Posted on August 30, 2016
By Kim McGuire, Houston Chronicle
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently released a report that suggests leaving the highly toxic waste in the San Jacinto River might be less risky than digging it up and hauling it away.
The corps was tasked by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to assess the feasibility of cleanup options being considered for the federal Superfund site, namely removing the waste from the river or securing it in place.
The report, which is not an official agency recommendation, manages to offer a rationale for multiple options to handle this highly controversial issue. While it says removing the waste would significantly increase the odds of the contamination escaping off site, it also says removal is possible if extra caution is used when dredging the material. Continuing to keep the waste under the protection of a permanent armored cap, is also a legitimate cleanup plan, according to the report.
What is definitive is there’s a chorus of local residents and public officials demanding the waste be removed. Some pushing for removal of the waste were somewhat perplexed by the report – both by what it says, and what it doesn’t say.
“The report does not go into the problems to date with the current cap,” said Jacquelyn Young, an environmental advocate who grew up near the Houston area Superfund site and has been leading efforts to get the waste removed from the river. “In the five years it’s been in place, it’s experienced a wealth of problems and caused EPA to do a multitude of repairs. We know that just one big storm, one barge strike, could be devastating for Galveston Bay.”
EPA officials said this week that the corps report is one of many documents being reviewed by the agency, which is expected to soon release its proposed cleanup in the next few weeks. It’s unclear how much the corps assessment will influence the EPA’s decision.
Texas officials discovered the waste pits in 2005 along the river, between Channelview and the small town of Highlands. The EPA determined that tugboats pushed barges of waste sludge from a Pasadena mill to the pits for offloading and storage in the 1960s.
The agency identified several hazardous substances in the pits, including dioxins, which are carcinogens linked to numerous potential health effects, including birth defects.
In 2008, the EPA designated the area a Superfund site and placed a $9 million armored cap over the sludge to keep it sealed.
In December, divers discovered a hole in the northwest portion of the cap. EPA officials characterized the damage as “displacement” of the stone cover of the protective cap and ordered repairs.
Recently, Republican Congressman Pete Olson urged EPA to remove the waste, joining the majority of Houston’s congressional delegation.
Two weeks ago, the outgoing director of the Harris County Flood Control District, Mike Talbott, wrote a letter urging EPA to dig up the waste and haul it off.
“The highly toxic waste at the site, in this major river’s floodway and subject to extreme force of flood flow, tides and storm surge, should not be allowed to remain there,” Talbott wrote in an Aug. 9 letter.
In the report, the corps said that a permanent cap could withstand most extreme weather events without being compromised.
Keeping the waste under a permanent cap is a move being endorsed by a group of citizens that also recently commissioned a report by a University of South Florida professor.
That report concludes the waste should stay in the river.
“This report offers strong evidence that an excavation of the pits as an alternative remedy poses significantly greater risk of harm to human health and the environment than capping in place,” said Thomas Knickerbocker, attorney for the San Jacinto Citizens Against Pollution. “Excavation of the pits would disturb existing sediments in the river thereby posing a significant risk for outcomes that could damage the river ecosystem for generations. An in-place armored permanent cap remedy avoids those risks and is the remedy most likely to lower the river’s overall toxic load.”
Source: Houston Chronicle
