Dorothy Leonard, who lives across the street from this barren lot, says children play there. Although no sign identifies this site in the center of this low-income New Orleans community – now restricted to commercial or industrial use, long-time residents of Gert Town remember the Thompson-Hayward chemical plant once located there. A class action suit against companies that operated the facility ruined relationships between neighbors.
“The people had complained about the smell and the burning eyes and they couldn’t sit on their porches,” said Frank Edwards, one of the lawyers who represented Gert Town residents in the class action suit against plant operators. “It was in their houses and it was in their attics and it was under their houses.”
A
Dorothy Leonard, who lives across the street from this barren lot, says children play there. Although no sign identifies this site in the center of this low-income New Orleans community – now restricted to commercial or industrial use, long-time residents of Gert Town remember the Thompson-Hayward chemical plant once located there. A class action suit against companies that operated the facility ruined relationships between neighbors.
“The people had complained about the smell and the burning eyes and they couldn’t sit on their porches,” said Frank Edwards, one of the lawyers who represented Gert Town residents in the class action suit against plant operators. “It was in their houses and it was in their attics and it was under their houses.”
In the fall of 1989, lawyers Edwards and Leonard Crooks filed a complaint against the previous owners of the plant – including Thompson-Hayward Chemical Company, Philips Electronics North American Corporation (Philips) and Harcros Chemical Inc. – and six managers of the facility on behalf of Gert Town residents. The complaint alleged the defendants were negligent due to their management of the plant, handling of toxic chemicals, and failure to disclose potential risks the facility posed.
Edwards says the case went to trial after they challenged several jurors, including a former Thompson-Hayward Chemical Company employee, who he believes was receiving a pension from the company. But in 1996, Philips and its subsidiary TH Agriculture and Nutrition Company (THAN), formerly Thompson-Hayward Chemical Company, the first owner of the plant, offered the plaintiffs an amount that the judge deemed fair, he says.
Although THAN and Philips supplied the bulk of the $51.575 million settlement, Chemical Waste Management Inc., Gulf South Systems and the last owner of the facility, Harcros Chemical Inc. – now Elementis Plc., later joined the agreement. About half of the settlement covered class counsel fees, court and administrative costs, and the expense to administer the monies – so each plaintiff received about $6,658 for damages suffered.
Lois Dejean, Gert Town resident and executive director of the Gert Town Revival Initiative (GRI), says the class action suit “fragmented” the community. “Some families were arguing and bickering because one member got some money and one member didn’t get some money, or one member got a large number and the other got small one,” she says.
But with all the hype surrounding the class action litigation, few neighbors mentioned the thousands of tons of chemically tainted soil – too lethal to dispose of legally in any state – that crews left behind after the initial cleanup. However, neighbors grew worried in 2004 when construction began on a high-traffic road bordering the toxic legacy.
“When the bulldozers and work crews were out in the neighborhood, members of Gert Town Revival Initiative became very alarmed because as they understood it, there’s contamination underground,” says Monique Harden, co-director and attorney for Advocates for Environmental Human Rights. “And so they – and rightly so – pitched a fit, held a public meeting, and were able to get the city public works officer to halt the project until there could be some environmental determination of the work moving forward.”
Harden helped GRI resurrect the agreement between Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry (DAF) and the responsible parties to complete remediation since nearly two decades had passed since the initial cleanup.
Edwin Akujobi, supervisor in the Remediation Services Division of DEQ, Region 1, provided multiple causes for delayed remedial activity. He says the agency was waiting for the lawsuit to “take its course” and for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to conclude a risk assessment of the off-site areas.
“To find the facility that can reduce it [the waste] to the level that is required, it was difficult,” says Akujobi. “That also helped prolong the remediation process because it was difficult for them to find a location that can remediate to such a level.”
Initial classification for on-site waste was based on sampling which detected pentachlorophenol in the pesticide formulation area and 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxy-propionic acid, banned in the U.S. in 1986, in the herbicide mixing area. However, the classification changed after THAN consulted U.S. EPA about another site that contained pentachlorophenol-tainted soil.
“In the case of Thompson-Hayward, the state went through this process and determined ultimately that it was not a listed waste,” Jon Rauscher, a toxicologist in the Superfund Division of U.S. EPA, Region 6.
According to records, U.S. EPA indicated in a 2003 letter to THAN that listed hazardous waste classification should be based on analytical data and proof of the spillage. The company searched through its documents and found no evidence indicating these two chemicals were spilled.
So responsible parties concluded the original classification was an error, making off-site treatment and disposal possible. But before responsible parties began final remediation, floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina inundated Gert Town in up to seven feet of water for up to two weeks.
Dejean, who returned to her house about two months after the storm, says it looked like “a bomb had dropped in Gert Town” and the door to a building located at the site of the former chemical plant was torn down. Officials reattached the door because neighbors were concerned that children would enter the building, she says.
Wilma Subra, a chemist who has been working with the Gert Town community, sampled the sedimentary, sludgy material on the surface immediately outside the fence of the facility after the storm. She shared her findings with U.S. EPA, and the agency took additional soil samples beyond the plant.
About a year after the storm, in October 2006, final remediation began. Much of the cleanup, which lasted until August 2007, took place in a large, white dome-shaped tent to prevent hazardous dust and air emissions from entering the community. During remediation, crews removed over 4,800 tons of soil identified as hazardous waste, disposed of over 5,800 tons of debris and construction waste, and extracted about 111,000 gallons of site-related toxic liquid, much from two nearby storm drains.
“We are still inundated with toxins in Gert Town [and are] trying to see who we can get to clean them up, if not, what do we do with the people who live there to tell them how to live to sustain their lives,” says Dejean.
Tomb of Toxins: Part III: Unearthing the Toxic Tomb
