EPA: Keep Jones Road residents informed
One moment, a locomotive is pulling tank cars through the farmlands near Palestine, Ohio. The next, cars are tumbling off the tracks and toxic chemicals such as vinyl chloride are burning. Residents are left to wonder whether their air, water and land is safe and if our government is doing enough to protect them.
In Houston, residents living near the superfund site on Jones Road in northwest Harris County also live with those fears, but their environmental threat didn’t just appear overnight; it has grown in slow motion, stretching out over decades.
From 1988 until 2002 Bell Dry Cleaners used a nearby storm drain to improperly dispose of its wastewater. That waste contained perchloroethylene (PERC), which degrades into cancer causing vinyl chloride, like what was released in the Ohio train wreck, as well as a host of other toxic chemicals. It wasn’t until the chemicals were discovered in the drinking water at a nearby kids’ gymnastics facility that the state got involved. Bell Cleaners soon shut down, leaving behind an environmental nightmare.
The Environmental Protection Agency named it the Jones Road Ground Water Plume Superfund Site because the chemicals in the groundwater spread in a plume under local homes and businesses. The EPA determined that local residents using private water wells were at risk and offered to connect them to municipal water supplies for free. Only 144 homeowners took them up on it.
It is in the news now because the EPA has determined its protection plan isn’t working. People are still at risk. In late February officials announced they would again pay for everyone who is on well water to connect to the municipal system.
However, the deadline to sign up was March 31. Residents say that was not enough time.
Winston Churchill supposedly once said, “Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else.”
In many ways that describes our government’s approach to environmental crises. In Ohio the EPA has ramped up its response, but only in the face of public outrage. At Jones Road, the EPA is trying to do the right thing, but it has taken 20 years and many false starts to get here.
Residents wonder if the EPA is focused on solutions or simply checking regulatory boxes. Andy Escobar from the Coalition for Environment, Equity and Resilience, grew up in the superfund site. He told us, “My parents moved to the Jones Road area in 1991 for the promise of a safe community with opportunities for their kids…We’ve dealt with tremendous health costs: my dad and mom are cancer survivors and my elderly great aunt who spent 17 years living with us is currently undergoing cancer treatment.”
Were the chemicals in the ground water to blame? There’s no way of knowing. Would a more proactive response from the EPA have spared their health? That’s a question that haunts people living near Jones Road and every other superfund site in America.
At Texas Health and Environment Alliance, we think the EPA’s process has left many residents in the dark and even lulled some into a false sense of security. Go to Jones Road and look for any indication that you are in a superfund site. Look hard and you may find the two small signs located behind the strip mall.
The full area potentially at risk is also unclear. As the water table shifts, so does the chemical plume. The EPA isn’t testing outside the original area, so we don’t know if other homes are impacted.
Our community coordinators are in the neighborhood regularly. They talk to residents who weren’t even aware that they live over a superfund site while some take an “out of sight, out of mind” approach.
THEA and our partner the University of Texas Medical Branch, are trying to provide people with the information they need. We have been performing free air, water, and soil testing for area homeowners. That data should give us valuable information on the current exposure levels and the location of the plume.
Environmental equity can only work if the EPA is committed to truly informing the public. The neighborhood at the Jones Road Superfund Site is a snapshot of Houston – diverse and growing, a place people move to so that they can take part in the American dream of owning their own home. The EPA has embraced environmental justice, but that can only work if the agency is willing to proactively keep the spotlight on health threats and provide effective, timely solutions. It shouldn’t take a train wreck to make our environmental laws work.
Rachel Jordan is the assistant director of Texas Health and Environment Alliance (THEA), a local nonproft that focuses on superfund and other historical toxic contamination sites in Houston and Harris County. Stefania Tomaskovic is the coalition director for the Coalition for Environment, Equity, and Resilience (CEER), a local nonprofit that raises awareness of the connections between pollution, place and the public’s health.