$5M OK’d to move residents away from creosote plume
Council voted unanimously Wednesday to allocate $5 million toward the creation of a fund announced by Mayor Sylvester Turner this summer to bankroll the voluntary relocation of some residents living over a plume of creosote from a shuttered Fifth Ward wood-preserving operation.
Turner said the $5 million is just a start for the fund. It will eventually target people living in a two-to-three-block radius of a rail yard now owned by Union Pacific Railroad where, until the 1980s, the company’s predecessor Southern Pacific used a toxic mixture of chemicals to treat rail ties.
Nearby residents have been saying for years that residual contamination has threatened their health, and beginning in 2019 cancer cluster studies by the Texas Department of State Health Services showed an unusual concentration of cancers consistent with the chemicals used in the creosoting process.
The council vote on the seed funding was held up by Council Member Letitia Plummer last week, delaying the vote. Turner reacted with dismay at the stall, repeating several times how disappointed he was in her decision to put off supporting the program.
“As mayor of the city of Houston, to sit back and just watch and wait on study after study and test after test, and people are continuing to die, makes no sense to me. In good conscience, I can’t do it,” Turner said last week.
Plummer responded that delaying the vote was done to “make sure the community understands what they are dealing with, they need to understand that the $5 million is seed money,” and that other potential funders — such as Union Pacific, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and CommissionCity er’s Court — would need to contribute as well for the program to be executed as planned.
A document attached to the ordinance said the voluntary relocations would focus on existing residents living in properties directly on the creosote plume north of Liberty Road, west of Lockwood, east of Wipprecht and south of Jewel.
The area has 110 parcels, it said, but only 41 lots are residential.
According to the plan, the city would appraise and purchase the homes of residents who wish to move and apply that appraised value to the cost of a new house elsewhere. The city would then supplement that with cash from the fund to ensure each resident is given an equivalent new construction, compensating for any devaluation due to the contamination. Current renters will also be offered up to $10,000 to move.
“In order to relocate everybody in that area who may choose to relocate, it could cost about $30 million or more,” Turner said last week. “But we don’t have $30 million. And Union Pacific should step up, but they haven’t stepped up.”
Union Pacific has said it would begin re-testing area homes this fall for contamination and exposure to a range of chemicals linked to the wood treatment process.
“We are currently in the neighborhood seeking formal permission from residents to conduct these critical soil samples once the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approves the testing plan,” said Toni Harrison, a spokeswoman for the company. “This additional testing will provide the essential data needed to make informed decisions regarding any required additional remediation.”
Union Pacific has said in the past that the company will not make any decisions on relocation proposals until after the testing is complete.