Jose Pesante remembers the conditions at Osborn Correctional Institution in Somers as among the worst he’s encountered.
Osborn is Connecticut’s oldest prison. Pesante said when he was incarcerated there, the water tasted and looked off, and people were constantly getting sick, an observation he made as a volunteer certified nursing assistant.
“I dreamt of the day that the building would just crumble down by the hand of a bunch of freaking bulldozers,” Pesante said.
Pesante, who was incarcerated at Osborn for about four years, sued staff from the Department of Correction. He and other current and formerly incarcerated people alleged that they were exposed to unsafe environmental conditions while in prison, including tainted drinking water, asbestos and polychlorinated biphenyls, also known as PCBs.
PCBs are manmade chemicals that were once common in building materials, but are linked with serious health problems.
The state has denied any wrongdoing. But documents that emerged during the course of an eight-year legal fight show contamination was indeed found at Osborn. They also reveal the state's halting approach to remediation, the plaintiffs allege, putting incarcerated people at risk of exposure.
Court documents reviewed by Connecticut Public show that as early as 2011, testing in an area called the Q buildings found elevated levels of PCBs in some building materials. Records show the state enacted temporary safety measures, then closed the area entirely, but not for several more years.
Pesante, who was incarcerated at the time, said he asked prison staff why the Q buildings were shuttered. He wasn’t satisfied with the answers he got back.
“That's what made the lawsuit happen,” he said. “I think the lie there, ‘We have no knowledge of toxins in Osborn.’”
'There all the time'
PCBs were produced most actively in the 1940s and 50s. They were used as additives in oils to prevent electrical equipment like transformers from catching on fire. But they started being used in building materials like caulking and window glaze, too.
Osborn opened in the early 1960s, a time when PCBs were frequently used in building materials. The Environmental Protection Agency attempted to limit their use, and eventually banned them in the late 1970s.
Keri Hornbuckle, an expert on PCBs at the University of Iowa, said they can be particularly concerning in prisons because people housed there are constantly exposed to them.
“People in prisons are probably a very vulnerable population," Hornbuckle said. "They're there all the time. Many of them are there for years. And many of them have serious health issues.”
'Deliberate indifference'
Officials tested the Q buildings at Osborn for PCBs in 2011 as part of a planned renovation. Testing records filed in the court case show that glaze used in showers and the exterior of a kitchen window contained PCB concentrations that exceed federal regulations. Levels in half a dozen other materials exceed Connecticut’s own rules, which are more strict.
The state recommends disposing of contaminated material as soon as possible. But it doesn’t mandate a timeline.
Court records show it was more than a year before contaminated areas were sealed with epoxy, which can help contain low levels of PCBs. The state eventually removed the contaminated material and shuttered the Q buildings entirely, but not until several years later.
Pesante and other current and former Osborn inmates accused corrections officials in the federal suit of acting too slowly to remediate PCB contamination.
The complaint accuses prison staff of showing "deliberate indifference" to the health and well-being of inmates by exposing them to an "unreasonable risk of serious health problems," in violation of their constitutional rights.
The plaintiffs allege that despite discovering "significantly elevated levels of PCBs in and around the Q Buildings in 2011 and 2012, the first steps toward remediation did not begin until three years later in 2015," when DOC removed the old kitchen windows that contained the source window glaze, according to court records. Soil and surfaces outside and around the cell block and kitchen windows were not remediated until mid-2016, the plaintiffs allege.
"In this case, for as long as five years after receiving documented evidence of the significantly hazardous levels of PCBs in the Q Building cell blocks and kitchen, the Department of Corrections and the named Defendants intentionally chose to place the inmates at risk of exposure to and poisoning by the hazardous and deadly toxin," the complaint reads.
The state has refuted the claims. In a legal filing, a lawyer from the attorney general’s office denied that drinking water at the prison is unsafe. Water testing is conducted on a regular basis, and the results are submitted to the Department of Public Health, he wrote.
After PCBs were detected, prison officials followed expert guidance, and conducted air testing as a precaution in 2012, he wrote.
The plaintiffs say that testing relied on standards that are outdated.
Claims settled
The lawsuit reached a settlement this year. A copy of the agreement obtained by Connecticut Public shows the state paid $5,000 each to Pesante and the other plaintiffs to resolve their claims.
Connecticut’s prison system is currently replacing all the exterior doors and windows at Osborn. The plan is based on a feasibility study from 2017. According to the project description, the windows and their frames are to be treated as contaminated hazardous material.
The DOC has not responded to questions about whether the windows are being treated this way because of PCBs, and whether or not there has been additional testing for the compound.
David Carpenter is a PCB expert at the University of Albany. He said the state could have been more swift removing material at Osborn. But he said many government agencies have been slow to deal with PCBs.
“I think it was, sort of ... what most government and regulatory officials were doing at that time,” he said.
Pesante said going to prison shouldn't have a heavy burden on your health.
“There are a great majority of people that deserve the opportunity to rehabilitate themselves and come out a new person, such as I did," he said.
