Times Beach, Missouri

Times Beach is a ghost town in St. Louis County, Missouri, United States, southwest of St. Louis and east of Eureka. Once home to more than two thousand people, the town was completely evacuated in early 1983 due to TCDD (a type of dioxin) contamination, formerly the largest civilian exposure to the compound in the history of the United States.

In 1985, the State of Missouri officially disincorporated the city of Times Beach. The site of Times Beach now houses a state park which opened in 1999.

History

Times Beach was founded in 1925 on the flood plain of the Meramec River, southwest of the river, as a promotion by the now-defunct St. Louis Star-Times newspaper. A six-month newspaper subscription, costing , included a lot on a tract of former farmland.

In its early years, the town was primarily a summer resort, but the Great Depression combined with gasoline rationing during World War II reduced the feasibility of summer homes. The town became a community of mostly low-income housing, and a small population (1,240) lived in Times Beach by 1970. In the years immediately before its evacuation, Times Beach had become a lower-middle-class town. leading to the town's evacuation by 1985 and complete demolition by 1992. The town was disincorporated by executive order of the Missouri governor, John Ashcroft, on April 2, 1985.

The story of Times Beach was featured on History Channel's Modern Marvels, in the episode "Engineering Disasters 20".

Dioxin contamination

Events leading up to the crisis

NEPACCO chemical waste disposal

During the late 1960s, the Northeastern Pharmaceutical and Chemical Company, Inc. (NEPACCO) began operating out of a facility located near Verona, in southwestern Missouri. This facility was owned by Hoffman-Taff, a company that produced the Agent Orange herbicide for use during the Vietnam War. By the time NEPACCO ceased its operations in 1972, Hoffman-Taff had been taken over by Syntex Agribusiness.

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2,4,5-trichlorophenol is synthesized from 1,2,4,5-tetrachlorobenzene by the nucleophilic aromatic substitution reaction with sodium hydroxide (NaOH). Unfortunately, instantaneous dimerization of the resulting phenol produces trace amounts of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD), an extremely toxic compound known to have both acute and chronic adverse effects. The result of this purification process led to the storage and accumulation of heavily concentrated dioxin still bottoms, or thick, oily residues, in a storage tank located near the facility in Verona. When NEPACCO first began operations, the still bottoms were sent to a waste facility in Louisiana for incineration. Within a few days of the spraying, birds began to drop dead from the rafters of the barns, and horses began to develop sores and lose their hair. Piatt and Hampel blamed these occurrences on Bliss, who denied responsibility, claiming that the material he sprayed was nothing more than old motor oil. Suspecting that Bliss' oil was the source of their problems, the owners of Timberline removed the top layer of soil from their property. Based on this estimate, which was later found to be incorrect, Missouri officials decided to forgo the recommended cleanup.

Involvement of the EPA

The EPA did not become heavily involved with the Missouri dioxin contaminations until 1979 when a former NEPACCO employee reported the burial of toxic waste on a farm located about seven miles from Verona. NEPACCO had paid James Denney, the owner of the farm, $150 for the use of his property. Under the investigations of the EPA, a total of 90 drums, all of which were corroded and leaky, were unearthed. Eleven of these drums contained still bottoms with dioxin concentrations as high as 2,000 ppm.

Since it contained over 50 percent of the dioxin in the state of Missouri and because it was no longer inhabited, Times Beach was the logical choice for the placement of a new incinerator. The construction of the incinerator began in June 1995. Once built, it burned more than 265,000 tons of dioxin-contaminated materials from across the state. The cleanup of Missouri was completed in 1997 and had cost close to $200 million.

Because the RCRA was not implemented until 1976, Bliss was not legally required to keep records of the chemical wastes he had collected from NEPACCO. During investigations surrounding the dioxin contamination in Missouri, Bliss maintained that he had no knowledge of the presence of dioxin in the chemical waste he collected from NEPACCO. Still, Bliss was the object of many legal pursuits. Over 14,000 citizens' suits were filed against NEPACCO and its officers, Syntex Agribusiness, IPC, and Bliss. The EPA revisited and tested the soil at the Route 66 State Park in June 2012. On November 19, 2012, it was reported that "Soil samples from Route 66 State Park show no significant health risks for park visitors or workers".

Controversy

Several months after the evacuation, the American Medical Association (AMA) publicly criticized the news media for spreading unscientific information about dioxin and the health hazards associated with it. The AMA stated that there was no evidence of adverse consequences from low-level dioxin exposure. Subsequent studies of potentially exposed people from Times Beach and some other contaminated locations in Missouri have revealed no adverse health outcomes that can be directly linked to dioxin.

References

External links

Satellite Image from Google Maps (The old Times Beach roads are vaguely visible.)
"Times Beach, Mo., Board Moves to Seal Off Town", New York Times, April 27, 1983.
"Times Beach, Mo., Votes Itself Out of Existence", New York Times, April 3, 1985.
US Department of Justice news release announcing that the cleanup of Times Beach is complete.
Times Beach: Superfund Site Profile: Superfund Site Information, US EPA
TIMES BEACH SITE, MISSOURI, EPA ID# MOD980685226, earlier US EPA document
Times Beach One-Page Summary, Superfund Redevelopment Program, US EPA (archived 2016)