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

Photo: Allison Sickle

As a mustard yellow bulldozer about the size of a Jeep Rubicon rumbles forward and reverses hurling dirt into the air, cars rattle down Earhart Boulevard in New Orleans. The spring sun beams down baking six construction workers in neon yellow vests and white hard hats as they prepare to concrete the gutted neutral ground. Greg Dabalos, a concrete finisher from Command Construction Industries based out of Metairie, La., says his company did not tell him what used to exist on the grassy parcel across the street in this mainly black community. But before he could respond to additional questions, an employee from the construction company exited a truck and crossed the street directing all inquiries to their office.

Unlike Dabalos, long-time residences of Gert Town know what occupied this barren lot surrounded by a five and a half-foot barbed wire fence. They blame activities that occurred there for damaging their health – causing cancer, respiratory problems and other adverse effects. And a class action suit by neighbors against companies that made and stored an arsenal of lethal chemicals there – including DDT and toxic dry-cleaning fluids – tore the community apart.

“The real bad time of the operation was during the Vietnam War,” says Frank Edwards, one of the lawyers who represented Gert Town residents in the class action suit against plant operators. “They actually made Agent Orange there.”

Seventy-two year-old Dorothy Leonard – who is about five feet tall with cocoa-colored skin, a rounded face and gray hair – has lived across from the Thompson-Hayward chemical plant, which closed in 1988, in a shotgun-style duplex for over 40 years. She is concerned that construction on Earhart Boulevard could be stirring up contaminates that leached into the soil from the facility.

“There’s a lot of dust coming from over there,” she says. “We have to keep the door closed.”

This is the second time since the plant closed that reconstruction has occurred on this high-traffic road abutting the former site of the chemical plant. But it is the first time workers have unleashed toxic soil underlying the asphalt adjacent to a playground in the community.

“We probably wouldn’t have pulled samples,” says Charles Faultry, associate director for remedial in the Superfund Division of U.S. EPA, Region 6. “I only pulled samples because of the community concern to make sure that what was being dug up – because this community has some concern – that it was safe.”

In 1998, U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration, Department of Public Works City of New Orleans and Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development conducted a joint environmental assessment on potential reconstruction on Earhart Boulevard bordering this site. The assessment concluded that soil excavation could potentially harm those exposed to contaminants that migrated from the facility via air, groundwater and the sewer system. So officials restricted future plans for roadwork on this segment of the road, based on the environmental assessment, to include removing the top surface of the original street and repaving it with new asphalt.

Gert Town residents held responsible agencies to the terms of the assessment in 2004 when bulldozers approached this segment of Earhart Boulevard. But earlier this year attempts to stop digging next to this once highly toxic site were unsuccessful.

“We thought, never ever should there be ever any excavation, and then, six years later here’s excavation – ‘What, what’s going on,’” Monique Harden, co-director and attorney for Advocates for Environmental Human Rights. “And EPA folks are scrambling trying to figure it out and calling the City of Public Works to halt any excavation.”

In 1997, Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry (DAF), and parties responsible for contamination from the plant entered a cooperative agreement. The purpose of the agreement was to investigate toxicity at the site, perform a risk assessment to identify action necessary to protect human health and the environment, and determine appropriate activity to finish remediation.

Investigators took soil samples from 75 locations under streets abutting the facility as part of the examination of contamination from the facility, according to records. Edwin Akujobi, supervisor in the Remediation Services Division of DEQ, Region 1, says they drilled through the asphalt to obtain these samples and that about a quarter of them came from Earhart Boulevard.

DEQ was concerned about some of the levels detected in the subsurface soil beneath the streets, says Tom Harris, DEQ administrator for remediation services. But Akujobi says investigators subjected the samples to risk assessments, and there was “no reason to even consider” doing remedial activity based on the results. The final remediation, which occurred October 2006 to August 2007, excluded cleanup in the subsurface of this segment of Earhart Boulevard between the asphalt and the storm drains beneath the road.

However, earlier this year, excavation in this area of the street due to roadwork has unearthed a tomb of toxins. According to Superfund Division associate director Faultry, a soil sample taken by U.S. EPA exceeds the state’s Risk Evaluation/Corrective Action Program (RECAP) standard, which sets the agency’s minimum remediation standard.

But DEQ’s Harris says, “…There were no remaining and are no remaining restrictions on what can be done beneath the streets as far as digging up soils or any concerns in that area whatsoever.”

DEQ examined the former site of the Thompson-Hayward chemical plant after final remedial activity. Harris says that based on the remaining concentrations of contaminants in comparison to those risk-based standards, the agency determined in June 2008 that no further action was necessary, freeing this area of Earhart Boulevard for roadwork.

According to Harden, Gert Town residents thought the no excavation order included in the 1998 environmental assessment was still active. So in January when bulldozers once again approached this segment of the road, members from Environmental Advocates for Human Rights and the community contacted U.S. EPA.

This time, efforts to halt roadwork failed. Harden says construction workers began digging the day after they notified the federal environmental agency. And the community later discovered contamination in the street was outside the agency’s jurisdiction.

“Until a month or so ago, we were not aware that the streets around the facility were under DEQ’s control,” says Wilma Subra, a chemist who has been working with the Gert Town community.

In the 1990s, around the time of the class action suit against operator of the facility, DEQ and U.S. EPA decided that the state environmental agency was responsible for cleaning up the former site of the chemical plant and the surrounding areas were U.S. EPA’s jurisdiction.

Subra says the community and she thought the fence was the dividing line. But Faultry says DEQ is responsible for Earhart Boulevard.

“The street was considered onsite because its continuation from the site itself,” he says. “What we had was some of the contaminants went over into that area so that was a continuation of the site itself.”

When representatives from the community contacted the U.S. EPA, the agency “certainly” did not act as though street excavation was a “DEQ jurisdiction issue,” says Harden. In addition, contaminants also traveled to areas currently outside DEQ’s jurisdiction, like residents’ yards and the playground diagonal from the site.

According to Jon Rauscher, a toxicologist in the Superfund Division of U.S. EPA, Region 6, the federal agency was aware that the street was controlled by DEQ. And when asked why he failed to direct inquiries regarding roadway construction abutting the former facility to the state environmental agency, he responded:

“We probably could have communicated better in the ‘90s about this distinction, but a lot of times when we work with the state, we try to make it seamless. We may have our own bureaucratic distinction, and I think part of it was DEQ and EPA probably could have done a better job of communicating that distinction in the 1990s.”

Public anger surrounding the roadwork on Earhart Boulevard prompted U.S. EPA to take 10 soil samples in the park across the street and six samples adjacent to the site in the excavated portion of the road earlier this year. Subra says some of the samples contained DDT and its metabolites. And one from the road exceeded the state’s RECAP standards.

Keith Casanova, DEQ senior environmental scientist, says that just because a minimum risk-based standard is exceeded does not mean that cleanup is mandatory. “Further evaluation has already been done through a more detailed risk assessment and determined that the concentrations that were appropriate for the street for a construction worker scenario are [in] excess of the minimum standard,” he says. DEQ says their standard protects the workers. But some people disagree.

The Thompson-Hayward site after remediation. Photo: Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality

“…We were really concerned that the construction workers were out there without any protection not knowing that they were excavating in an area that was adjacent to this site that had extensive excavation and off-site disposal,” says Subra.

Marvin Thompson, New Orleans Department of Public Works project manager for renovations on Earhart Boulevard between Hamilton to Pine streets, which includes the segment next to the former site of the chemical plant, says he is “unfamiliar” with the soil sample that U.S. EPA took from the street that exceeded the state’s RECAP standard. However, he attended the meeting last April when U.S. EPA shared the results of the recent soil samples with Gert Town and state governmental agency representatives, according to the sign-in sheet and Dejean, who was in attendance. Thompson says New Orleans Department of Public Works expects reconstruction to be completed by the end of the year. And Faultry says soil samples from the community do not rise to the risk level that would require the agency to take clean-up action.