in coal tar creosote for as long as she can remember, she said. The city once used creosote-treated railroad ties for curbs, and she used to ride her horse in the creosote behind the factory and come home covered in it, McCorkle said.

"If that's the case, everybody should be affected," she said. "I'm fine."

Campbell worked at the plant off and on through high school and college from 1968-74, he said. During that time, BNSF Railway never burned wood treated with coal tar creosote, a known carcinogen, in the plant's boilers -- one of the main arguments Woodfill has made in the Fausts' case.

Campbell said he's worried that the lawsuits will decrease property values and discourage new businesses from moving into the town. Even worse, his family and friends in Somerville have been divided by the allegations against the tie plant, he said.

"I think it's put a barrier up between parts of the town. People have drawn the battle lines and gotten on both sides," he said. "They've painted Somerville as a toxic town. I don't think it is."

• Janet Phelps' e-mail address is janet.phelps@theeagle.com.

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