The Environmental Protection Agency expects to begin cleaning up soil with high levels of lead and arsenic at Park Crest Elementary School in Garland and in nearby residential areas by the end of August.
Eric Delgado, the EPA’s on-scene coordinator for the former Globe Union lead battery manufacturing site in Garland, said the agency anticipates spending about 10 weeks on cleanup, a year after the contamination was first identified.
“Mitigation and cleanup of this type of contamination is pretty straightforward,” Delgado told neighborhood residents at a Thursday evening meeting. “We remove the contaminated soil from your property, we dispose of it properly and we restore the property with materials that have been prescreened for environmental contaminants.”
More than 100 people tuned into the meeting virtually. About 30 more residents attended in person at Garland City Hall to listen and ask questions to EPA, Texas Department of State Health Services, City of Garland and Garland ISD officials.
Delgado said if the agency identifies other area properties with contaminated soil, the cleanup process may take longer than 10 weeks.
A local group of residents called Clean Up Garland began soil testing in the area in September 2019. Their findings prompted the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the EPA to get involved.
In February, the EPA found arsenic levels in soil at 25.3 parts per million in a garden at Park Crest, which exceeds its cleanup standard for residential areas of 24 parts per million. In soil along Stream 2C4, a tributary into Duck Creek that runs behind the school, the agency found high arsenic levels and lead levels exceeding the agency’s cleanup standard of 400 parts per million.
Jessica Price, a health educator for DSHS’ health assessment and toxicology program, said children should not spend any time in Stream 2C4 due to the risk of contaminant exposure.
“Based on the current data that we have access to, we have determined that it’s safe for children to attend the school,” Price said. “That being said, children should still avoid the areas where there are elevated lead and arsenic [levels] in the soil.”
Delgado told residents why the Globe Union site is not on the EPA’s National Priorities List, which includes over 1,300 of the most hazardous contaminated sites in the United States. He said of the more than 1,000 soil samples taken in the neighborhood area, 6% showed levels of lead or arsenic that warrant a federal cleanup process.
Jessica Kessinger, team lead of DSHS’ health assessment and toxicology program, said area residents can mop their floors, place rugs on both sides of their doors and remove shoes before going inside to try to limit lead contamination in their homes.
In response to a question about the risks posed to children in the area, Delgado said he would not let his child play in the creek. At one point he said it was because of poison ivy, and at another point he said he would have gotten his child’s blood tested for lead in 2020 if he heard about potential contamination in neighborhood soil.
“Are you comparing poison ivy to lead contamination?” one resident asked in the meeting chat.
Delgado paused for a moment, then responded.
“As long as I’m not inhaling, or eating that dirt, I can go inside, I can take a shower and I can mitigate that risk,” he said, adding that he was not trying to compare the two or minimize the situation.
Although the cleanup sites at the Park Crest campus, near Stream 2C4 and on residential lawns are not some of the most contaminated sites in the country or on the EPA’s priority list, Delgado said they’re still not safe.
“The site presents an imminent and substantial detriment to human health and the environment,” he said. “And we need to take care of it.”
Resident Melissa Massey, who previously taught at Garland ISD, said after the meeting that it’s essential for district officials to be transparent with parents.
“We moved here because Garland schools were known to be the best. It was affordable, I was able to be a mom and stay home,” said Massey, a mother of three now-grown children. “And then finding this out was just so disappointing.”
At the public meeting, resident Mike Harbison pleaded with the city to consider offering some type of free medical testing for residents who have grown up living near industrial facilities.
People started applauding after Harbison told his story about cancer scares and other medical issues among his family and friends who grew up in the neighborhood.
“How much non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma can you have in one family?” Harbison said. “Friends of mine grew up with leukemia, bone disease, heart disease, prostate cancer. I mean, 25 years old with prostate cancer?”
He also said his wife, who grew up on Patricia Lane near Park Crest, had a 10-pound tumor when she was 30 years old.
“They took it, and showed it to medical students because it was bigger than a baby,” he said. “Thank God it was benign.”
That tumor was just one of his wife’s litany of medical issues, he said.
“We’re talking about thing after thing,” Harbison said.
Delgado said over 30 properties did not respond to EPA communications while the agency was conducting soil testing.
“We have... kind of limited data,” Delgado said, referring to residences.
Delgado asked residents to tell their neighbors to sign up for sampling or remediation if they have not already provided consent. More data will help the EPA assess the extent of contamination in unsampled neighborhood properties, Delgado said.
But residents say this cleanup plan near Park Crest addresses just the tip of the iceberg.
Since manufacturing for World War II took off, Garland became a city that relies on industry for its tax base, residents and Garland Mayor Scott LeMay have said.
And the city has no current plans to change that because it would not be economically feasible for the city or its residents, LeMay said.
Living in relatively close quarters with industrial sites has residents worried. They’re concerned pollution from nearby factories contributed to their poor health. In the neighborhood that feeds into Park Crest, some residents live less than a mile from more than one industrial site or factory.
But DSHS published a study in 2018 stating that the number of various types of cancer cases in the area weren’t notably different from what would be expected based on its size. The agency controlled for demographic factors.
Residents want more data.
Last week, Clean Up Garland brought in a professor who specializes in soil toxicology to take dozens of soil samples at sites of interest around the city, group leader Don Phillips said at Thursday’s meeting. Garland ISD will also pay a consulting engineering firm to perform soil testing at Sam Houston Middle School, which sits directly across the street from Park Crest.
Jerry Yearout, who has lived in Garland since he graduated high school in 1963, said he wants someone to take responsibility for the contamination in the neighborhood.
“Y’all need to take the bull by the horn,” Yearout said. “All I want to see is the city of Garland stand up and take ownership for this problem, and correct the damn thing.”
