Along famed ROUTE 66 just south of St. Louis, lies one of Missouri’s newer state parks. But one with a very checkered past. It’s the former location of the town of Times Beach and an infamous dioxin hazardous waste site.
In the 1970s, the lower-middle class town on the Meramec River couldn’t afford to pave its 23 miles of dirt streets. It was plagued with constant dust clouds kicked up by local cars and trucks. To solve the problem, in 1972, the city hired used oil waste hauler Russell Bliss to spray what was supposed to be just used engine oil on the dirt streets, at a cheap cost of only 6 cents a gallon.
Bliss said it would do the trick, cause he’d successfully sprayed his horse stables and other ranch roads in the area. He also knew he’d make a profit, as he got the materials from the companies that paid him to haul their wastes away. Bliss mixed 1 tank load of used engine oil with 6 tanks of waste liquid from a nearby chemical plant. It was a factory that manufactured the notorious defoliant Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
The liquid waste was tainted with toxic levels of TCDD (dioxin).
For 4 years, he was regular sight in Times Beach, Missouri. Bliss drove his tanker truck around spraying his carcinogenic cocktail on the town’s dirt streets. Kids loved sliding around in Bliss’ slippery purplish goo. And it worked too, gluing the dirt to the road for up to 10 months. No one gave the foul-smelling substance a second thought. That is, until horses at the ranches he had sprayed started dropping dead. Soon the town’s people began to get sick as well.
What the city didn’t know is that Bliss hauled waste for the Independent Petrochemical Corporation (IPC), an industrial waste subcontractor of the Northeastern Pharmaceutical and Chemical Company (NEPACCO). The waste liquid contained levels of Dioxin (at the time the most potent cancer-causing agent made by man) that were 2,000 time higher than the Agent Orange used in Vietnam!
When 62 horses died in stables Bliss had sprayed, the sick owners contacted the Dept. of Agriculture and Centers for Disease Control (CD) who began an investigation in 1979. The U.S. EPA began to visit Times Beach in 1982, taking soil samples and identified dangerously high levels of Dioxin. Bliss was vilified by the press, town and state. He claimed he was completely unaware that the wastes IPC gave him contained any toxic chemicals.
Soon, panic spread as every illness and pet death in town was attributed to the toxic spraying.
The controversy over what to do next sadly pitted townsfolk against one another. Residents felt betrayed and publicly criticized the U.S. EPA for not informing them of the danger sooner! Why did it take two years before the public was informed? The half-life of dioxin is 11 years, so the problem wasn’t going away anytime soon.
In December 1982, the Meramec River on the edge of town flooded 14 feet during heavy winter rains, spreading the road contamination throughout ALL the homes and buildings in the entire town. Shortly after Christmas Day, U.S. EPA officials in white body suits and respirators showed up on people’s lawns, telling them to evacuate immediately.
Marilyn Leistner, the last Times Beach mayor said the message from the government was clear:
‘If you live in the community, you need to get out. And do not take anything with you. If you are outside of the community, do not come back!’
U.S. EPA warning to residents, December, 1982
The national media painted Times Beach, Missouri and the similar Love Canal in New York as the poster children of industrial greed and toxic pollution in America. President Ronald Reagan formed a Dioxin Task Force to study the effects of the chemical on the town. In early 1983, the U.S. EPA announced the entire town’s buyout, 830 properties, at a cost of $36 million dollars.
Within 2 years, the entire population of 2,242 residents had been moved. Only one elderly couple, life-long residents who refused to leave their home were allowed to stay. The now ghost town of Times Beach was dis-incorporated by Missouri Governor John Ashcroft, calling it sad but necessary. The perimeter of the entire empty town was blockaded behind chain link fencing and warning signs.
One U.S. EPA official said to visit the silent, abandoned town was heart-wrenching.
Walking the vacant streets and into the empty houses, it was like people had just dashed out for the lives and were never allowed to come back. There were still Christmas trees inside and holiday decorations hanging outside. Food was rotting in refrigerators without power and clothes still hung in closets.
For the residents who moved, the ordeal was far from over. They continued to worry about the long-term effects on their children’s health. Among Vietnam Vets, Dioxin used in Agent Orange has caused cancer, skin diseases, immune disorders, and birth defects. Sadly, some of the 800 families were shunned by neighboring Missouri communities, who wrongly feared contamination from “contagious” residents.
Hundreds of lawsuits were filed against Russell Bliss, IPC and NEPACCO. Though Bliss’ spraying was undoubtedly the source, his pleas of ignorance were believed by the courts and he was never convicted of any crime. As for NEPACCO and IPC, no laws were yet in effect that regulated the disposal of hazardous waste, so they too were cleared of guilt.
For more than a decade, the buildings and houses sat deserted behind barricades and large black-yellow warning signs, while Washington politicians decided what to do with the mess left behind in Times Beach, Missouri. The massive clean-up operation first demolished all the houses and buried the rubble, including the foundations, under a huge, long mound of dirt.
In 1995, the government removed 265,000 tons of contaminated soil at a cost of $110 million.
An incinerator was built on the site which burned the hazardous waste for two years. After all the contaminated dirt was incinerated by the EPA, the site was turned over to the State of Missouri. Thankfully, an American Medical Association study could find no long-term health effects in the evacuated families … yet. Survivors are still monitored annually to this day.
Times Beach and New York’s Love Canal brought hazardous waste dumping and toxic pollution to national attention and the U.S. EPA cleaned up hundreds of other toxic waste sites for the next 20 years. Congress passed the Superfund Act in 1980 to address the clean-up of the worst of the worst hazardous waste sites in America.
What became of Times Beach? The cleaned-up, former town was turned into a new park, the ROUTE 66 STATE PARK. The 419-acre park opened in 1999 and includes a historical museum of the town’s infamous past. Few visitors of the park realize that under a huge grassy mound of earth 4 football fields long lies the sad remains of Times Beach homes and its residents possessions. If you care to visit Times Beach and the Route 66 State Park, it is located just 17 miles southwest of St. Louis, right off I-44 at exit 266.
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