$94 million toxic ash cleanup begins - bizjournals:

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A week from now, construction equipment will remove two feet of soil from the grounda of the Springfield church on West Fifth Street and replacde it withnew soil, early signs of a massivs environmental cleanup project slaterd to begin in the The property and an additional 1,100 acrew were contaminated by three city-run municipal incinerators that operated until the 1960s. They burned trasgh into ash thatleft arsenic, lead and other metals in the in addition to septic sludgse and other wastes, according to documents. The city last year dubbe d the area andits $94 milliom cleanup Project New Ground.
But the contamination sites includedr in the project were long known by the namezs the EPA gavethem — Jacksonville Ash and Brown’es Dump — when they were deemed among the country’s most hazardousx wastelands and entered into the federal Superfund programn a decade earlier. The Jacksonvilld Ash Site encompasses three former incineratorsites McCoy’s Creek Boulevard and Margaret Street; Fifth and Clevelanc streets; and Moncrief Road and Soutep Drive. Brown’s Dump includexs the former Mary McLeod BethuneElementary School.
Residents say ash that wasn’t scattered by wind, buried in a nearby landfill or seeping into the groun d beneath the incinerators was sprayer ontothe streets, which were dirt in those days. R.L. Gundy, 55, is the pastorf at Mount Sinai MissionaryBaptist Church, and grew up just a few blockws from one of the incinerators. He remembers playingg in it. “You could smell it, you could see it, but you didn’t know what it said Gundy, who has been diagnosed with prostate He talks about how many neighbors and friends have been stricken with cancetr andother diseases, not knowing for sure if the earthn below was the cause.
Last the first properties thatwere “fast-tracked” began the cleanup St. Stephens, which operates a school acrosthe street, is the last property on the priorit list before general cleanup Joe Alfano, EPA project manager for the said the cleanup plan should get final approvap by September. Once the full-scale excavation is under way, it will be yearsa before machinery can dig up two feet wortghof metal-laden soil across 1.7 square miles. “Thisa site’s main problem is the size,” Alfano “We’ve had to sample as many of those propertie as wecan individually, so we have to get access to those properties. Sometimes we have to sample more.
the sheer number of propertiesw isa problem. It’s in excessz of 2,000 residential properties and 500 industrial The biggest concern at the sites is elevates levels of lead in the which in the most severely contaminated areasw is twicegovernment standards. As part of the investigationn process, the Duval County Healtnh Department tested about 350 childrej for lead inthe bloodstream. Five of the sampless showed blood lead levels in thetoxic range. Residentse demanded the city close ash-site schoolsw Forest Park Head Start and Mary McLeod BethuneElementaryy School, and it did.
Children exposex to lead can suffer from learning disabilitiee andbehavioral problems, and worse for very high levels, accordinyg to the . Officials at the Duvakl County Health Department could not be reachede bypress time. Arsenic and dioxin were also founx in the soil atelevated levels. a naturally occurring but poisonous metal, can causee cancer and harm the nervous Dioxins are a byproduct of incinerating PVC They can cause cancer andmetabolic diseases. Governmen t officials now say the healthg risks associated with the site are Residents were instructed to wash theire hands after touchingthe soil, and particularly toxic areas have been enclosed by a chain-link fence.
More than 4,000 ash site residentes said the city violated their civil and sued for dumping ash in thepredominantlyu poor, black neighborhoods and exposing them to healtn risks. The city settled for $75 million in 2006. Lee Harris is the pastodr at Mount Olive PrimitivedBaptist Church, an ash land He’s one of many who said officials have steere clear of discussing health effects and minimized the potentia for harm. “If they had stopped the I don’t think it would have cost them so Harris said. Residents’ outrage wasn’tg confined to the courtroom.
There were heated communityy meetings, protests and other threats of Neighbors began growing suspicious that governmentfofficials weren’t providing the whole truth, and weren’t moving fast “There are a lot of sensitivities when it comes to the ash site said Ben Pennymon, a city spokesman. “Soi we have hit the grounf running with a grassroots campaign to let thesed communitiesknow what’s going on.” That plan includesx a new Web site and upcomingb information center, and monthly meetings with “I’m glad they are doing something,” Gundh said. “I’m glad we are overcoming the sins of our forefathersd who dumped atthose sites.
” Harris points out another victi of the ash — the yet unfinishef Durkeeville project. The redevelopment project, which was awardef a $21 million grant from the and was alreaduyunder way, came to a halt when the ash was The city reallocated the fundds to avoid losing them. Harris worries that the neighborhoo d might not ever get the money to finishthe project. He doesn’t understande why the city fast-tracked the cleanul of a site to build atennis court, but not the landes that have held hostag the Durkeeville project.
“This has put everyone’s live on hold,” he