Crowd attends EPA meeting on proposed cleanup of San Jacinto waste site

Belinda Barnes grew up on the San Jacinto River, fishing, crabbing and water skiing whenever she got the chance.

On Thursday, she told officials with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency she might have made very different choices had she known toxic waste from a former Pasadena paper mill was dumped on the river's banks.

"To find out at this age, that all those years ago … we might have been killing ourselves," questioned Barnes, who said she has lived near the river since the 1950s.

Barnes was one of dozens of people at the Highlands Community Center meeting who spoke with EPA officials who were there to gather input on their proposed cleanup plan for the San Jacinto Waste Pits Superfund site.

The $97 million plan unveiled last month calls for removing more than 200,000 cubic yards of waste from the site and hauling it away to a licensed disposal facility.

Texas officials discovered the waste pits in 2005 along the river, between Channelview and the small town of Highlands. The EPA determined that in the 1960's tugboats pushed barges of waste sludge from a Pasadena paper mill to the pits for dumping and storage.

The EPA identified several hazardous substances including cancer-causing dioxins in the waste pits and in 2008 declared it a federal Superfund site.

For the most part, those who spoke at the meeting overwhelmingly supported the plan and thanked EPA officials for not leaving the waste in the river under a permanent cap, one of the options federal environmental regulators considered.

"Containment has not worked and will not work," said Jackie Young, leader of the San Jacinto River Coalition. "We sincerely appreciate EPA for recognizing this.

Indeed, EPA officials said they are proposing to remove the waste partly due to the fact that keeping it contained under a temporary cap that was installed in 2011 simply isn't working.

Gary Miller, the site's remedial project manager, said repairs have been made almost every year since the cap was installed. A recent inspection revealed an 8-foot deep scour around parts of the cap's perimeter. In April, there was no sign of scouring.

"So that's a concern," he said. "We've talked to the (Army Corps of Engineers) and the potentially responsible parties to come up with a plan to address that."

Still, some told EPA officials they'd like to see the waste stay right where it is, pointing to possible risks associated with putting the waste in trucks and disposing of it in a landfill.

Thomas Knickerbocker, an attorney who represents some residents who want the waste to stay capped, said EPA's proposed cleanup plan is "fraught with uncertainty."

He voiced concerns about what might happen if there was a hurricane when cleanup crews were digging up the waste.

The proposed plan calls for some kind of sheet piles to be installed at the site, removing the water from that area, excavating the material, then hauling it to a permitted disposal facility.

To remove 200,000 cubic feet of waste material, the agency estimates it would take more than 13,000 truck trips to complete the job. EPA officials said they will take extra precautions to make sure their work doesn't cause the pollution to migrate off-site.

Miller said that clean up would like take two years to complete, a job that likely won't start until 2020 under EPA's current time table.

EPA will be accepting public comments on the proposed cleanup plan until Nov. 28