— — As promised, the attorneys who filed a class action lawsuit last week against Tonawanda Coke on Monday filed individual complaints alleging that the plant’s benzene emissions caused their clients’ cancer.

“The lawsuits we filed today are just the tip of the iceberg,” said Collins & Brown attorney Charles Cobb. “I have assembled an amazing litigation team, involving four law firms, to help this community receive the justice it deserves.”

Those firms are Buffalo-based Collins & Brown, as well as Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer; Gordon & Gordon; and Hobbie, Corrigan, Bertucio & Tashjy. Attorneys for the firms are holding another meeting at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Northwest Community Center in Buffalo for individuals interested in taking legal action against Tonawanda Coke.

The Town of Tonawanda plant has yet to respond to last week’s class action suit, filed in state Supreme Court. After filing the class action suit, Cobb said individual complaints would soon follow. “I anticipate many more lawsuits to be filed in the near future,” Cobb said, adding that it will be “a constant wave.”

The complaints charge that Tonawanda Coke’s emissions of benzene — a toxic chemical found in coke oven gas — caused cancer. A known human carcinogen, benzene has been linked to leukemia, and residents who live near the River Road plant have claimed there are higher-than-normal rates of leukemia in the area.

Tonawanda Coke and its owner, J.D. Crane, have come under intense fire lately, both from the government and the public.

Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency made public the results of tests that showed the company underreported its benzene emissions. In an exclusive interview with the Tonawanda News last fall, Crane, who has declined to speak with the media since, said Tonawanda Coke emits less than 10 tons of benzene.

The EPA, however, said last week the plant produces 90.8 tons, or nearly 10 times its allowable limit. EPA officials said they’ll be back at the facility this month to further examine the foundry coke manufacturer’s sources of “fugitive” benzene emissions, which are caused by leaks.

In addition to governmental scrutiny, Tonawanda Coke has faced a growing backlash from residents with the formation of a new community group called Citizens United for Justice, which is in the process of gathering data to take legal action of its own.

Bruce Steiner, the president of the American Coke and Coal Chemicals Institute, of which Tonawanda Coke is a member and for which Crane serves on the Board of Directors, declined to comment on the action taken against Tonawanda Coke this year.

“We do not comment on member company legal matters,” Steiner wrote in an e-mail to the News.