Jones Road: EPA Road To Superfund Site Cleanup In The Slow Lane
The EPA’s plans to protect residents and the environment from the Jones Road Ground Water Plume Superfund Site are coming into focus, but project managers made it clear at their community meeting September 17th that answers won’t come quickly.
Background
From 1988 to 2002, Bell dry cleaners operated in the Cypress Shopping Center on Jones Road. The company dumped used Tetrachloroethene, a carcinogenic dry cleaning chemical also known as PERC, into the ground behind its store. After the dumping was discovered and the county tried to recover damages, the company went bankrupt.
The lasting impact was that PERC migrated into the soil under the shopping center and then created a plume of the chemical that continues to drift through the aquifer beneath homes and businesses. Many in the surrounding community rely on water wells pumped from that aquifer.
Dates To Remember
2000 - PERC discovered in the drinking fountain at a local gymnastics and childcare facility
2003 - The site was named to the EPA’s Superfund National Priorities List.
2006 - Harris County designated a “No New Wells” zone around the plume location.
2008 - The EPA connected 144 homes and businesses that relied on well water to the municipal waterline.
2016 & 2018 - Bioremediation injections were used at the site to reduce contamination in the immediate vicinity of the strip mall, but not the neighborhood.
2019 - Nearly two decades after the site was discovered, a Vapor Extraction System (SVE) was installed at the site to address the source area and reduce indoor air contamination levels in the strip mall. Businesses had continued to operate before the SVE was in place, potentially exposing people to levels of PERC that were higher than EPA thresholds.
Other than asking people to voluntarily move to municipal water, the EPA was not addressing the plume that continued to circulate deeper in the aquifer. Residents still on well water have been reluctant to shift over and pay fees for municipal water.
2022 - The EPA determined that its approach is “not protective” of people and the environment. It said it would need to come up with a new plan.
What Is The EPA Going To Do About It?
EPA Managers have outlined a number of steps they are taking at Jones Road:
Community Engagement - Over the summer, the EPA released a Community Involvement Plan, designed to inform community members and seek their input as the next phase of the cleanup proceeds. It is unclear how this will change the EPA’s relationship with the community.
Supplemental Groundwater Remedial Investigation and Feasibility Study (RI/FS) - The EPA will hire an outside contractor this Fall to perform the study, which it says will include “extending the semi-annual sampling, adding additional vapor intrusion sampling, installing additional monitoring wells and re-evaluating the feasibility of the original Record of Decision.” In plain language, the EPA will expand its testing program and review its plans to see what else it needs to do to remediate the site. THEA has been told by EPA personnel that this should include 3-D modeling of the aquifer to determine the size, shape and depth of the plume. That’s important because it may identify homes where the threat of contamination is higher.
Now The Bad News
The EPA says this remedial investigation will take several years to complete. If residents are at risk, they will continue to be at risk. If the plume shifts beyond the current No New Wells Zone, additional residents will be at risk. The EPA has given no indications that it will put additional safeguards in place before the full process is complete.
THEA’s Concerns
Exposure - THEA has been independently testing resident water supplies for two years, first with the University of Texas Medical Branch and now on its own. We are tracking homes that have PERC in their well water and our results indicate that the plume has moved beyond the original zone.This map shows the approximate size of the plume, as well as areas where sampling shows levels of PERC, including at homes outside the original zone.
Communication - We also spend a lot of time in the community talking to residents. We find two things:
Newer residents frequently are unaware of the contamination or even that they are near a Superfund Site.
Residents who are on well water do not feel that the EPA has communicated the level of risk that they may face from being exposed to PERC or any sense of urgency to solve the problem.
Knowledge - The EPA doesn’t know how many residents use water wells in the community. It estimates that about half of residents use wells, but that is an estimate. In fact, the EPA reviewed its progress five years after remediation started and the major recommendation was to determine the actual number of people at risk:
The following actions must be taken for the remedy to be protective: perform a well/groundwater use survey to identify all properties within the site boundaries where private wells are still used to provide drinking water or water for domestic purposes (e.g., bathing, washing dishes), and to verify how each site property obtains water; perform sampling of private wells found to be in use as drinking and domestic water sources; and based on sampling results, take appropriate actions to prevent human exposure to contaminated groundwater.
That still hasn’t been done and the EPA’s minimal outreach has resulted in a struggle to gain access to impacted properties.
What Ever Happened To Pumping and Treating The Water? In its original remediation plan, called the Record of Decision, the EPA recommended pumping and treating water to remove PERC from the aquifer. Four years later, it rejected that approach, saying it would take too long. Instead it decided to urge residents to voluntarily give up their water wells and paying to connect them with municipal water. It was a much cheaper option but, as the EPA has now admitted, it didn’t work. More than a decade has passed and the EPA says it will reconsider the pumping option.
What About Water Filters? Not long after the dry cleaner’s illegal dumping was discovered, the state provided residents with water filters to protect them from exposure to PERC. However, once the EPA took over, the state removed the filters. When asked if water filters were an option, both the EPA and the state said they would not pay for them, even though a solution may now be years away.
The Bigger Question
This all leaves one huge unanswered question - Is protecting the Jones Road community a priority? At least one elected official is writing to the EPA to ask why it isn’t more committed to fixing the problem.
Here are some things that would help:
Let’s find out how many people are actually on water wells.
Let’s stop treating the water plume like a kind of “bad luck lottery” that causes some people to have traces of PERC but leaves everyone else alone. As long as the plume is there and changing shape, the full community is at risk.
Let’s find out if water filters are a short term solution. At the very least, the EPA should inform the public if filters are a reliable protective measure so that each homeowner can make an informed decision.
4. Let’s remember the EPA is a Federal agency charged with protecting people and not the Wizard of Oz. We need more transparency over what the EPA is doing, not less.