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Home - Cover Stories
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Paints Pains
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EPA’s ‘re-do’ on the
Omaha lead project raises questions over the projects efficiency and effectiveness
by Bryan Cohen
Omaha is the nation’s largest residential superfund site, a classification reserved for the most polluted and environmentally hazardous areas. Since 1999, the Environmental Protection Agency has spent some $175 million to remove lead contaminated soil in east Omaha and estimates $406 million will be needed to complete the project. But for years public officials, landowners, and health experts have questioned whether the money is making a difference on human health. The rush to replace yards, and lack of communication between the federal government and local officials, have led to duplicating work and confusion over responsibilities. Since the beginning of the project it’s possible that hundreds of yards replaced by the EPA may have been recontaminated with lead from exterior lead-based paint chipping on to the ground.
While the EPA likely knew of the risk exterior paint posed early on, the agency went ahead with soil removal on thousands of properties in Omaha without first stabilizing (repainting) lead-based paint, potentially leaving yards vulnerable to recontamination. In 2004, the EPA issued a rule saying it would address paint stabilization, but it wasn’t until 2007 that the agency officially began the work. In fact, according to data analyzed by The Reader, the EPA continues to remove soil in some cases before addressing paint. The costs of returning to homes to stabilize paint after the soil work is complete are unclear. But after all that, there may be no significant difference in human health anyway.
Soiled Past
Before foot bridges and skyscrapers, large smoke stacks greeted travelers crossing the Missouri River into Omaha. From 1899 to 1997, Asarco (formerly the American Smelting and Refining Company) operated one of the world’s largest lead refineries on the corner of 5th and Douglas.
Lead smelting involves a toxic process of burning lead ore with a mix a chemicals to extract the softer metal. Lead, like that produced in the Omaha Asarco plant, was used to manufacture paint, pipes, glazing, ammunitions, and tools among other products. Most lead has been phased out of manufacturing since its health effects have become more widely known.
Asarco, based in Tucson, Ariz., has a long history of operating some of the most productive and environmentally hazardous refineries in the world; many have become targets of environmental activists and attorneys. Asarco plants in Mexico were targeted by Pancho Villa in the events leading up to the Mexican-American War. The company has faced lawsuits in several states, including California where the first environmental lawsuit was brought against Asarco in 1910. One of Asarco’s most well-known and controversial sites is the now-defunct El Paso refinery. With its 828-foot smoke stack that still dominates the El Paso skyline, the plant is a fitting image of Asarco’s former production power and on-going environmental degradation.
In the early 1970s several key pieces of legislation, including the Clean Air Act of 1970, brought the modern environmental movement to the mainstream. In 1972 the Omaha Asarco plant was found to be releasing extraordinarily high levels of lead and arsenic into the air and river. Asarco refused to comply with the new regulations. It wasn’t until two Bellevue citizens filed a lawsuit some 30 years later that Asarco was held legally responsible for the pollution. Rather than pay the millions it would have cost to come under federal regulations, Asarco decided to close the plant in 1997.
After Asarco dismantled the plant and turned over the 23-acre property to the city, then-City Councilman Frank Brown asked the EPA to investigate lead contamination in the area. The first soil testing for lead in and around the site began in 1999.
EPA Rushes In
The EPA found soil in many eastern Omaha properties had been contaminated by lead beyond the threshold of 400 parts-per-million; soil in average residential areas contains around 25 ppm of lead. The EPA also found children in the area to have elevated blood-lead levels (EBLs) of at least 15-micrograms per deciliter, enough to trigger environmental remediation. With those levels children could suffer learning disabilities, lowered IQ, and behavioral problems. Higher levels of lead poisoning could result in nerve damage, anemia, kidney failure, or death. The Omaha lead site is also located around the areas with the highest concentrations of poor and minorities complicating prevention and education efforts.
In 1999 the EPA used its emergency response authority to begin removing contaminated soil in high risk areas, including schools and day care facilities. Although the site wouldn’t be officially added to the National Priorities List (superfund sites) until 2003, funding for the project came under the EPA’s Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), also known as the superfund law. The EPA determined decades of Asarco pollution was to blame for the contaminated soil.
The EPA can replace soil within a week of testing, but the process is cumbersome and expensive. Contractors first divide a property into quadrants. If any of the quadrants test above the threshold amount for lead, the EPA will remove the soil. Clean sod from farms in central Iowa is trucked in and the property is restored. The process costs more than $13,000 per property.
The superfund site has expanded since 1999 as EPA rules for lead contamination have become more strict. The current clean-up plan contains around 15,000 properties in roughly seven and a half zip codes. The 68111 area in North Omaha and 68105 in midtown consistently rank the highest in the city for EBLs found in children.
Underestimating the Problem
As soon as the EPA began work in Omaha, questions were raised over how much contaminated soil was actually contributing to EBLs in eastern Omaha. In 2001, while the EPA was working to make Omaha an official superfund site, Mayor Mike Fahey voiced concern that lead-based paint may have been a bigger factor in human health and soil contamination than EPA officials thought.
The EPA acknowledged in its preliminary assessment of the project that the site included many homes built before 1950 that likely included lead-based paint. However, due to the emergency response, the EPA began the project without thoroughly studying potential contamination sources.
“The EPA probably didn’t realize how big of a problem (exterior) lead-based paint was in Omaha, so it probably didn’t hit them right away,” said Reid Steinkraus, supervisor of Douglas County Health Department’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program. Steinkraus provided the first soil samples for the EPA and has oversaw the department’s blood testing and lead education efforts since the beginning of the EPA project.
EPA officials say the Omaha site was the first of its kind — previous lead clean-ups had nothing to do with lead-based paint.
There was concern that not only was exterior lead-based paint making kids sick, but that it was actually contaminating the new soil from the EPA. Though EPA officials knew of the problem, they said the CERCLA law prohibited any work beyond the superfund site. In other words, the EPA was limited to soil remediation because pollution from the ASARCO plant had nothing to do with paint chipping off houses. But after five years of community criticism, the agency changed its policy.
In 2004 the EPA officially recognized that exterior lead-based paint was compromising the clean-up effort. The Interim Record of Decision (ROD) allowed the EPA to “stabilize” exterior lead paint where it “threatens to recontaminate replacement soils.”
Real progress didn’t start until 2007. But even then, the EPA continued to perform soil removals without first stabilizing lead-based paint on homes they knew had it. Data obtained by The Reader shows the EPA replaced soil in 94 properties in 2008, only to go back to those same properties in 2009 to work on exterior paint stabilization.
The EPA has returned to 846 properties since 2008 to stabilize exterior paint. Of the 7,391 properties that have been tested, around 57 percent have been determined eligible for paint stabilization.
Project Manager Bob Feild says though the EPA is returning to some sites to perform paint-stabilization, he does not think chipping paint has re-contaminated the soil to any significant degree.
“We don’t believe recontamination of the soil has occurred at these properties,” Feild said. “We’ve conducted a study to determine if soil levels have increased above level of concern, and we have not found that lead-based paint falling to the ground increases the soil concentration. Rather, we go back to remove the paint chips that have fallen to the ground, and that leaves soil conditions protective of human health.”
According to Feild, the paint chips can be removed with a specialized, high-powered vacuum, leaving the “soil conditions protective of human health.” But according to The Reader’s analysis, the EPA has returned to stabilize paint as late as 2009 on properties where the soil was replaced a decade earlier, and paint chips would unlikely have stayed in place during that time.
“It sounds a little silly to go back and vacuum a yard ... I think the right way to do things would be to address the paint on the outside first,” said Cara Eastman, executive director of the Omaha Healthy Kids Alliance. “I think they’re doing a good job trying to catch up. We’ve always said they should just halt the soil program and get to the paint first and then do the soil afterwards.”
Was It Worth It?
According to health experts, any level of lead exposure can be dangerous for children. Most lead poisoning occurs when a child ingests or inhales contaminated substances. Critics of the EPA’s focus on soil remediation say it’s more likely that a child would put a lead painted toy in their mouth or breath in particles from interior lead-based paint than eat lead contaminated dirt. Either way, source testing in Omaha is not happening on a wide scale.
“The EPA says they have information that the risk was lead in the soil,” Steinkraus said. “I’ve never seen that data in print.”
The Douglas County Health Department’s lead program is probably the most precise in place for catching kids with lead poisoning and identifying the source. The program coordinates EBL testing of thousands of children every year in eastern Omaha. If a child has at least 15-micrograms per deciliter of lead in their blood, county health inspectors will go to the child’s house to determine the cause. According to Steinkraus, lead-based paint is present in around 90 percent of the homes the Health Department inspects. He said the homes may or may not have soil issues.
The target area for the county’s lead program includes 11 zip codes based on the location of old houses that are likely to have lead-based paint. The EPA’s superfund site includes seven and a half zip codes, an area that is completely inside the county’s target area. One might expect children in the superfund site to have higher EBLs due to exposure of more possible contaminants, but Steinkraus said there is no statistically significant difference between EBL rates in the superfund area and the county’s larger target area.
EBL rates have been steadily declining in Omaha since the 1970s: In 1997, nearly 8 percent of kids tested in Douglas County had EBLs. In 2009, of the 15,200 kids tested, around 1.1 percent were found to have EBLs. But national EBL rates have declined at practically the same pace. Around 1.2 percent of kids nationwide tested positive for EBLs last year. In the most high risk areas in Omaha (paint, soil, and other sources), average EBL rates are around 1.8 percent.
“It’s possible that the EPA has caused a decrease in blood lead levels … there’s no way to be sure,” Steinkraus said.
When asked if Omaha’s average EBL trends meant soil might not be a major contributor to lead poisoning in Omaha, Feild said via-email “Children in Omaha are exposed to multiple sources of lead, including lead-contaminated soil and accessible lead-based paint, that contribute to elevated blood lead levels.”
To help mitigate risks from lead-based paint, the Omaha city council passed an ordinance last year that made it a nuisance, allowing the county health department to require homeowners to fix the problem. A separate grant program from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will pay for lead stabilization work in qualified homes.
Soil clean-up efforts are free to homeowners, but the source of funding has been clouded by much legal wrangling. The EPA will ultimately pay for the project, but settlements from potential responsible parties (Asarco, Union Pacific) could cover the costs. In December, Asarco filed for bankruptcy in a $1.7 billion settlement with the federal government, considered the largest-ever U.S. environmental settlement. Omaha is expected to get around $220 million from the deal.
Much of the $175 million spent by the EPA thus far has gone to contractors for soil testing and removal (including multinational Black & Veatch which just opened an Omaha office) and to more than 30 local contractors for paint stabilization, including the Omaha Planning Department. The Douglas County Health Department’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program is funded almost entirely through superfund money.
Omaha’s designation as the “largest residential superfund site” ultimately allowed the city, county, and local contractors to receive federal dollars to stabilize lead-based paint even though it has nothing to do with Asarco’s pollution; and according to health experts, there are other cities with far more children exposed to lead-based paint than there are in Omaha.
Robyn Wisch, news editor at KVNO, contributed to this report. |
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