EPA Timeline of Omaha Lead Superfund Site

EPA Timeline of Omaha Lead Superfund Site

In the Five Year Review Report for Omaha Lead Superfund Site (Douglas County, Nebraska), prepared by the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) there is a Section titled ‘Site Chronology’ which details action steps taken from the 1970s all the way to 2013, right before this document was released. This resource gives a good indication as to the specific steps that were being taken by the EPA to limit further lead exposure and to cleanup the lead in Omaha.
The very first event on the timeline is from 1973-1998, which was when the “Douglas County Health Department was first compiling statistics regarding elevated blood lead levels in the Omaha area.” The next event was in 1998 when “Omaha City council requested the EPA’s assistance to address the high incidence of children with blood lead concentrations greater than 10µg/dL.” What is not clear from this timeline is what actions were being taken by the Douglas County Health Department in the 25 year period between 1973-1998 to compile the statistics related to elevated lead levels in Omaha. While this huge gap in time does not reveal anything about what statistics were being compiled or what prompted the investigation, the timeline does establish that there was some known reason that elevated blood lead levels were being investigated as early as 1973. The gap of 25 years that followed until there was official outreach to the EPA for intervention, does seem to indicate a lack of urgency or perhaps just a general slowness that ultimately seems as though it was a small failure to the community. If it is known that lead in a person’s blood at any level is toxic and dangerous, then it seems as though taking 25 years to compile data is far longer than justifiable.
The slow start to the process of lead remediation could have been contributed to by how ever-present Asarcowas in Omaha, as the lead smelting plant was the largest in the world. Asarco’s plant had been around since the late 1800s and had been growing steadily, becoming part of Omaha’s identity. It was a huge source of revenue for the city of Omaha. Was this part of the reason that, even though people knew about the harmful effects of lead in the bloodstream, nothing was really done until the late 1990s? Was it the status quo that prevented action from being taken in those 25 years? This timeline put out by the EPA does an effective job in corroborating our stance that early actions in the Omaha Lead superfund were slow and lacking. It seems as though the community’s well-being was not fully taken into account until ASARCO finally shut down in 1997. The effects of lead are still being dealt with today in 2021. If action had been taken sooner, would that not be the case?
While it is unknown what earlier intervention could have meant for Omaha and the people living in the affected areas, the timeline does also show how much has been done to help make the lead remediation process in Omaha successful.

EPA

Douglas County Superfund 5 year Report

2014

Chelsea Greenway