Residents rally for railroad to clean up contamination
Company said groundwater polluted; neighborhood has elevated levels of cancer
Dozens of residents protested outside Union Pacific’s Englewood rail yard in north Houston on Friday as they try to press the railroad company to clean up legacy contamination in a neighborhood where state health officials have identified higher-than-expected rates of cancer.
For years, residents have wondered if contamination from the rail yard, in Houston’s Fifth Ward on Liberty Road, was harmful to their health. Early last year, some began to investigate the issue further after notification from the company that groundwater beneath their homes was contaminated with creosote, a wood preservative that the Environmental Protection Agency classifies as a probable carcinogen, or cancer-causing substance.
Creosote, which was used to treat railroad ties at the yard, seeped into the ground and formed a plume deep below the surface. The plume moved beneath about 110 properties in the area in recent years.
Residents in the area immediately surrounding the yard were assured by the city of Houston last year that their drinking water is safe — homes in the area use water from the city’s reservoirs, not the contaminated groundwater.
Many in the neighborhood blame the creosote contamination for the higher-than-expected rates of cancer in the community. Though creosote operations were halted in the 1980s, longtime residents remember smelling the contamination while the plant was active and tell of rainbow sheens in their streets and yards when
it rained.
“We dealt with contaminants, and we didn’t even know it,” said Keith Downey, president of the Kashmere Gardens super neighborhood organization. “I was a block from the railroad track. I had a cousin (who lived in the area). We lost her to cancer, and we never knew why, because the lady never smoked and never drank.”
State health officials in August completed a cancer cluster analysis that identified higher-than-expected rates of lung, bronchus, esophagus and larynx cancers in the area immediately surrounding the yard. The analysis, however, cannot determine what caused the cancers in the area, sparking calls for more testing.
“I want Union Pacific to come on out and take care of this,” said Leisa Glenn, a longtime resident of the area and organizer of IMPACT, a community group. “They need to come out and take the stuff they destroyed. When I go over there (to the street she grew up on), and it looks like a dead ghost town, it makes me cry.”