Times Beach

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Times Beach was a small US town with a last 2240 inhabitants. It was located in St. Louis County, Missouri , 17 miles (27 km) southwest of St. Louis and 2 miles (3 km) east of Eureka, Missouri . Because of a dioxin scandal, the city was evacuated and demolished in the 1980s. Times Beach was on Route 66 , now located on the redeveloped site of Route 66 State Park .

History of the city

Times Beach was founded in 1925 in the floodplain of the Meramec River . The location owed its creation to an advertising campaign for the now-closed newspaper St. Louis Star-Times . A 20-by-100- foot (6 by 30-meter) lot and a six-month subscription to the newspaper were available for $ 67.50 . In order to be able to build a house, two such plots were necessary.

In the early years, it was mainly weekend houses that were built in Times Beach, most of which were built on stilts because of the risk of flooding. During the Great Depression , some homeowners moved to live in these homes year round. During the Second World War , petrol was rationed in the USA, so that weekend houses in the country were difficult to reach and therefore uninteresting for their owners. After the war, housing was scarce, and Times Beach was mainly populated by people with low incomes. Since the risk of flooding was now assessed as low, new buildings were no longer built on stilts. In the 1970s, the local income structure changed when members of the lower middle class moved in.

In the early 1970s, Times Beach had 1,240 residents. There were also two rapidly growing mobile home spaces. The increased traffic caused a lot of dust on the dirt roads in and around Times Beach. The city could not initially afford to provide its 16 miles (27 km) extensive road network with a solid surface. So she hired the disposal contractor Russell Bliss to spray the streets with oil to bind the dust. Bliss sprayed used oil on the streets from 1972 to 1976, and later they were paved.

Background of the dioxin contamination

Russell Bliss had a disposal contract with Northeastern Pharmaceutical and Chemical Company (NEPACCO) , which operated a plant in Verona, Missouri for the production of the disinfectant hexachlorophene . Parts of the plant were used to produce 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid , an ingredient in Agent Orange , during the Vietnam War . Dioxins had also accumulated in the oily sludge that had settled in the reaction vessels.

Bliss sprayed waste oil in horse stables and on racetracks to keep dust from being stirred up. When 62 horses came in in March 1971, the owners suspected Bliss. He assured that he had only used used engine oil. In fact, however, he had mixed NEPACCO's production residues with waste oil. When similar problems began to appear in other stables, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began investigations. At the end of 1979, a NEPACCO employee admitted his company's disposal practice. The government sued NEPACCO in 1980.

evacuation

In Times Beach it was learned on November 10, 1982 that there was potentially dioxin-contaminated waste oil that had been used there. Since the EPA was busy with a large number of similar suspected dioxin cases at the time, it announced a sampling in about nine months. The troubled residents raised money and hired a private laboratory to do research.

On December 2, 1982, a flood warning was received and the residents of lower-lying houses began to be evacuated. The private testing laboratory and the EPA, which has now become aware of the location, completed their sampling on December 4th. On December 5, 1982, the level of the Meramec River rose 13 m above normal and flooded Times Beach. After the water drained, residents returned and began cleaning and cleaning up. On December 13, the private testing laboratory announced that it had detected dioxin, but could not yet make any statements about the level of contamination. The EPA was also able to detect dioxins in the soil samples from Times Beach, and on December 23rd it recommended that residents leave the city or not return there.

On February 23, 1983, the EPA announced that it would buy the entire city for a total of $ 32 million. She made the funds available to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which was supposed to evacuate the residents. By 1986 the evacuation was complete and the entire property became the property of the State of Missouri.

Redevelopment

Between March 1996 and June 1997, about 265,000 tons of dioxin-contaminated soil and rubble from Times Beach and other locations in Missouri were incinerated in an incinerator. The plant was built and operated in Times Beach by Syntex , NEPACCO's parent company. The renovation cost a total of US $ 200 million. When the action was over, the incinerator was demolished and the property was given to the State of Missouri.

A 1.7 km² park was opened on the site of the site in 1999, reminding of Route 66 and the history of Times Beach. One building in the city still stands: it is now the park's visitor center. It was originally an inn, later the EPA's local branch.

Times Beach and Love Canal were the largest redevelopment cases to be remedied in the United States under the 1980 Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). CERCLA was the basis of the Superfund program and is therefore often referred to colloquially or in the media as the Superfund itself . In 2001 the EPA removed Times Beach from its list of Superfund locations.

rating

Today there is some doubt that the evacuation of Times Beach was necessary. Seveso in Italy was even more contaminated with dioxins than Times Beach as a result of the Seveso accident , but the residents there could have returned after the decontamination of the place.

The residents of Times Beach were examined for their dioxin exposure, it was not above the average for the population. The incidence of cancer and malformations in newborns is also said to have been no higher among the residents of Times Beach than anywhere else.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Marilyn Leistner: The Times Beach Story . 1985.
  2. ↑ a b Department of Justice (United States) : CLEAN UP OF MISSOURI TOXIC WASTE SITE COMPLETE . Press release of July 3, 1997.
  3. ↑ National Priorities List document of the EPA: Times Beach Site (PDF; 34 kB)
  4. ↑ US Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Register Notice: Final deletion of the Times Beach Superfund site from the National Priorities List (NPL).
  5. ^ John Emsley: Parfum, Portwein, PVC ... WILEY-VCH Weinheim, 2003, ISBN 3-527-30789-3 .

Web links

Coordinates: 38 ° 30 ′  N , 90 ° 36 ′  W