Contaminated soil cleanup in Garland is expected to wrap up by March, but some worry it won’t get to the root of the issue.
The Environmental Protection Agency began the cleanup process for lead- and arsenic-contaminated soil near an elementary school back in September with expectations to finish after 10 weeks.
But as the agency dug deeper into the ground in the areas that touched the stream near the school, they found even higher levels of lead. Those results — and past industrial activity — has concerned some neighborhood residents, advocates and professors.
The creek bed
Dr. Barbara Minsker, department chair of civil and environmental engineering at Southern Methodist University, teaches an environmental epidemiology class. Her students’ semester-long projects focus on studying the neighborhood’s contamination, and she said cleaning the soil around the creek might not be enough.
Lead attaches to soils and could be swept down in the sediment on the bottom of the creek from upstream, she said.
Sufficient testing on the sediments inside the creek hasn’t been done, she said. Her students took samples in the fall, and are awaiting the results of those tests. The EPA hasn’t sampled the creek bed, EPA site coordinator Eric Delgado said.
After the next big storm, any lead bound to sediments at the bottom of the stream next to Park Crest could wash back up on the banks.
“This is going to be a continuing problem,” Minsker said.
Delgado said the EPA has not sampled the bottom of the stream and did not have plans to do so as of early December. The creek bed is mostly hard limestone, not soft sediment, Delgado said, making it more difficult for lead to attach to the bottom.
But he said he doesn’t believe that’ll be necessary.
The agency is not worried about possible human exposure to lead in the stream, he said. That’s because the stream isn’t dried up most of the time, and because the bottom has a lot of limestone and not as much soft sediment, he said.
“We’re not worried from an exposure perspective, that water or any type of sediment for the type of stream that we’re dealing with is a concern for an imminent and substantial danger to human health or the environment,” Delgado said.
He also said that a sample of the limestone might not be representative of the entire creek bed because the distribution of lead might not be even throughout the bottom of stream 2C4. Limestone’s chemical composition also makes soil test analysis more difficult, Delgado said.
Delgado also said that the EPA is “really confident” that the high lead levels are localized to stream 2C4 and that other nearby waterways — such as Rupert’s Branch — are not contaminated.
Future enforcement
Some residents are still worried, though, because children play in the stream — and have for decades.
But that’s not their only concern.
Longtime residents, such as 63-year-old Mark Hickman, say they grew up watching industrial site workers in the area dump unknown substances into local waterways. At the time, they swam in the local streams, searched for crawfish and considered the creeks to be their playground — most of the time.
“As a child growing up there, I would see the creek turn white, and it would smell like paint. And I would know not to go play in it,” Hickman said, who is involved with local environmental activism group Cleanup Garland. He once lived behind Park Crest Elementary but moved away when he was 18. He still lives in Garland.
Residents want assurance that the city will protect local waterways and air from industrial polluters in the future.
“It’s not going to be the Garden of Eden. It’s not going to be perfect,” Hickman said. “But we want Garland to put forth a better effort to protect the citizens and protect the environment over there.”
