Righteous anger

You cough. You feel unwell. So do many of your neighbors in Gert Town; more than is typical. No explanations are given for your chronic illness, save the typical vagaries of aging.

Then you learn that six years ago, during security sweeps for the 2013 Super Bowl, radioactive Radium-226 was discovered under the nearby roadway at Lowerline Street and Coolidge Court.

And it was literally and figuratively covered up. Not a word was said by City Hall until the new mayor took office half a decade later, and at least she took some action. However, the contractors hired by LaToya Cantrell ended up putting the Radium-226 in exposed dumpsters for several days, sitting out in the sun.

This, despite the fact, that the company, ARS Aleut Remediation, gave the following recommendation in November of last year, “Due to the location and time sensitive nature of the remediation, ARS believes it is in the best interest of the City and State if all radioactive material is relocated to our licensed facility in Port Allen, Louisiana where they may be properly secured and managed while completing disposal preparation activities.”

Moreover, just last April, ARS notified the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality of the magnitude and extent of the radiation. The Cantrell Administration subsequently contacted the Federal Environmental Protection Agency for assistance, and the EPA determined the project should be conducted as an emergency removal action under their authority. Fortunately, the toxic remnants ARS removed in December of last year ended up in a secured temporary storage at their Port Allen facility.

Apparently, the remediation company started the project in November 2018, but then realized the extent exceeded their scope of the project. The radioactive material spread out over a wider area than anyone originally thought. As a result, the City came back to LDEQ, and LDEQ got the Cantrell Administration in touch with the EPA.

Yet almost no one in the general public knew what was going on at any point in the saga. There were no press releases, no public meetings, no discussion of any kind of the inherent dangers. Secrecy at every level, even in the wake of a previously apologized six-year cover up.

Would this silence have persisted if Radium-226 were discovered at the corner of First Street and Camp in the Garden District, or elsewhere in the more silk-stocking neighborhoods of Orleans Parish? Would the radioactive material have been even judged a non-credible threat in 2013, to be buried under until another security sweep came half a decade later for the World Wrestling Entertainment gathering?

Years of cascading illnesses made worse by a mishandled extraction easily brings forth to righteous anger. Can anyone blame the 1,000 Gert Town residents for seeking legal restitution before the federal court?

This article originally published in the July 8, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.