Source: Houston Chronicle, February 2, 2014
Posted on: http://envfpn.advisen.com
At the end of the night, after officials from the Environmental Protection Agency laid out options for cleaning up dioxin contamination of the San Jacinto River north of the Interstate 10 bridge, residents seemed nearly unanimous: haul all of the polluted sediment away, once and for all.
Gary Miller, EPA remedial project manager for this so-called Superfund site, and his colleague, Valmichael Leos, explained that “full removal” of 208,000 cubic yards of sediment on the north site would take 16 months, cost between $104 million and $636 million, and leave the site vulnerable during that time period to storms that could spread the toxic material.
The EPA officials, however, did not have a plan to clean up even more serious dioxin contamination on the river south of the I-10 bridge.
The cost and complexities of the cleanup hardly seemed liked impediments to about 100 people who packed the San Jacinto Community Center in Highlands on Thursday night, given how long they’ve waited for relief.
“We need you to take the waste pits out of here and dispose of it,” said Jacquelyn Young, who has studied environmental geology, partly because of health issues in Highlands. She is now an organizer with a group called Texans Together. As people applauded, Young told EPA officials she’d contacted a firm in Boston that could incinerate the waste.
“How did one little girl get so much done and y’all can’t do anything?” one participant asked.
Miller and Leos said the EPA will choose one of the cleanup options this summer. Another option, they explained, would be to put a permanent cap on the waste pits, which a now-defunct paper company filled with dioxin-laced waste back in the 1960s. A third option would be to dig out about 25 percent of the worst sediments, haul it away or burn it.
The cost for any option will be paid by Waste Management Inc., which purchased one of the firms responsible for the dumping, and by International Paper.
Priority status
The waste pits were originally dug into the river flats. Groundwater over-pumping caused the river lands to sink, so the pits are now under water.
While Thursday night’s meeting dealt only with the pits on the north side, where dioxin measurements have been as high as 31,000 parts per trillion, the pits to the south are even more contaminated, measuring 50,000 parts per trillion of dioxin several feet below the surface. EPA officials couldn’t explain why the south site was omitted.
The industrial dump sites were rediscovered in 2005 by Texas parks and wildlife officers, searching for the source of dioxins in Galveston Bay. It soon qualified for Superfund designation and then for the most serious National Priorities List.
The Superfund site is considered one of the most dangerously polluted in Texas. County officials have described it as the top environmental priority locally.
At Thursday’s meeting, fishing was on the minds of many. Miles of the river feature “Danger, no fishing” signs. But no one at the meeting seemed to believe the signs are working.
J.T. Grimes, a fisherman, said he respects them. “But people are setting crab traps right there in those waters,” he said. “Crab traps are picked up daily and the crabs sold in Kemah to unknowing people from Friendswood and Webster. Why isn’t the government stopping them?”
“You are right. People are crabbing and selling their crabs,” the EPA’s Miller responded, trying to maintain control of the meeting.
“You’re on our side, right? The side of the public?” one resident asked a bit later. “Then why do you sound like you’re defending the people that put that stuff out there?”
“I’m trying to be as balanced and as accurate as I can,” Miller replied.
Numerous residents spoke up about health issues they believe are related to poisons they’ve encountered in the water, river sediments and drinking water. EPA deferred some questions to Tina Walker of the Texas Department of State Health Services. Questioners asked why there has been no health survey or epidemiological study conducted in Highlands.
Walker said it would require a control group.
“We have spent hundreds of hours out here trying to tell people, ‘Do not swim in the river. Do not eat the fish. The fish are contaminated,'” Walker said.
Great fishing at bad end
But San Jacinto River fishing is irresistible. The pollution is not as visible now. At one time, the waters were so dirty few took fish from them. But industry no longer pumps discharge into the river. The fish have come back.
“The real problem is there is a great fishery out there. The fishing is fantastic. The only way you are going to protect the public is to remove this stuff,” said Bud Hall, whose family has lived in the area for generations.
Atypical toxin
Not all the fishermen are poor or immigrants. Some are piloting $50,000 boats into Burnet and Crystal Bay, practically under the I-10 bridge, near the pits, longtime observers say.
Dioxin sticks to the river bottom and is taken up by organisms that are eaten by fish and crabs, which store the poisons in their fat and organs.
“Dioxins are not your typical toxic chemical,” said Linda Birnbaum, chief of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Rather than interfering with just one system in the body, “dioxin seems to have the ability to interfere with basic processes in our bodies.”
“Some of the things we see […] is children whose immune system seems to be suppressed, children who when they go through puberty — the little boys … don’t develop as well as you would expect them to. We see some effects on their learning ability.”