Houston Chronicle by Perla Trevizo June 20, 2019
With hurricane season underway, contractors this week secured a sloped area of the San Jacinto Waste Pits that has needed multiple repairs over the years — an interim fix while officials continue to work on a design to remove cancer-causing toxic substances from the site.
The pits became a federal Superfund site in 2008 and were capped in 2011, partly in response to prior reports of leaks and fears of damage from hurricanes. But the northwest side has been a source of trouble, especially during heavy storms and hurricanes, because it includes a steep slope.
After Hurricane Harvey in 2017, the Environmental Protection Agency found dioxin sediment near the pits at a level that was more than 2,000 times the agency’s standard for cleanup. While rocks have been used to help keep the cap on the flat parts of the site, the rocks would slide off the northwest side, said Gary Baumgarten, project manager with the EPA.
On May 20, a team of divers and workers began placing what’s called an articulated concrete block mat to extend from the surface of the capped area to the floor of the San Jacinto River. Once the mat was in place, they brought out a special mix of concrete and pumped it into tubes that are part of the block mat, Baumgarten said. Work was finished Wednesday.
The plan involved installing about 4,100 square yards of this material over the existing cap in the northwest area to help stabilize it while the design for the remedy is completed, he said.
It’s an area where the responsible parties had to do repairs on several occasions, and given that the remedial design process was going to take about two and a half years to complete, they decided it was best to shore up that section of the site, Baumgarten said.
The pits, on the western bank of the San Jacinto River near the Interstate 10 bridge, were used into the 1960s to store waste that was taken by barge from a nearby paper mill. The site was originally on the riverbank in eastern Harris County, but it became partially submerged over time due to subsidence, dredging and construction of the I-10 bridge near Channelview, which altered the path of the river. The site is about 60 percent underwater on a normal tide.
Dioxins are linked to birth defects, cancer and reproductive problems even in microscopic doses.
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