Waste no time in cleaning our bay

Galveston Bay is a vital part of our region’s economy. To give you an idea of its impact and worth, the recreational and commercial fishing industries operating in the bay are valued at nearly $600 million annually. That’s a heck of a lot of fish, oysters, crabs and shrimp.

Economics aside, the bay is also a treasured natural resource. It is the nation’s seventh largest estuary, providing a home for wildlife of all kinds, as well as a recreation center for Texans of all ages.

So how could anyone stand idly by while it was being poisoned with a known cancer-causing chemical that is, in turn, known to be contaminating this vital link in our food supply?

During the late 1960s, a company pumped paper and pulp waste containing large amounts of dioxin into a pit along the San Jacinto River, east of Houston near the I-10 bridge. The site subsided with time, and water from the river inundated the pits and spread dioxin along the San Jacinto River and Houston Ship Channel into Galveston Bay.

This site, now known as the San Jacinto River Waste Pits, has been designated as a “Superfund” site and is going through a long-term Superfund review and cleanup. The Superfund cleanup process is generally a good one, but it can take many, many years to result in actual cleanup.

As that process moves along, meanwhile, the site continues to leak dioxin into the surrounding environment.

It has been estimated that this single Superfund site alone accounts for as much as 70 percent of the dioxins in the Galveston Bay system and is a major source contributing to the fish consumption for catfish and speckled trout.

Despite this advisory, however, local residents continue to fish near the waste pits, even fishing from areas that lie directly alongside them.

Fortunately, this tragic situation is apparently about to change. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has issued an order requiring two companies tied to this site to clean it up. Under the EPA order, announced last month, McGinnis Industrial Maintenance Corp. (which was acquired by Waste Management) and International Paper Co. must act within six months to secure the waste pits.

The Galveston Bay Foundation is very pleased with this positive leadership from the federal government.

To ensure continued progress toward this critical public safety objective, moreover, the foundation has retained the counsel of Jackson, Gilmour & Dobbs PC, a law firm that specializes in contaminated sediments and waterways across the country.

While we view EPA’s order as a critical step, much work lies ahead and the foundation will continue aggressively monitoring the progress — or lack thereof — to ensure full and complete compliance with the agency’s orders.

The San Jacinto River Waste Pits may be many miles as the crow flies from Galveston, but make no mistake: the site presents an imminent and substantial danger to the environment, the bay and the citizens using the bay. It is imperative that it be cleaned up as soon as possible.

Bob Stokes is president of the Galveston Bay Foundation. For information, go to www.galvbay.org.