Harvey proved that dioxins need to be removed from the San Jacinto River.

Harvey proved that poisonous dioxins need to be removed from the river.

All you need to do is drive Interstate 10 across the San Jacinto River and glance out of your window to see one of the most toxic and dangerous pieces of property in the Houston area.

A small island alongside the freeway bridge is marked with ominous signs — “DANGER, PELIGRO, NGUY-HIEM” — warning about the hazards hiding in the water. Without the signage, you would never know the little patch of land beneath the bridge is the site of the infamous San Jacinto Waste Pits.

Homeowners have spent years fighting cancers and other unusual health problems they’re convinced are linked to the carcinogenic dioxins buried under the river. And the companies responsible for the waste pits have fought efforts to clean out the site. Now the Environmental Protection Agency has come down on the side of the homeowners, and it’s way past time the industrial concerns resisting the cleanup give up the fight.

A paper mill used this site for waste storage until the 1960s. As the decades passed, the pits were pretty much forgotten, and they were partially submerged by the shifting waters of the San Jacinto River. But in the 1990s, Texas Parks and Wildlife employees noticed that fish caught in the river were contaminated with rising levels of dioxin. In 2005, the long neglected pits were rediscovered.

By that time, a lot of people living around the area were suffering some debilitating health problems. Among them was the family of Jackie Young, a college student studying environmental geology, who began documenting a pattern of diseases residents of the nearby Highlands area believe were caused by contaminants from the site.

The San Jacinto Waste Pits were added to the EPA’s National Priority List as a Superfund site in 2008. A trio of companies was tasked with taking care of the site, including the business that once operated the pits and the corporation that currently owns the paper mill. In 2011, a part of the site was capped with a concrete barrier that the companies argued would keep the dangerous dioxins safely sealed underground.

But county officials and environmental researchers said dioxin continued to leak from the site. The Harris County Attorney’s Office won a $29.2 million judgment against two of those three corporations. Nonetheless, the companies have fought against the expensive option of clearing out the dioxins, claiming the cap was strong enough to withstand even the dangers posed by a hurricane.

Just as people who live around the river feared, the cap was breached during Hurricane Harvey. The EPA found dioxin in concentrations more than 2,300 times the level at which the government mandates a cleanup. So last week, after years of court action and citizen activism, federal regulators approved a plan to permanently remove the tons of toxic chemicals from this notorious Superfund site. County officials said the companies involved will have to pay an estimated $115 million.

Unfortunately, it appears that’s not the end of the story and the EPA’s order may only launch another round of litigation. At least one of the corporations, McGinnes Industrial Maintenance Corp., opposes removing the dioxins, claiming the cleanup operation itself will endanger the river and areas downstream from the site.

Pardon our skepticism, but these companies claiming to know how to keep the San Jacinto River safe no longer have much credibility. For years they argued that the cap was strong enough to keep the carcinogenic dioxins safely buried, but Harvey proved them wrong.

The EPA has finally done the right thing by ordering those hazardous carcinogens removed from the riverbed. The companies tasked with the cleanup shouldn’t fight the inevitable. What we all should fight for is a San Jacinto River that is safe, clean and environmentally sound for wildlife and for future generations of Texans.