Farewell to a Poisonous Past
February 5th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Those who caught Jesse Bogan’s story in the Observer, Slow Death, Slower Justice, know the sad story of the old pesticide manufacturing plant in South Mission that contaminated an entire neighborhood over a period of decades. The folks in the houses around the old warehouse have been riddled with cancer and disease from the DDT and other poisons that saturated the neighborhood.
From the Observer story:
The plant exhaled pesticide dust like a vacuum cleaner with a full bag. The fan sucked poisonous dust and fumes from the factory, sending them into the neighborhood. Families left their windows open most of the year because they didn’t have air conditioners. Strong Gulf winds moved the dust around so much that residents said they could taste it. The poison blew off of trucks, open-top kettles, and piles of residue left outside, which neighborhood kids used like a community sandbox, according to former workers, locals and court records. Rainbow colored storm water frequently flooded unpaved streets, at times muddying dirt kitchen floors.
Now comes news from the Rio Grande Guardian that the factory building, once owned by the Helena Chemical Company will finally be dismantled by the Environmental Protection Agency “in early to mid-February.”
Unfortunately, it is never easy for the folks in Mission. Taking down the old warehouse has the potential to expose residents to more deadly chemicals stored in the soil, wood, and concrete in and around the old plant.
The EPA sent a fact sheet to residents detailing a plan for the dismantling of the airport-hangar-like monument to environmental degradation — a plan that, it says, will protect residents from dust and water laced with pesticides.
From the Guardian:
“Dismantling will proceed slowly and cautiously to minimize offsite migration of possibly harmful dust,” the Fact Sheet states. “The mixing plant will be dismantled in small, manageable sections, without the use of steel wrecking balls or implosion techniques.” The EPA says it will control any dust or air emissions that occur during dismantling and soil excavation by watering the ground, maintaining the windscreen and by washing vehicle tires before any dump trucks leave the site.
It’s still unclear exactly where all the contaminated refuse, building materials, and soil will end up.
Even with the building gone, the South Mission community’s ‘mass toxic tort’ lawsuit to provide some kind of relief for residents and former employees stricken with a wide variety of cancers, organ failures, and incidences of birth defects will continue.
February 7th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
This site needed to go a long time ago. I’m happy this is being dismantled by EPA. I would also hope that Congress decides to tax companies to pay for cleaning toxic waste sites under the Superfund program. We need more sites to be cleaned up.