subject: Unwelcome neighbors: How the poor bear the burdens of America's pollution posted: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 11:19:54 +0100
[This is really an article about the Law of Unintended Consequences.
At its most basic, this law sez, be cool, or you'll pay later. As it
happens, the article was written before Hurricane Katrina; the
landfill under discussion - a federal Superfund [toxic waste] site -
was subsequently flooded for weeks. Note the warning regarding
breathing the dust - 'toxic dust' has featured in recent reports from
New Orleans. After the flood we can expect the toxins from the
landfill to have been mixed together and spread far and wide. - Stu]
Unwelcome neighbors: How the poor bear the burdens of America's
pollution
Living a Nightmare
It was the American Dream turned upside down: home ownership on land
that turned out to be New Orleans' longtime landfill. The federal
government paid to clean up the area, but residents say that's not
enough.
When they started moving in during the 1970s, residents of the
Agriculture Street neighborhood near the Industrial Canal were
supposed to be getting a rare entree to homeownership courtesy of the
federal government. Two decades later, they have ended up in a bitter
standoff instead.
Two developments -- Gordon Plaza, a subdivision of single family
homes, and Press Park, duplex apartments for low-income residents --
were partly financed with federal money that gave low-income
residents the chance to buy the property. With it came a stake in the
neighborhood, pride of ownership and the normal worries: mortgage
payments, gardens to care for, concerns over crime and property
values.
Unbeknown to many, they were living on poisoned land. The homes were
built on the site of the Agriculture Street Landfill, the main city
dump from 1909 to 1958. Any kind of refuse under the sun, from
household garbage to oil waste from service stations, ended up in the
95-acre site. Tests have found high levels of toxic substances,
including lead and arsenic, in the soil. Residents' anxieties veered
into matters of life and death: They complain of a variety of
mysterious health problems, including cancer, respiratory problems
and skin diseases.
Some residents thought the solution was obvious. Their lives were in
danger and several institutions were at fault, the federal government
in particular. Someone ought to pay to move them away. But they
encountered a Catch-22: The pollution in the ground was dangerous,
but not dangerous enough.
The Environmental Protection Agency declared the area a Superfund
site, targeting it for a $20 million cleanup to skim 2 feet of
topsoil off people's yards. The EPA decided the soil was not toxic
enough to pose a deadly health threat that would justify relocating
residents.
That difference of opinion led to a bitter breakdown in the
relationship between the government and the people it is supposed to
protect. Many residents wanted to be relocated and so refused to let
the EPA onto their land to do the cleanup, and it was never
completed.
"Even at Love Canal, they didn't live on top of the waste," said
resident Don Lewis, who nailed a sign to a tree in his front yard.
The government relocated residents of Love Canal in Niagara Falls,
N.Y., the toxic dumping case that led to the creation of the
Superfund program.
Anatomy of a landfill
Conflicts like the Agriculture Street dispute are all too common in
polluted minority and poor communities. They show how the human
factor greatly complicates public health decisions that are supposed
to be purely scientific, putting government agencies in difficult
positions.
"The EPA's mandate is to protect the health and welfare of citizens.
But health effects are notoriously hard to prove. There are always
other factors: Is there a smoker in the house? Is there radon? It's
hard to trace a health problem back to contaminated soil," said
Michael Lythcott, a housing consultant who helps polluted communities
negotiate relocations. "They are beginning now to explore the welfare
element of their mandate: How has a toxic site affected the welfare
of these families? But they have a ways to go."
The city created the Agriculture Street landfill in 1909 as part of a
plan to consolidate garbage collection and disposal. Before then,
garbage was piled on vacant lots or left on wharves to be barged out
and dumped into the Mississippi River. The Agriculture Street site
was an open dump for decades, referred to by neighbors as "Dante's
Inferno," according to Craig Colten, a historian at Southwest Texas
University who has studied the site.
The city closed the landfill in 1958, reopening it in the 1960s to
take refuse created by Hurricane Betsy. But residential development
was encroaching, and the city decided to convert the land to housing.
Construction of Press Park started in 1969 and Gordon Plaza about 10
years later.
Residents of Gordon Plaza knew something was amiss soon after they
moved in. Remnants of the former dump were everywhere. Broken glass
turned up in the soil, along with tires and other discarded auto
parts, animal carcasses, oil drums and other refuse.
Yardwork, and illness
Many residents maintained gardens, some resorting to trucking in
topsoil to do it. Lewis had a lush vegetable garden in his back yard
that won several awards. But he gave it up after his 16-year-old
daughter died in 1983 of lymphoma, cancer of the lymph nodes. The
Lewises had moved into their house two years before from another home
a few blocks away that was next to the dump.
Though no link has been established between the cancer and the soil,
Lewis said he and his wife started worrying about the possibility.
"At first, I didn't connect it with the landfill," he said. "I asked
the doctor what might have caused this, since nobody in my family or
my wife's family had cancer. The doctor didn't seem to know. I
thought it might be the water. We started drinking bottled water
after that."
Some people expressed concern when high lead levels were found in
soil at the site for the proposed Moton Elementary School. But demand
for the school was high and it was built, opening in 1986.
As more testing was done, residents grew more worried. Many began to
suspect that cancer cases and other illnesses among neighbors were
directly linked to living on the dump site.
They got mixed messages from city, state and federal officials. The
EPA's initial Superfund study, done in 1986, gave the site a low
score because investigators didn't think the soil contamination could
lead to much actual exposure.
Eight years later, after a lobbying campaign by residents, the EPA
reversed itself. Its standards for evaluating potential Superfund
sites had changed and soil contamination was given much more weight.
So the Agriculture Street site was added to the list in 1994.
But after extensive environmental testing and health surveys, the
mixed messages continued. A health evaluation by the state Department
of Public Health and the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and
Disease Registry found that, except for a few areas on the site,
toxic substances were not present in high enough concentrations to
pose a serious health threat.
They had found toxins near the soil surface, the highest
concentrations in a large L-shaped vacant lot next to the Gordon
Plaza homes and a few other "hot spots." The substances included
various metals, including lead, arsenic and barium, and organic
compounds associated with pesticides and the burning of wastes called
polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
Risks in the soil
Residents' fears had some basis in reality, the investigators said.
Chemicals close to the surface can pose a threat to children playing
or adults working in dirt, or if the soil is eaten or dust is
inhaled. The health analysis said the toxic substances in some areas
butted up against maximum recommended safety levels, especially those
found in the soil of the vacant lot.
Arsenic, for example, was found in high concentrations. The levels
were not enough to pose a cancer risk, but high enough to cause
"gastrointestinal irritation" in young children if they consumed it --
usually by putting dirty hands in their mouths -- at the rate of 5
grams per day in the most contaminated areas.
The report recommended that access to the vacant lot be restricted
and that it not be developed because construction could create more
avenues of exposure.
Outside the vacant lot, the results were more benign. Lead and
arsenic were found in concentrations typical of urban areas. The
lowest concentrations were found around the Moton School, which had
been closed because of the contamination. Testing showed blood-lead
levels in the children were lower than elsewhere in New Orleans.
Health investigators looked at cancer and premature birth statistics
and found something disquieting: a breast cancer cluster. An
unusually high number of breast cancers -- 26 -- were diagnosed in
the population of the census tract that includes the Agriculture
Street area from 1988 through 1993, 60 percent higher than the
expected number. Surrounding census tracts had no such elevations.
But the experts couldn't trace it to the chemicals in the dump.
Indeed, most such cancer clusters have no apparent cause, and some
scientists attribute the vast majority of them to chance.
While chemical exposures, especially to pesticides, are a suspected
cause of breast cancer, the report said, "the current environmental
data for the (Agriculture Street Landfill) site that was collected by
the EPA did not show pesticides in the soil at levels that are known
to cause health effects."
Vincent Carradine was one of those cancer cases. She moved to the
neighborhood with her husband in 1982 and was diagnosed with cancer
in 1992 after finding a lump in her breast. She went to Charity
Hospital, had a biopsy and a mastectomy two days later. She had no
family history of cancer. But given the vagueness of the chemical
problem, she says she doesn't know where, or if, to pin the blame.
"I don't know, I can't say, I can't pinpoint it," she said. "We ate
vegetables grown in the soil here. Could that have caused it? But
breast cancer is a worldwide disease. They get it everywhere. How are
we supposed to know?"
A cleanup but no relocation
To the EPA, the test results warranted a cleanup, but not moving
anyone out. The solution offered residents the worst of all possible
worlds: Their property is worthless and their health potentially
threatened. Yet the government won't move them.
"We want to do what's best for all residents," said Ursula Lennox,
the Superfund site manager overseeing the cleanup. "My heart bleeds
for those homeowners who desire relocation. But we just can't do that
for them."
A political problem was lurking behind the scientific numbers. Nobody
in the city or federal government wanted to take responsibility for
the problem. The EPA was overseeing the pollution problem, but the
neighborhood was built on land the city had owned and polluted. It
had been financed under a Department of Housing and Urban Development
program.
Compounding the problem was the EPA's vague policy on relocations. In
the past, the agency had relocated neighborhoods using seemingly
arbitrary standards: sometimes because of a grave health threat,
sometimes as the result of public outcry, sometimes after political
pressure.
The agency has been working to come up with a more standard policy,
but the decision had already been made on Agriculture Street. Tim
Fields, the EPA official overseeing Superfund, promised to get
together with state and federal officials to find alternative
financing for relocations. The effort has yet to bear fruit.
Relations between officials and residents broke down, undermining the
cleanup. Many people blame health problems on the dump, and say they
are getting a run-around from officials. Some say race has played a
role in the handling of the case, something EPA officials deny.
"My mother, she's 63, and the only time she was ever in the hospital
before this was to have me," said Elaine Anderson, whose mother, Ruth
Parker, has developed a rare form of mouth cancer. "What do they take
us for? If this were a white middle-class neighborhood, would we
still be stuck here, many of us sick and dying? No. It's racism."
The federal government is trying to address the health complaints.
Federal agencies brought in James Becker, an occupational health
specialist at Marshall University in West Virginia, who is surveying
residents' health and consulting with them.
Opposition by residents
Facing an unwanted cleanup, residents who had organized to prod the
EPA into action turned around and tried to stop it. Joined by the
city, they filed suit to block the cleanup. But the agency prevailed
and the cleanup proceeded last spring and summer.
Workers dug 2 feet of topsoil off people's yards, leaving
contaminated soil exposed for days, sometimes weeks. Residents dug in
their heels. Ultimately, 42 of 67 Gordon Plaza property owners
refused to allow workers into their yards.
Now residents say they are even worse off than before. Property
owners whose yards were cleaned got documentation, something that
allows them to get bank loans. The others can't.
"That's a real big problem for us," said Peggy Grandpre, the
president of Concerned Citizens of the Agriculture Street Landfill,
who was turned down for a loan. "The EPA said this was a voluntary
action they were taking. All the documents said it's voluntary. Now
we run into this issue. It never ends."
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