San Jacinto plan foes backed by big firms
‘Well-funded efforts’ to keep pits capped called ‘outrageous’
Companies held responsible for cleaning up the San Jacinto Superfund site have disclosed involvement in three supposedly independent groups that popped up to protest an Environmental Protection Agency plan to permanently remove hazardous paper mill wastes from the capped pits east of Houston, according to a letter their attorneys provided to a Harris County judge.
Representatives of groups called Keep it Capped, Galveston Maritime Business Association and the San Jacinto Citizens Against Pollution have attended meetings, organized events and launched a website to support keeping the waste pit sites capped, even though the riverfront site frequently floods and leaked cancercausing dioxin after Hurricane Harvey.
But the revelation of what attorneys called “significant participation” in those protest groups by at least one of the corporations required to fund EPA-ordered Superfund cleanup activities came to light only after Jackie Young, a longtime community leader and executive director of the Texas Health and Environmental Alliance, formally complained that she had been harassed by the groups.
“This is outrageous,” Young said. “Such well-funded efforts distracted the Superfund process and could have drowned out the voices of our residents that received no funding from the responsible parties in this mess.”
The San Jacinto Waste pits, adjacent to the Interstate 10
“Such well-funded efforts distracted the Superfund process and could have drowned out the voices of our residents.” Jackie Young, community leader
bridge that links Channelview and the town of Highlands, were filled up with paper mill wastes in the 1960s and forgotten. The leaking pits were rediscovered after fish in the lower San Jacinto River were found to be poisoned with dioxin; the site was designated for Superfund status by the EPA in 2008. A temporary cap installed in 2011 has required repeated repairs. Initial denial
The plan to permanently remove about 212,000 cubic yards of material laced with dioxin, a known human carcinogen, won approval from the EPA in October 2017 after government divers confirmed cancer-causing dioxins had again escaped the pits after Hurricane Harvey battered the site.
The plan is supported by Young’s group and a long list of environmental organizations as well as local and state government leaders. But it’s been opposed by the corporations charged with cleaning up the pits, Waste Management of Texas and McGinnes Industrial Maintenance Corporation or MIMC.
The connection between corporate PR efforts and the supposedly independent groups protesting removal was revealed in a recent filing in a Harris County waste pit lawsuit.
The pending civil lawsuit involves more than 600 people who believe their health and property were damaged by long-term exposure to dioxin from paper mill wastes stored in the pits that leached into the river.
Young’s nonprofit is not part of the civil lawsuit. But her complaints came during a hearing last year when she described how the corporate defendants’ subpoenas for records in the case have caused a crippling amount of work for her tiny organization and that she’d also been harassed by independent organizations she believed to be tied to the corporations.
In the hearing, attorneys initially denied any connection with the three protest groups. But the attorneys later advised the court that they’d just learned about PR efforts that included “significant participation” and “involvement” in keepitcapped.org, the Galveston Maritime Business Association and the San Jacinto Citizens Against Pollution, according to information provided to the court. ‘Not relevant’
In a statement, Waste Management of Texas acknowledged Friday that attorneys for both firms in December “learned that an additional PR firm had been retained to assist MIMC with advice and community outreach efforts relating to the proposed EPA remedy for the San Jacinto Superfund site.”
“The companies do not believe that the community outreach efforts are relevant to the personal injury or property claims involved in the pending litigation,” Waste Management said in its statement Friday.
But in response to the disclosures, Young has requested a full explanation from the companies and sanctions from the judge overseeing the civil case.