About 40 people attended the EPA's public hearing at Carbondale City Hall on June 12, 2019.
Credit Amelia Blakely
The Environmental Protection Agency paid Carbondale residents a visit to present the agency's proposal to add about 16 acres to the cleanup plan for the former Koppers Wood-Treating site.
This addition comes after the EPA determined dioxin and furan compounds on the treatment site were not fully evaluated in the 1990s.
For almost 100 years, the Koppers Wood-Treatment plant used toxic chemicals like creosote and pentachlorophenol as wood preservatives.
Koppers employed a predominatly African-American workforce. Many of the employees began living next to the site which has turned into today a neighborhood where some of the relatives and descendents of the workers live.
As the plant used toxic chemicals the groundwater, soil, creek water, and mud became polluted from chemical spills.
Dioxin and furan compounds are byproducts of pentachlorophenol that break down slowly in the environment, according to EPA officials. In 2016 Carolyn Bury, the EPA Project Manager said sampling and analysis of these chemicals were used in an ecological risk assessment that concluded the additional 15.8 acres should be remedied.
In 2004 a final remedy was decided on to clean up the Koppers site. Since then 1,300 ft. of a creek bed channel has been relocated and 32,860 gallons of creosote have been sent off-site for disposal and recycling.
Bury said the creosote removal remedy is still on-going.
Since the closure of the treatment site in 1991, former workers and their families have suffered from cancers and other illnesses that are linked with exposure to the contaminants.
Carbondale residents ask hard questions to the EPA
After Bury presented the additional remedy plans, Carbondale residents who live in the neighborhood that borders Koppers had pressing questions about whether the contamination had spread south of Koppers to the residential area and whether the community should trust the EPA and its data.
Resident Rodney Morris expressed his gratitude for the agency coming to Carbondale, cleaning up the site and sharing their plans while also expressing his frustration with the organization's lack of transparency and unwillingness to test the soil in residential areas.
"All we're asking is for the soil south of the fence to be tested," Morris said.
Morris lives across from the Koppers site and argues that his land is contaminated by the wood treatment site. He argues the community affected by the contamination cannot trust the EPA, even though they would like to.
There were also questions about the health effects of the contamination and whether the agency cared about the affected people. The agency could not directly answer healthcare questions because it's not their area of work.
Bury told the public that the agency is aware of past contamination to the neighborhood.
"EPA's responsibility is not to go back in time and fix past exposures, our responsibility is to take the contaminated site and clean it up for current and future use," Bury said.
The public meeting ended without a consensus between the community and the EPA. Resident Pepper Holder said he wished the City of Carbondale would take on the community's fight to clean up the contamination and provide reparations for the local families affected.
