DC Bureau - Investigative Journalism, Environmental News, and National Security Stories That Matter

Photo: Allison Sickle

Spanish moss cascades from the twisted branches of live oaks shading New Orleans streets and luring tourists out of the French Quarter to pristine neighborhoods, like the Garden District. But few visitors venture to Gert Town, dominated by the old, gigantic Blue Plate sign. This sparsely inhabited neighborhood is home to Xavier University and the birthplace of famous musician Allen Toussaint. Floodwaters up to seven feet from Hurricane Katrina inundated Gert Town for about two weeks. Now, most businesses there are liquor-filled corner stores.

Although Gert Town was never a tourist mecca, it was booming industrially in the mid 20th century. Companies, including Coco-Cola and Blue Plate Fine Foods, opened factories there. But since few citizens questioned businesses moving into their community, the deadly potions operators brewed at the Thompson-Hayward chemical plant on Earhart Boulevard remained a mystery for nearly half a century.

Toxic chemicals have plagued this crime-ridden community since a former St. Louis-based chemical company began producing herbicides and pesticides there in 1941.  Between 2006 and 2007 – nearly a decade after class action litigation against plant operators by Gert Town residents, crews removed the noxious legacy on the 2.7-acre parcel, where workers made DDT and the main component of Agent Orange. But the community is still fighting to get U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to remove the poisons that leached into their soil from the chemical plant. And construction on a high-traffic road abutting the site of this once lethal facility has alarmed neighbors.

“When you open up those types of companies, they’re always in poor communities,” says Gert Town resident Lois Dejean. Dejean is the executive director of Gert Town Revival Initiative (GRI), an organization which formed in 2000 to spur development in the community.

Robert Leonard, 42, has lived across from the plant in a white one-story, wooden shotgun duplex trimmed in dark green for over 40 years. Living with his three sisters, two brothers and parents, Leonard says he was unsure what semi-trailer trucks traveling to and from the facility were hauling.

“It was a mess,” says Leonard, pointing to a pool of water along the fence where the plant was located from his front porch swing. “I mean, as kids playing when it rained, that stuff used to be orange – right here, right where the grass is at near the street used to be orange and bubbly.”

After Thompson-Hayward Chemical Company began operations, the water trickling from the Leonard’s faucet turned yellow, and the air outside smelled of chemicals. Leonard says his family got frequent headaches and the plant exasperated his asthma. His 72-year-old mother, Dorothy Leonard, says she took him to the hospital up to three times a week due to respiratory problems.

“I was really concerned, but I felt better after they made their move,” says the elder Leonard.

Companies, including TH Agriculture and Nutrition Company (THAN), a Philips Electronics North America Corporation (Philips) subsidiary formerly called Thompson-Hayward Chemical Company, and Harcros Chemicals Inc., formerly a subsidiary of Elementis Plc., made and stored an arsenal of lethal chemicals at the plant before it closed in 1988. But it was not until 1987 when toxic fumes from a dry-cleaning chemical struck New Orleans Sewage and Water Board workers inspecting sewers near the plant that citizens learned about the poisonous potpourri plaguing their community.

“With that investigation, it clearly showed that they [Harcros Chemical Inc.] were illegally flushing the stuff down the drains as oppose to disposing of it in accordance with environmental laws and regs,” says Monique Harden, co-director and attorney for Advocates for Environmental Human Rights. GRI contacted Advocates for Environmental Human Rights in 2004 to gain support to clean up their community.

About a year after the incident, Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry (DAF) ordered Harcros, the last operator of the plant, to continue remediation in the sewer system and submit a plan with THAN, the other responsible party, to clean up the site.

The $4 million cleanup began in May 1989. Workers in gear resembling moon suits plugged storm drains and capped sewer lines exiting the property; they demolished the former mixing building because the bricks and concrete had absorbed DDT and chlordane.

DDT, a pesticide banned in 1972 by U.S. EPA and responsible for bird kills described in Rachael Carson’s book “The Silent Spring,” is a potential carcinogen and linked to diabetes. And chlordane, a pesticide banned in 1988, is linked to myriad of health effects – including, but not limited to, testicular cancer, diabetes, migraines and respiratory infections.

Photo: Allison Sickle

During the four-month cleanup, workers hauled 75,000 gallons of poisonous liquids and millions of pounds of toxic concrete and soil to a hazardous waste dump. But at least 2,600 tons of herbicide-tainted soil – too lethal to dispose of legally in any state – remained onsite covered with asphalt.

“I think there is a legitimate concern because some of this stuff was so potent and so bad that the defendants could find no place that would take it and dispose of it an environmentally safe manner,” says Frank Edwards, one of the lawyers who represented Gert Town residents in the class action suit against plant operators.

Representatives from Elementis Plc., the last owner of the facility, failed to return multiple calls regarding contamination from the plant.