AVENAL -- María Saucedo sat with one hand on her swollen stomach, which was round with the promise of a new life.
Saucedo was happy -- but cautious -- as she spoke about the child kicking and moving inside of her. She said she was anxious to finally see the baby, who was scheduled to be born by Caesarean section in one week.
Saucedo wanted to guarantee the new child was not like her daughter Ashley, who was born with cleft palate and died about 11 months later, and not like four other Kettleman City area infants, who were also born with birth defects in the span of about two years.
Since Ashley's death in January 2009, Saucedo and her husband, Alejandro Álvarez, have joined other area residents to bring attention to the cluster of birth defects in Kettleman City, a 1,500-resident community located about 3 ½ miles from the state's largest toxic waste dump, and about halfway between San Francisco and Los Ángeles.
Saucedo, the other affected families, and community activists want to know why five local babies were born within about 14 months with defects -- mostly cleft palate and cleft lip -- and why three of those children, including Ashley, have since died. They want to know why local authorities seem to have taken little action since the discovery of the cluster.
Most of all, they demand that the county halt the permitting process for local industrial facilities -- including the proposed expansion of Waste Management, Inc.'s hazardous waste landfill, and the proposed construction of a power plant in nearby Avenal -- until an independent health investigation has determined the cause and extent of the birth defects.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is scheduled to hold public hearings regarding the proposed power plant on Oct. 1 and Oct. 15, and the Kings County planning commission is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the proposed landfill expansion Oct. 5.
"It is no longer a coincidence that my daughter was born unhealthy, that other babies were born unhealthy, that infants have died, and that more are being born with defects," Saucedo, a 17-year resident of Kettleman City who has lived in Avenal for two years, said in Spanish.
"Why is it happening?" she asked. "There has to be an answer, but unfortunately no one has given us one. They tell you, 'we promise we are going to investigate, we promise we are going to investigate,' but nobody has responded, and answered why babies are being born like this."
Kettleman City residents have been protesting Waste Management's Kettleman Hills Facility, a 1,600-acre municipal and hazardous waste landfill, since the late 1980s.
Local activists said their ongoing fight against the facility has always been motivated by a desire to protect the local environment and the health of their community, which is about 93 percent Latino. It angers them now to see their fears about the facility realized.
"Before, it was just an idea: Maybe people could get sick, maybe women will have reproductive issues, maybe there will be birth defects," said Kettleman City resident Maricela Mares-Alatorre, a leader of the local environmental justice organization El Pueblo Para El Aire y Agua Limpio/People for Clean Air and Water.
"And all of a sudden, they are being born with birth defects," she said. "It's not something we ever wanted confirmed, but there it is."
There is no proof that Waste Management's facility has caused the birth defects, though.
In fact, Waste Management senior district manager Bob Henry said there is no way the landfill has contributed to the health problems in Kettleman City.
Henry said the facility is not connected to the community's water source, and the prominent wind direction does not blow toward Kettleman City. There are air- and water-monitoring stations on site, and about 10 local, state, and federal agencies regulate the facility, he said.
"How can this facility impact the community?" Henry said. "We're downwind and we're not hydraulically connected to the community's water supply.
"It is not occurring," he said.
Henry said his heart goes out to the families who have been impacted by the birth defects, but he stressed that his facility did not cause the childrens' health problems.
"Do we feel like it is from this facility?" he said. "No, but that doesn't make that mother feel any better."
There is also little proof that the birth defects are more than a random phenomenon, according to Kings County health officer Dr. Michael Mac Lean.
Mac Lean said there are very few children born each year in Kettleman City, so it is challenging to scientifically determine whether it is abnormal or excessive for five babies to be born with birth defects in the small community.
He said he would be more concerned about the cluster if all the infants were born with the same, exceedingly rare defect.
"It is probably not a real phenomenon," Mac Lean said. "It's real to them, each one of those families, what happened to them is real. But whether or not this means there is anything going on in Kettleman City that caused that is probably not the case."
The county health department has asked the California Birth Defects Monitoring Program, part of the California Department of Public Health, for more detailed data on local birth defects, to determine if there has been a spike in the number of birth defects in the community when compared with other communities in the county, the San Joaquín Valley, the state and the nation.
If the program's data shows there is an excessive number of birth defects in Kettleman City, then the issue will be investigated, Mac Lean said. As of Friday, the county had not received that data.
"If it raises a red flag for them, then I'll go along and let's see what we can do," he said.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has offered that Kettleman City residents could work with a contractor, who could help affected families better understand the origin and nature of the birth defects, according to Deldi Reyes, regional manager of the EPA's environmental justice program.
But Kettleman City residents insist there is an urgent health crisis in their community, though activists do not blame the birth defects on one industry.
To determine the true cause of the birth defects and other health issues, residents are requesting an independent health study that takes into consideration the cumulative effects of all the health factors affecting the community -- including the nearby landfills; the fumes expelled from the thousands of cars and trucks that pass the town on State Route 41 and Interstate 5 each day; the community's poor drinking water, which has levels of arsenic above drinking water standards; the agricultural pesticides and chemicals used on nearby fields; and the lack of access to fresh food and produce.
Bradley Angel, the executive director of the San Francisco-based organization Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, who is assisting the Kettleman City residents in their fight, said the severity of the community's health concern, combined with the seeming inaction of officials, has angered residents and re-energized the community's decades-long environmental justice movement.
"It is like a jolt of horror, and kind of a call to arms, so to speak," Angel said.
"I think it has taken what has always been an important fight, and a potential life-and-death fight, and turned it into a real life-and-death fight."
Ashley's shadow lingered over Saucedo's small apartment, even as the day of Saucedo's Caesarean section approached.
Pictures of Ashley, with her deformed lip and her feeding tube, were displayed on a table in the living room, beside a religious candle.
Ashley's crib still contained her blankets, stuffed animals, and musical toys. Ashley's closet and dresser were still filled with baby clothing, much of it unworn, since she did not grow much during her short life.
When Saucedo's new baby kicked inside her, she commented that Ashley was a less active fetus, maybe because of her developmental problems. She remembered that her oldest daughter, 8-year-old Adamaris, was also less active in the womb.
Saucedo, who immigrated from México City to Kettleman City in 1990, worked in Valley packinghouses for about 10 years before she began working in the fields in 2000.
She was 40 years old when Ashley was born on March 12, 2008. The baby weighed less than four pounds, and doctors told Saucedo and her husband it would be a miracle if Ashley lived past three months.
At the time of Ashley's birth, doctors explained to Saucedo and Álvarez that Ashley had a chromosome abnormality. "They never told us that it was because of where we lived, or the chemicals," Álvarez said.
Though the defect was genetic, Saucedo believes the environment also played a role in Ashley's condition.
"If you are living in one place for years, and you are breathing all these chemicals, something will have to affect you at some point," Saucedo said.
Ashley survived for 11 months, but those were not easy months for the baby or her parents. Saucedo recalled that her daughter was always sweating, required a feeding tube to eat, and needed massages on her hands, which were always scrunched into tight fists.
On January 24, Ashley had a temperature of more than 100 degrees, so Saucedo took her to the hospital. The baby died less than two hours later.
Doctors told Saucedo and her husband that their daughter died of an infection in her blood and lungs.
"You go to the closet, you go to her crib, you look, and it makes you want to cry," Saucedo said. "It makes you sad that she's not here, and you're left alone with all the memories of her."
On the day of Ashley's death, Saucedo had known for just one week that she was pregnant again. Saucedo said she comforts herself with the thought that Ashley sent her the new child as a parting gift.
"I'm going to leave, but I'm not going to leave you alone," Saucedo said, as she interpreted Ashley's rationale for providing her mother with news of life, and then death, in the span of nine days. "I'm going to leave you with someone, so you are not left always thinking about me."
With the desire to improve her life, the lives of her family, and especially the life of the baby on the way, Saucedo enrolled in a weekly General Education Development this summer. Her goal, she said, is to earn her diploma and then study to work as a nurse, as she once did in México.
Ashley's gift to her mother arrived on Sept. 1. Her name is Cetlaly, and she weighed 7 pounds, 3 ounces.
"Thank God, everything turned out well," Saucedo said.
Cetlaly now sleeps in Ashley's old crib and sits in Ashley's car seat. "It's difficult to see her using Ashley's things," Saucedo said. "It makes me remember."
Memories of Ashley will inspire Saucedo to continue participating in Kettleman City's movement for environmental justice and community health. She said she is fighting not for herself, "but for the future parents in Kettleman City and Avenal, who are also going to have sick children."
"How long is this going to continue?" she asked.