Gordon Plaza residents continue their fight for fully funded relocation
2nd August 2021 · 0 Comments
By C.C. Campbell-Rock
Contributing Writer
Gordon Plaza residents are continuing to demand that Mayor LaToya Cantrell do what five other mayors wouldn’t do: Move them off the toxic waste dump the City agreed to allow the construction of their houses on without their knowledge.
The Desire Area Resident Survey, conducted by the City and released last June, found that 33 residents were interested in relocation.
The subdivision was built on the former 95-acre Agriculture Street Landfill (ASL). An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund Report reported that the ALS operated as a municipal dump from 1909 until 1957.
The report states, “From the 1970s through the late 1980s, parties developed about 47 acres of the site for private and public uses. At that time, the site supported 67 single-family homes, multiple-family dwellings, retail businesses, an elementary school, a community center, a recreation center, and an electrical substation.”
“Before 1994, access to the undeveloped portion of the former landfill was unrestricted. This access allowed unauthorized waste disposal and exposure to contaminants.,” the report confirmed.
Indeed, after Hurricane Betsy in 1965, the ASL reopened for dumping debris. “We are actively and exhaustively exploring options to meet the varied needs of the Gordon Plaza residents,” the mayor’s office said in a statement in response to The Louisiana Weekly inquiry.
“The City of New Orleans is working with local and federal partners to explore the feasibility of redeveloping the existing Agriculture Street Landfill site and nearby properties for productive public use. Possible uses of the area include an off-road bikeway, a renewable energy park, a stormwater detention pond, a recreational park, etc. The City is not considering returning the site to use as a landfill or industrial use.”
While they wait for an answer to their request for fully fund relocations from Mayor Cantrell, the residents are not allowing anyone to disturb the soil in Gordon Plaza.
On July 12, the residents blocked a truck sent by the City for soil testing. “The City was supposed to come out with a company doing soil testing. One truck came, and they didn’t let him in,” says Jessie Perkins, who bought his Gordon Plaza home in 1988.
“They said they wouldn’t do major work. Our letter said the City was bringing in heavy equipment to test the soil,” Perkins explains. “Why are you testing? EPA has reports,” he adds.
Twenty-seven years and counting – that’s how long Gordon Plaza residents have known that the land their homes are on is full of harmful toxins.
Shannon Rainey, president of the Gordon Plaza Residents, Inc., told The Louisiana Weekly in 2019 that sixteen Gordon Plaza residents have died. Several had cancer. Rainey and Marilyn Amar, a resident, and secretary of the group, are cancer survivors.
“The Residents of Gordon Plaza lived in an area with the second highest cancer incidence rate in the state of Louisiana in 2019,” according to Lauren S. Maniscalco, MPH, a Louisiana Tumor Registry (LTR) liaison. The LTR Report’s rankings come from cancer diagnoses data.
In its 2021 LTR Report, the Gordon Plaza neighborhood ranked third among state census tracts with significantly higher cancer incident rates.
Still, for the past 11 years since the LTR began reporting cancer incidence rates, the Desire census tract has been at the top of the rankings.
Residents initially asked the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) to test the soil in 1986, but the federal agency declined.
However, the EPA had no choice but to inspect the site after Wilma Subra, an environmental scientist and the residents’ pro-bono consultant, tested Gordon Plaza’s soil.
“Chemicals in the Agriculture Street Landfill comprise a toxic stew, with synergistic and cumulative impacts on the health and welfare of residents,” Subra reported in 1993.
“The Agriculture Street Landfill is contaminated with arsenic, lead, and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (“PAHs”) among more than 140 toxic materials, at least 49 of which are associated with cancer. There is no safe level of lead exposure with respect to developmental impacts on children. In addition, lead can damage every organ system, and the nervous system is especially sensitive to lead exposure. Arsenic is a known carcinogen and can harm health through ingestion, skin contact, and inhalation,” Subra reported.
The following year, in 1994, the EPA found lead, arsenic, and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the surface soils at levels 55, high enough to be of concern. The site was put on the EPA’s National Priorities List for superfund action that year.
“As a result of the contamination found in the surface soils,
The EPA implemented a remediation action as a result of the contamination found in the surface soils, which residents said was inadequate and failed to protect them from becoming ill. The remediation action included placing a geotextile mat over two feet of fresh, uncontaminated soil.
The City entered into a consent decree with the EPA in 2008. The consent decree required the City to “maintain the [soil] cap” at Gordon Plaza and to “provide for appropriate restrictions on use and excavation of the property,” according to a 2020 class-action lawsuit filed by the residents.
“Plaintiffs assert that ASL remains contaminated with harmful chemicals and that those chemicals cause cancer and other harmful health conditions.”
Residents say they are still exposed to harmful pollutants because the mesh mat poked through the soil after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Also, Subra tested the ground again in 2015 and found that toxins were still there, Marilyn Amar told The Louisiana Weekly.
Residents filed at least three lawsuits against the City. “A 2015 settlement with insurance companies garnered small payments – about $3,000 to $10,000 – for all but nine plaintiffs on the case. The City has yet to pay out anything because there is no legal mechanism to force them,” according to an article in The Guardian.
The residents’ 2020 lawsuit against the City of New Orleans and Mayor Cantrell was dismissed by U.S. District Court Judge Sarah Vance. Her ruling was based on technicalities in the law, which called into question the residents’ right to make their claims.
In dismissing the case, Judge Vance quoted the EPA, which released a statement about the superfund site in 2018. The EPA confirmed the position it has held since 2002, that the remediation the agency performed was enough to protect human life.
“The actions the City has taken and continues to take under the consent decree (2008) are “protective of human health and the environment.”
In the lawsuit, the Court acknowledged that the EPA knew contaminants were still in the soil. “In the consent decree, the Court notes that ‘contaminants have been left in place beneath the geotextile mat under Gordon Plaza. It also notes that the soil cap and geotextile mat “could be breached or degraded…by the failure to maintain the vegetative cover over the soil cap.” As a result, the consent decree provides that “proper operation and maintenance practices and institutional controls are required to maintain the integrity of the cap.”
Which begs the question: If the EPA knew harmful toxins were still in the soil, why didn’t it order the removal of residents and buildings on the site demolished, as it has the authority to do?
“If the residents were white, they would have been removed long ago,” both Amar and Rainey have said in the past. Tulane Environmental Law Clinic attorneys described Gordon Plaza as “a national symbol of environmental racism.”
Lydwina Hurst bought her home in Gordon Plaza more than 30 years ago. Hurst says she has heard about future developments on the site. “They want to put a solar park back here and a bike path. All we’re interested in is fully funded relocation. The majority want to be bought out.”
“A lot of people have gotten sick and died. People with cancer surround me. In one block, six people have cancer,” Perkins adds. There’s a husband and wife who both have cancer. It’s scary,” he says. Perkins worries that his granddaughter, whose fight birthday is coming up, and his son and his fiancee who lives with him are at risk of getting ill.
“I’m concerned about the lead in the soil. I don’t want to expose my grandbaby to something that will hurt her. It’s a tough situation. Mayor Cantrell didn’t have anything to do with it, but she is still responsible.”
This article originally published in the August 2, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
