Successes and Failures from Other Communities
March 2004
When planning for cleanup, it’s important to address the potential pitfalls and learn from previous efforts. Many older industrial cities across the U.S. midwest have undertaken lead remediation with varying degrees of success. Cities such as New York City and Leadville, CO have successfully remediated sites and homes contaminated by environmental lead exposure from sources like lead-based paint in older housing stock. However, not all cleanup efforts have been successful, and failures offer crucial lessons.
Granite City, Illinois, a town directly across the river from St. Louis, Missouri, exemplifies what can go wrong during lead remediation. As discussed in the March 31, 2004 CAG Meeting handout, many properties became recontaminated despite initial cleanup efforts. Even after soil from a lead smelter operated by NL Industries was removed from residential yards, lead paint continued to flake from the houses, reintroducing contamination. The 1996 article from The Granite City Press-Record highlights these failures, raising questions about the EPA’s effectiveness in overseeing such cleanups, a concern directly relevant to Omaha, where the EPA was also managing remediation.The EPA acknowledged that Granite City sites were recontaminated from two other sources, even though the yards had been cleaned and the smelter has been closed for over 15 years.
Like the proposed Omaha plan, Granite City’s cleanup involved scrapping the top 6-12 inches of topsoil from residences with a lead concentration of 500ppm or higher. However, the remediation did not include other remediation efforts such as lead paint cleanup, interior dust tests, or cleanup of the smelter itself, where scrap lead was left behind. The results were troubling as 16% of the 490 children living within the three mile radius showed elevated blood lead levels. The Illinois Department of Health (IDOH) determined that the majority of the lead exposure came from interior dust rather than contaminated soil. The EPA disputed IDOH’s methodology, but The University of Cincinnati validated the state health department’s findings, confirming that their methods were sound.
The controversy deepened when Assistant City Attorney Ed Fitzhenry declined to publicly release the study’s findings until federal officials reviewed them. The study noted that “abatement of residential soil does not effectively reduce house dust lead levels and therefore is likely to have a minimal effect on lead exposure,” (Slate 2). Even more concerning, lead levels inside some homes actually increased after cleanup, “possibly recontaminated by lead in paint, by lead dust that was disturbed during soil removal or by lead dust blowing from the giant scrap lead pile” (Slate, 2). Residents reported witnessing lead dust blowing from contaminated sites and from homes but didn’t realize they were being exposed to lead, assuming it was ordinary dirt.
For Omaha to achieve a successful cleanup of its superfund site, the CAG needed to learn from these mistakes and design a more comprehensive approach. The group advocated for programs that would test all possible contaminate sources after abatement of the ASARCO lead site, including soil testing, paint assessment, and interior dust sampling. This strategy would accurately identify every potential source of lead on a property. By incorporating these lessons into their Superfund plan, the Community Advisory Group worked to ensure that all point sources of lead would be properly addressed and abated, preventing the recontamination that plagued cities like Granite City.
Bob Slate (Author), Granite City Press Record (Newspaper), “EPA Cleanup Ineffective,” History of Environmental Inequalities, https://steppingintothemap.com/inequalities/admin/items/show/374.
New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, “Preventing Lead Poisoning in New York City,” History of Environmental Inequalities, https://steppingintothemap.com/inequalities/admin/items/show/378.