1999- Emergency Action
The 1999 EPA Action Memorandum marks one of the most significant turning points in the history of Omaha’s environmental cleanup efforts because it represents the formal beginning of federal intervention into the city’s long-standing lead contamination crisis. For more than a century, the ASARCO lead refinery and other lead-using industries in Omaha had released airborne lead particles into the surrounding neighborhoods, contaminating yards, childcare facilities, and playgrounds across eastern Omaha. Although concerns about lead exposure had been raised by community members and local health departments for years, this memorandum is the document in which the EPA officially acknowledges the scale of the hazard, declares it an urgent public-health threat, and authorizes an emergency removal action. In doing so, it becomes the foundational step that transitions Omaha’s lead problem from a local concern to a federally managed cleanup effort under Superfund authority.
One of the most important elements in the memorandum is the EPA’s summary of scientific and medical evidence demonstrating the severity of contamination. The document cites data showing that at dozens of childcare facilities and private residences, soil lead levels exceeded 400 mg/kg, a threshold considered dangerous for children. It also references years of blood-lead testing conducted by the Douglas County Health Department, which found that certain zip codes in East Omaha had extremely high rates of children with elevated blood-lead levels. By combining environmental sampling results with county health statistics, the memorandum provides the first comprehensive, federally validated picture of the correlation between soil contamination and childhood poisoning. This linking of environmental and health data was essential in justifying immediate cleanup work.
The Action Memorandum is also crucial because it identifies the geographic scope of contamination and establishes that the issue extends far beyond the ASARCO property itself. The EPA notes that contamination followed the path of prevailing winds from the smelter, affecting hundreds of properties throughout eastern Omaha and even parts of Council Bluffs. This broader understanding of the contamination plume laid the groundwork for what would eventually become one of the largest residential lead cleanups in U.S. history. Without this federal confirmation of the contamination path, the cleanup might have remained limited to the refinery footprint rather than addressing the widespread residential impact.
Under CERCLA (Superfund law), the EPA requests a “time-critical removal action,” along with the statutory exemptions needed to exceed the $2 million spending cap and the twelve-month limit normally placed on such actions. This request demonstrates that the federal government saw the contamination as so severe and so urgent that standard limits were inadequate. This authorization is what directly enabled the excavation and replacement of contaminated soil on residential properties work that would continue for decades.
Finally, the memorandum is significant because it establishes the official start date of federal soil remediation in Omaha. Prior to 1999, concerns existed, but no large-scale federal cleanup operations had begun. This document is the point at which the EPA declares the problem an imminent public-health hazard and commits funding, personnel, and authorities to address it. All subsequent Superfund activities including listing the Omaha Lead Site on the National Priorities List and beginning mass soil removal can be traced back to the actions initiated by this memorandum
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (1999, August 2). Action memorandum: Request for removal action, twelve-month exemption, and a two-million-dollar exemption at the Omaha Lead Site, Omaha, Nebraska and Council Bluffs, Iowa