Lethal chemical exposed at Houston Superfund site
WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency says an unknown amount of a dangerous chemical linked to birth defects and cancer may have washed downriver from a Houston-area Superfund site during the flooding from Hurricane Harvey.
The EPA said Thursday night it has ordered the companies responsible for the San Jacinto River Waste Pits site to immediately address damage to a protective cap of fabric and rock intended to keep sediments highly contaminated with dioxins from spreading. The companies, International Paper and the Waste Management subsidiary McGinnis Industrial Maintenance Corp., have made initial repairs to the underwater section of the cap where the protective rock was missing.
The EPA said a sample collected by an agency dive team from the exposed area showed dioxin levels at 70,000 nanograms per kilogram — more than 2,300 times the level set to initiate a cleanup. Dioxins do not dissolve easily in water but can be carried away with any contaminated sediments and deposited over a wider area.
Residents in nearby neighborhoods that flooded during the storm are now worried contaminated mud might have been washed into their homes, said Jackie Young, a local environmental advocate.
“For years we’ve told the EPA it’s not a matter of if this area is struck by a hurricane but when,” said Young, executive director of Texas Health and Environment Alliance. “The scary part about this is we have no way of knowing where all the contaminated material was carried by Harvey’s floodwaters.”
At least a dozen Superfund sites in and around Houston were flooded last month in the days after Harvey’s record-shattering rains. Associated Press journalists surveyed seven of the flooded sites, including San Jacinto. The EPA said at the time that its personnel had been unable to reach the sites, though they surveyed the locations using aerial photos.
The San Jacinto River Waste Pits Superfund site is on and around a lowlying island that was home to a paper mill in the 1960s. The site was completely covered with roiling floodwaters when the Associated Press surveyed it on Sept. 1.
About 16 acres of the site were covered in 2011 with an “armored cap” of fabric and rock intended to contain the contamination until it can be removed as part of a proposed $97 million cleanup plan. The cap was designed to last for up to 100 years, but it has required extensive repairs on at least six occasions in recent years, with sections becoming displaced or going missing.
In its statement, the EPA did not disclose precisely when the damage to the cap from Harvey was first discovered. The Associated Press observed a dive team working from a boat over an underwater section of the site on Sept. 13. Workers began using heavy machinery to add layers of rock to the cap the week after the storm.
The EPA said additional testing will be needed to determine whether the contamination spread and to ensure that the exposed waste material is isolated.
Despite the EPA’s statement affirming that contaminated materials were exposed, International Paper and McGinnis said in a statement that “no evidence exists that there was any release of waste material to the environment as a result of Hurricane Harvey.”