Bridge City receives Clean bill from EPA

By: Duane Craig

That maintenance includes mowing, removing shrubs and trees, keeping riprap areas clear of vegetative growth, making repairs to the caps as necessary to correct the effects of erosion, settlement, cracking and animal activity (i.e., burrowing) and prohibiting trenching, digging and other destructive activities.

This site is known as the Bailey Waste Disposal site, and the land it sits on was originally a tidal marsh where the Sabine River and Neches River commingle. Industrial and municipal waste was dumped there in levees from the 1950s to 1971. It wasn’t until the 1980s that the site was defined by the EPA, and the original 280 acres was reduced over the years as further investigations were done. The list of environmental issues included contamination from ethylbenzene, styrene, benzene, chlorinated hydrocarbons and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, industrial wastes and debris, rubbery chunks, municipal wastes, corroded drums and tarry wastes. The solution was to remove the most problematic contaminants, stabilize the rest of the waste where it lay and then cap it so it could not spread from the containment area.