By Wally Kennedy

wkennedy@joplinglobe.com

In the late 1990s, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency spent nearly $30 million removing lead-contaminated soil from 2,500 residential yards in the Joplin area. Most yards were in northwest Joplin, where a lead smelter, operated decades ago by EaglePicher Industries, spewed airborne lead into the environment.

But about 50 property owners refused to let the EPA do cleanup work, though their yards had levels of contamination high enough to cause lead poisoning in children who might live in those houses in the future.

Now an agreement has been reached between the Missouri Department of Natural Resources and the EPA that will permit the state agency to tackle those remaining yards.

If the DNR encounters a problem with a reluctant property owner, the EPA could seek an administrative order that will permit the work to be done without the property owner’s permission, but the DNR wants to avoid a conflict by working with property owners to convince them that it is in their interest and that of future generations to complete the cleanup.

Dennis Stinson, head of DNR’s Superfund section, said, “We will work with them (the property owners) and hope that they see the benefits of it. They may not like it, but hopefully they will allow us to do it without resorting to an administrative order.’’

High lead levels

Letters were recently mailed to the property owners seeking permission to resample the yards to determine the extent of contamination and whether whole yards or only parts of a yard need to be cleaned up.

Samples taken from the yards in the late 1990s showed that some of them had contamination levels exceeding 3,000 parts per million of lead in the soil. The level at which remedial action is deemed necessary is 800 parts per million.

Mark Doolan, the EPA’s project manager for the cleanup, said the DNR will remove the soil from every yard with contamination levels above 1,200 parts per million.

“They will not be given a choice,” he said. “Whether they like it or not, we will obtain a unilateral order from the EPA. We’ll get a warrant, and we’ll show up with the sheriff if we have to.”

If the contamination is between 800 and 1,200 parts per million, a deed notice will be placed on the property’s title that will show that the yard’s soil is contaminated with lead.

Doolan said, “When the property is transferred, the future owners will know there is a problem. If we put a notice on the deed, we won’t be coming back to clean up that property. The property owner will have to clean it up if he can’t sell it.”

Stinson said the DNR has received replies from at least half of the property owners, some of whom are granting access. In other cases, the DNR is finding that houses on those properties have been torn down.

“We have found that some of these addresses are empty lots ...,’’ said Stinson. “Our next step is to verify those and knock on people’s doors to make sure they got what we sent and that they understand everything.”

As it stands now, the agency could be dealing with 47 yards. But Stinson said it is too early to know what the tally will be.

“We will be using a new method that targets the cleanup to specific areas,” he said.

The plan is to do the sampling this summer and then do the soil removal this fall when seed or sod will have a better chance of taking root, he said.

When the EPA removed the soil from the yards in the late 1990s, the state agreed to pay 10 percent of the cost, which is required under the federal Superfund law. Doolan, the EPA’s project manager, said the state owed the EPA about $1.9 million with regard to the 10 percent match. By assuming the cleanup of the remaining yards, the DNR will take care of that obligation.

Doolan said a person might think “they have the right to live on contamination if they want to, but sooner or later someone else will own that property. We need to protect the future buyers of that property.”



Lead poisoning

Blood samples taken from children in northwest Joplin in the early 1990s by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services showed that 14 percent of those sampled had lead poisoning.

A probe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that residential yard soils were contaminated with lead and that the soil was the primary cause of the lead poisoning in children.

After the EPA removed the contaminated soil from 2,500 residential yards in the late 1990s, the rate of lead poisoning among children in northwest Joplin fell to 3 percent.

Source: Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services