CLEANUP PROPOSAL CALLED TOO LITTLE - SUPERFUND SITE GETS $20 MILLION
Times-Picayune, The (New Orleans, LA) - September 3, 1997

Author/Byline: COLEMAN WARNER Staff writer
Section: NATIONAL
Page: A1
Readability: >12 grade level (Lexile: 1380)
Sticking to a plan it proposed in July, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday it will move forward with a $20 million
cleanup of hundreds of residential yards and an undeveloped tract on the site of a former 9th Ward garbage dump.
A leading critic of the plan immediately promised to fight it in court, and some members of the Louisiana congressional delegation said
they think the plan doesn't go far enough.
The EPA's final plan for the 95-acre Superfund site known as the Agriculture Street Landfill also involves removing Moton Elementary
School, closed since 1994 in response to parents' demands, from the EPA's listing of contaminated sites. A cleanup of soil contaminants
isn't needed at Moton because five feet of fresh fill were laid during its construction, the EPA says.
The EPA plan calls for a two-pronged cleanup lasting 12 to 18 months. In residential areas, two feet of topsoil will be scraped away, a
textile mat will be laid and fresh fill will be hauled in. In the 48-acre undeveloped area, which has the site's highest concentrations of lead
and other toxins, the ground will be graded and covered with a foot of fresh fill.
Grass or other vegetation will be used to hold the fresh soil in place and prevent human contact with contaminants left from the city landfill
that operated between 1910 and 1960.
The New Orleans office of the Army Corps of Engineers will oversee the cleanup, EPA project manager Ursula Lennox said.
Earth-moving should begin in early 1998, after negotiations with property owners and the hiring of work crews, officials said.
But announcement of the cleanup plan won't end a decade-old struggle over the fate of the working- and middle-class neighborhood.
Most of the approximately 65 families in the Gordon Plaza subdivision are expected to refuse to agree to the EPA's plan. If so, crews
would bypass their properties and they would not get a document certifying that a federal cleanup has been done. That could make it
harder for them to sell their homes.
Peggy Grandpre, a Gordon Plaza homeowner who has led an effort to get the federal government to buy out residents who don't believe
the cleanup plan will make the neighborhood safe, vowed a court fight against the plan.
"I cannot understand how they can do this and leave people in place," Grandpre said. "We don't see the value in it. It's a toxic landfill now.
It'll be a toxic landfill $20 million later."
Louisiana congressional representatives appear to be warming to the idea of a partial buyout of neighborhood residents. A spokesman
said U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, D-New Orleans, will ask Congress to direct the EPA to delay any cleanup work until the agency
estimates what it would cost to relocate residents who want to move, and Congress has a chance to respond.
That plan also has gained support from U.S. Rep. Bob Livingston, R-Metairie, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and U.S.
Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La.
"We're going to work very hard to give residents some choice," Landrieu said Tuesday. "They (EPA) are willing to spend $20 million on
this site. Perhaps we can come up with a better way to spend the $20 million which would include a relocation option."
New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial supports a "choice plan" paid for with federal money that would include a cleanup and partial buyout.
EPA officials have repeatedly said that the levels of lead, dioxin, arsenic and other toxins in the neighborhood's soil, while a cause for
concern, do not pose a direct threat to human health. If a buyout is pursued, it would have to be independent of the EPA, the agency has
said.
U.S. Sen. John Breaux, D-La., who met recently with EPA officials about the cleanup issue, released a statement calling for a rapid
cleanup of the site and making no mention of a buyout option.
"I will continue working to ensure that the EPA follows the federal law to the T, promptly releases the emergency funds and completes the
cleanup as soon as possible," Breaux said.

 Wilbert Thomas, executive director of the Desire Community Housing Corp., which runs a complex for the elderly in the neighborhood,
said he was pleased the EPA wants to proceed with a two-part cleanup and expressed hope that children and teachers can soon return to
Moton Elementary.
Thomas and former City Councilman Johnny Jackson Jr. have opposed anything more than a small relocation of residents, fearing that a
large-scale buyout would kill the neighborhood.
Despite plans for officially removing Moton from the Superfund list, an Orleans Parish School Board decision on whether to reopen the
school will take time, said Ken Ducote, director of facility planning for the board.
People in the community had called for closure of the school, and their views must be weighed again, he said. "At this point, we're just
monitoring events," Ducote said.
Although Morial, Jackson, the Desire Community Housing Corp. and some residents had urged the EPA to clean up the undeveloped
tract at the same time it carries out a massive landscaping of residential yards, Gordon Plaza residents have been irate that they would
be left in their homes while tractors push around topsoil on the wooded tract.
EPA tests have showed the undeveloped area to have the highest concentration of toxins. Gordon Plaza residents fear that work on the
land will create toxic dust and send rats fleeing into the subdivision.
State health officials have said they think that wetting the soil on the undeveloped tract and taking steps to kill rats would minimize any
new threat to residents. But they have yet to carry out a formal review of what impact the work on the undeveloped area could have.
"We just haven't been able to get to it," said Barbara Cooper, public health epidemiologist supervisor for the state Office of Public Health.
She said the office has been swamped with work on other projects.
Record: 9709030001
Copyright: Copyright, 1997, The Times-Picayune Publishing Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Used by NewsBank with Permission.