By David Taylor Managing Editor
The Texas Health and Environment Alliance (THEA) continues to be a thorn in the side of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the cleanup of the San Jacinto River Waste Pits Superfund Site which continues to date.
Last Tuesday, July 30, the group met in Highlands, just miles from the site itself, to discuss successes and future work that needs to be done. Completion is on the horizon after decades of work to push the process along.
The contamination extended to both the northern and southern locations of the bridge over the San Jacinto River. The good news is the southern portion of the cleanup is finally deemed complete.
“It’s a big accomplishment,” said Jackie Medcalf, THEA founder and CEO.
Medcalf and THEA have been involved since 2011 pushing to hold the EPA and the polluters accountable.
“Even though it’s complete on the books, we still have some concerns,” she said. Contractors only dug out and remediated approximately 10 feet deep.
“Area residents are worried about what might be deeper. At the southern site, the agency has never required the parties to look below 10 feet so it’s the unknown that people are concerned about,” she said.
“Local knowledge is everything. It’s one of the most important components of this process and the locals say that the site was contaminated deeper than 10 feet,” she explained.
Those concerns, she said, came from people who worked on it or knew someone that worked there in the 1960s.
For now, however, the EPA says that testing will occur during the 5- year review period after the remedial action.
“Our immediate concern is the TxDOT bridge replacement because their plans show the support structures will go 100-feet below ground and it’s going to be right on the edge of that southern impoundment. We’re extremely concerned about what will be encountered for the bridge replacement,” she said.
THEA has pushed for the EPA to coordinate with TxDOT and earlier this year at a community advisory meeting, for the first time, for them both to be at the same meeting.
“Since they will be working near a superfund site, they will have hazmat crews that will be present during their construction. In my opinion, it shouldn’t be tax dollars that pay for waste pit contaminants that are encountered. It should be the responsible parties,” Medcalf said.
She believes the northern site is moving in the right direction, but we’re not comfortable enough with the 100 percent design to submit it.
“The timeline is a huge problem,” she lamented. “They are going to be isolating the site with this double wall cofferdam structure that will be 30-feet wide. This is going to be a monstrous structure and the 7-year timeline stretches out the risks of that site getting hit with a hurricane or flooding,” she explained.
The original decision by the EPA was to get it done in 2.5 years and that could still happen, but it’s up to the EPA to put their foot down to get it excavated as soon as possible, according to THEA.
“Our position is that the risk of year-round excavation is not as great as stretching it over a 7-year period,” she said.
The threat is that six inches of flooding over the threshold would cause the area to flood within two hours. Then the question is how to take care of the spillage.
“It’s important for people to know that this 100 percent design is not final, and it has not been approved by the EPA, but it could be so that’s why we’re talking about it to let everyone know the ball is in the EPA court,” she said.
The EPA could approve the design, or take over the site with an independent contractor that will provide more trust and integrity than the responsible parties.
“It will mean that it’s not a company hired by the polluter to clean it up,” she said.
Medcalf said an EPA take over would also mean an additional six month to one year delay which she said they were comfortable with considering the responsible parties have 700 days of delays.
“To agree to a shorter timeline and get it done with more integrity, a six to 12 month delay is worth it,” she said.