TOXIC MIGRATION (TIMES BEACH)

[Cdstelzer@aol.com]

TOXIC MIGRATION
BY C.D. STELZER
[first published in the Riverfront Times (St. Louis) Oct. 11, 1995]

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)  has discovered dioxin
contamination on property in St. Louis that the federal agency had previously
listed as clean, the Riverfront Times has learned.  
 Soil tests conducted in June 1994 at the Nationsway Transport  Service Inc.,
a truck terminal at 5701 Hall St.,  revealed dioxin levels of up to 15 parts
per billion, according to an EPA correspondence and sampling data provided to
the RFT by a source. Despite the lapse of more than a year since the test
results were issued,  employees at the terminal and their union
representative  were never officially notified of the contamination. 
 In September, Bob Feild, the EPA project manager for the Times Beach dioxin
cleanup,  repeatedly told the RFT that samples taken at four sites in 1994
had uncovered no further dioxin contamination. "They were found to be clean,
..." said Feild.  
 When asked last week about the Nationsway terminal, Feild admitted the
property was among those he had previously identified as uncontaminated.
Feild and Martha Steincamp, the regional counsel for the EPA, now maintain it
is likely that the newly discovered dioxin-tainted soil migrated from the
adjacent Jones Truck Line lot, and, therefore, cannot be considered part of
 a separate site, according to the terms of the 1990 federally-mandated
consent decree.  
 "I guess we're having a little semantical problem about whether there are
other sites," says Steincamp. "Superfund doesn't care about property
boundaries, they clean up contamination. ... There is migration at a lot of
the sites," adds Steincamp. Officials at the EPA and the Agency for Toxic
Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) say the concentrations of dioxin at
Nationsway are well within health-based standards for industrial or
commercial properties and pose little risk because the contamination is
limited to the periphery of the property. Nevertheless, the EPA says it will
to excavate and burn the toxic soil at Nationsway.
 The abandoned Jones Truck Line property, at 5601 Hall St., is one of the 27
designated sites that are part of the EPA's Times Beach Superfund cleanup.
The project involves transporting and burning 100,000 cubic yards of
dioxin-contaminated soil in Eastern Missouri. As a part of the plan, an
incinerator is now being built at the site of the former town of Times Beach
in West St. Louis County. Test burns may start before the end of the year.
The EPA intends to use some of the contaminated soil from the Jones site as
feedstock for those burns,  which will require that the cleanup at the Hall
Street location begin soon. 
 As of last week,  no one yet had informed Nationsway employees about the
imminent excavation. In 1983,  the EPA deemed the site -- formerly known as
Trans Con -- to be clean, but workers at the terminal have long been
concerned about potential dioxin exposure.
 "As far as I know there hasn't been any announcement of any plans to clean
it up," says Rick Schleipman, the business agent for Teamsters Local 600, who
represents many of the workers at the Nationsway terminal. "If there is
something wrong on the property, they should definitely let them know," says
the labor official. 
 When risk manager Jerry Baer was contacted at Nationsway's corporate
headquarters in Denver, he denied any knowledge that dioxin contamination had
been found at the company's St. Louis facility. "Our understanding is that
there is dioxin at the site next door," Baer says. He refused to talk about
the company's policies regarding notifying employees of potential dioxin
exposure. He would only say: "I know that they are aware of it, (but) I don't
know how they became aware."  Nationsway -- an international transport
company --  is controlled by Jerry McMorris, the owner of the Colorado
Rockies baseball team.
 The property on which the Nationsway terminal is located is owned by Justin
Williamson III of Ladue. In a letter dated August 8, 1994, the EPA notified
Williamson of the dioxin contamination. "A review of the data shows that
2,3,7,8-TCDD (dioxin) was detected on your property ranging in concentration
from 0.336 to 15.0 parts per billion (ppb)," the letter states. Williamson, a
prominent St. Louis businessman and philanthropist, also owns Midwest
Transfer, another transport company located on Hall Street. He says he
informed the management of Nationsway about the dioxin contamination, and
otherwise bears no responsibility in the case. Williamson has owned the
property for four or five years, he says. He refused  further comment.    
 "He is essentially an innocent landowner,"  Steincamp, the EPA lawyer, says
of Williamson. "In other words, the contamination came to be located on his
property through no fault of his."
  An estimated 3,278 cubic yards of toxic dirt is supposed to be dug up at
the 5.65-acre Jones site and hauled to Times Beach for incineration,
according to the EPA's Engineering Evaluation/Cost Analysis  (EE/CA).
 Excavation, at this site alone, will cost more than $1.3 million. The total
price tag for incinerating the tainted soil at  Jones is expected to be more
than $4.2 million. In addition, more than 182,000 square feet of the
contaminated soil will  at capped with asphalt and remain at the location.
 The cost of capping the remaining soil will be more than $500,000.
 The ostensible purpose of the scorched-earth-and/or-asphalt policy is, of
course, the protection of human health. Established EPA and ATSDR standards
require residential property be cleaned up to below one part per billion
(ppb). The same guidelines, however, allow dioxin levels of up to 20 ppb in
certain commercial or industrial areas. The reasoning behind the
double-standard is that children are more vulnerable to the effects of
dioxin. The toxin is a suspected human carcinogen and is known to cause
immunological and reprodcutive problems. "Children are just more sensitive
and they also, through their play habits and eating habits, ingest more dust,
more soil than a worker does," says Denise Jordan-Izaguirre of the ATSDR. The
federal health official says that studies "have shown that adult, healthy
men, in a work place, are exposed to much higher levels  (of dioxin) without
any impact on their health."         
 Opponents of the EPA's plan see things differently. "It's a liability
removal project," says Steve Taylor, an organizer for the Times Beach Action
Group (TBAG). "It's very suspicious that these sites haven't been cleaned up
for 20 years. TBAG has long demanded that public officials help us to uncover
the dioxin coverup."
 Fred Striley of the Dioxin Incinerator Response Group (DIRG) shares a
similar view. "The plan says that they can cap  over dioxin-contaminated
soil, and that will be safe. They've capped over a lot of soil and its been
that way for ten years," says Striley. "I don't see why they have to burn it,
if it's safe to cap it. Why not cap it all, if it's safe?  I don't believe it
is safe in the long term," says Striley. "I think the sites should be cleaned
up and the stuff should be stored." 
 The dioxin-contaminated soil in the St. Louis area was created as an
unwanted byproduct at the Northeastern Pharmaceutical and Chemical Co.
(NEPACCO) plant in Verona, Mo. in the late 1960s and early 1970s. NEPACCO
manufactured hexachlorophene, an antiseptic, which has since been banned by
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. At the time, the company also leased
part of its facility to Hoffman-Taff, a producer of Agent Orange, the
herbicide used in the Vietnam War. Syntex Agribusiness Inc. later acquired
Hoffman-Taff. During this period, NEPACCO  contracted Independent
Petrochemical Corp. (IPC) to dispose of the dioxin. IPC then hired Russell M.
Bliss. Beginning in 1971, Bliss mixed some 18,000 gallons of the dioxin
residue with waste oil and sprayed it as a dust suppressant at horse areas,
parking lots, truck terminals and the unpaved streets of Times Beach. Bliss'
folly did not become publicly known until late 1982.
 Six of the 27 confirmed sites sprayed by Bliss  were truck terminals in the
city of St. Louis. 
 In late 1994, more than 50 former dioxin-exposed  employees of Jones Truck
Lines or their surviving family members received an out-of-court settlement
for a suit filed in 1983. The defendants in that case included, NEPACCO, IPC
and Syntex -- the company liable for the Times Beach cleanup. 
 The same parties were defendants in a 1991 civil trial.  In that case,  a
St. Louis Circuit Court jury awarded the family of deceased truck terminal
employee Alvin Overman  $1.5 million. Overman  died of soft-tissue sarcoma, a
rare form of cancer associated with dioxin exposure.
 "We are not more worried about company owners than the people that work
there," says Steincamp, the EPA counsel.  The lawyer remains firm in her
conviction that the agency she works for stnads by its name and is more
concerned about public health than private interests. Steincamp, however,
would probably have a difficult time convincing former Teamster Ken Manley of
this.  
 In the early 1980s, Manley helped run a dioxin task force for Local 600. He
recalls the Teamsters' investigation initially received the support of the
Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and got favorable coverage in the daily
newspapers. A health study proposal sponsored by the union identified 700
members who had worked at three St. Louis truck terminals that were then
known to have been sprayed by Bliss. 
 "Then all of a sudden it just stopped," says Manley."I can't tell you
exactly what happened, but somewhere along the line the issue just got shut
down. I mean it literally got shut down." 
 Not long before the task force folded, Manley received a tip that a
playground on the near Southside by Ralston Purina had been contaminated with
dioxin, he says. "I informed CDC and EPA, (but) by that point they weren't
doing any further testing."