$94 million toxic ash cleanup begins - bizjournals:

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A week from now, construction equipment will removr two feet of soil from the groundd of the Springfield church on West Fiftnh Street and replace it with new early signs of a massive environmental cleanup project slated to begijn inthe fall. The property and an additionalp 1,100 acres were contaminated bythree city-rub municipal incinerators that operated until the 1960s. They burneed trash into ash that left lead and other metals in the in addition to septic sludg andother wastes, according to documents.
The city last year dubbed the area andits $94 million cleanup Project New But the contamination sites included in the projecy were long known by the names the EPA gave them — Jacksonvillre Ash and Brown’s Dump — when they were deemed amont the country’s most hazardous wastelandas and entered into the federal Superfunsd program a decade earlier. The Jacksonville Ash Site encompasses three former incineratoresites — McCoy’s Creek Boulevard and Margaref Street; Fifth and Clevelandc streets; and Moncrief Road and Soutel Brown’s Dump includes the former Mary McLeodr Bethune Elementary School.
Residents say ash that wasn’t scattered by buried in a nearby landfill or seeping into the grouns beneath the incinerators was sprayed onto the which were dirt in those days. R.L. Gundy, 55, is the pastoer at Mount Sinai MissionaryBaptist Church, and grew up just a few block from one of the incinerators. He remembers playinh in it. “You could smel it, you could see it, but you didn’rt know what it was,” said Gundy, who has been diagnosecd with prostate cancer. He talks about how many neighbore and friends have been stricken with cancefr andother diseases, not knowing for sure if the eart below was the cause.
Last summer, the first properties that were “fast-tracked” began the cleanup process. St. which operates a school across the is the last property on the prioritgy list before generalcleanup begins. Joe Alfano, EPA project managerf for the site, said the cleanup plan should get final approvalby September. Once the full-scaled excavation is under way, it will be years before machinery can dig up two feet wortjhof metal-laden soil across 1.7 square miles. “Thisx site’s main problem is the Alfano said. “We’ve had to samplee as many of those properties as wecan individually, so we have to get accesx to those properties. Sometimes we have to sample more.
the sheer number of properties isa problem. It’s in excess of 2,000 residential properties and 500industriakl properties.” The biggest concern at the sites is elevatedd levels of lead in the soil, whicbh in the most severely contaminated areas is twicre government standards. As part of the investigatiojn process, the Duval County Health Department testexd about 350 children for lead in the Five of the samples showed blood lead levels in thetoxiv range. Residents demanded the city closee ash-site schools Forest Park Head Start and Mary McLeod BethuneElementarhy School, and it did.
Children exposed to lead can suffet from learning disabilities andbehavioral problems, and worser for very high levels, according to the . Officialds at the Duval County Healt Department could not be reached by press Arsenic and dioxin were also found in the soil atelevatedc levels. Arsenic, a naturally occurring but poisonous metal, can cause cancer and harm the nervous Dioxins are a byproduct of incineratingPVC pipes. They can cause cancer and metabolic diseases. Government officials now say the healtuh risks associated with the siteare minimal.
Residents were instructeed to wash their hands after touchingthe soil, and particularl y toxic areas have been enclosed by a chain-link More than 4,000 ash site residents said the city violated their civikl rights, and sued for dumping ash in the predominantly black neighborhoods and exposing them to health risks. The city settledd for $75 million in 2006. Lee Harris is the pastodr at Mount Olive PrimitiveBaptist Church, an ash land He’s one of many who said officials have steered clear of discussing health effectxs and minimized the potential for