Legacy of lead tests residents, regulators: This story was published in A-section on Sunday, January 20, 2002. By Bill Lambrecht Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau WASHINGTON - Across the nation, the government is struggling to come to grips with lead contamination that is pervasive, ongoing and in many cases a proven health risk. Herculaneum, Mo., is just one of many emerging problem spots. In the lead belt of southwestern Missouri, families plagued by contaminated soil and water have been waiting for years for help from the government. The Environmental Protection Agency is even farther behind in combating a lead pollution disaster in Oklahoma, where 75 million tons of mine tailings are piled and land is so polluted that the governor wants to relocate two whole towns. More than 372 million pounds of lead releases were reported in the nation in 1999, about three-fourths from mining, according to company disclosures required under the EPA's Toxic Release Inventory. Only Alaska, Utah and Nevada surpassed Missouri's 30 million pounds of lead discharges, according to an analysis by the Mineral Policy Center, an advocacy group based in Washington. Even before the budding lead crisis in Herculaneum, where a cleanup and temporary relocation of families is pending, the EPA had excavated properties of 2,600 homes and businesses in Jasper County, Mo., to remove contamination. Pollution from the old Eagle-Picher lead smelter there earned the site Superfund priority list status in 1990. The efforts in Jasper County brought results: the number of children with elevated levels of lead in their blood declined to 2 percent from 14 percent. Government agencies are working now to find solutions to serious contamination that has rendered well water undrinkable in a swath of the county. Just south, in Newton County, a request for still another Superfund priority status is pending. At least 200 properties need excavation, and about 350 wells in the county are polluted. As they wrestle with more recent problems at Herculaneum, near St. Louis, government agencies must determine what to do about thousands of acres of barren, lead-contaminated land in Missouri's far southwest corner. And officials point to the likelihood of finding even more lead pollution hot spots in Missouri beyond those already known to exist. "In the old Lead Belt, it's like a sleeping giant," said David Mosby, a Department of Natural Resources project manager. "There are sites all over, sites we haven't even discovered yet." Cooperation is needed The widening specter of lead pollution promises to require expensive remedies and new levels of coordination between state, federal and local officials. In Jasper County, for instance, government agencies worked together to help lead-afflicted residents by hooking them into public water supplies. But solutions to water problems in Newton County have been elusive. Missouri has had an acrimonious relationship with the federal government on some environmental issues, like radioactive waste cleanup and Missouri River restoration. But in the budding crisis over lead, the state is a partner with the EPA. State officials have occasionally pressed the EPA for stricter postures in its dealings with Doe Run Co., according to sources. But the federal-state partnership in dealing with lead pollution remains strong, perhaps fueled by an understanding that even more collaboration will be required in the coming years. Stephen Mahfood, secretary of Missouri's Department of Natural Resources, was suspicious at first about how the EPA would proceed in Herculaneum. "I was concerned that they wouldn't be listening to people in the town, that they would come in and do something in a very abrupt and rough fashion. That is not what I'm seeing and hearing." Mahfood hinted that difficult decisions about Herculaneum's problems lie ahead. "Our need now is to get those people the hell out of there as fast we can and bring the smelter into compliance. And then, frankly, it starts another discussion." Lead dangers Deliberations over lead, now and in the future, are fueled by a wide recognition about the danger of lead to children. An estimated 38 million American homes have lead-based paint, 25 million of which present dangers, according to a government study last year. But until recently, there were no regulations for lead abatement, in part because of fears within the government of the vastness of the obligation in correcting problems. But after languishing for years, limits on lead levels in dust in homes as well as in soil became law in a flurry of eleventh-hour rule-making in the administration of former President Bill Clinton. Unlike some of those new regulations, the lead limits remain on the books. The government's commitment survived because of a nearly universal acceptance of the dangers of lead exposure. "The medical data became so strong and incontrovertible that it created critical mass," said Bud Ward, executive director of the Environmental Health Center of the National Safety Council, chartered by Congress. Dr. Bruce Lanphear, a professor of pediatrics at Cincinnati Children's Hospital and a prominent researcher, said the benefits of reducing lead exposure could be far-reaching. "If we could reduce blood lead exposure in children, their math and reading scores would improve," he said. "There would be fewer problems with their attention spans, and perhaps we would reduce violent and aggressive behavior." Superfund remedies Dozens of sites already have landed on the EPA's Superfund national priority list because of their lead contamination. But agency officials suggest that neither Herculaneum nor others from Missouri will be added to that list soon. Priority status, which triggers more spending to remedy problems, is determined in Washington largely on the basis of recommendations from EPA regional offices, EPA officials said. Hattie Thomas, a spokeswoman in EPA's Kansas City office, said that specialists in her region were assembling paperwork that could support a priority designation for Herculaneum but that it might be summer before a formal recommendation could be made. Landing on the national priority list doesn't always lead to successful cleanup. In northeastern Oklahoma, the massive Tar Creek mining area has been on the Superfund list since 1983. It has been ranked No. 1 at times. But as recently as the early 1990s, nearly half of the children near the site had elevated blood-lead levels. Families, many of them members of the Quapaw tribe, were using mine tailings to pave their driveways and even putting it in sand boxes where children played, an Oklahoma state official recalled last week. EPA-sponsored excavations of more than 1,500 properties helped to reduce the health threats. But with vast problems remaining, Gov. Frank Keating has proposed a $250 million cleanup plan that would relocate two towns, Picher and Cardin. A task force made up of specialists from several federal agencies is scheduled to arrive at the Tar Creek site next week with Keating's proposal in mind. So far, the EPA has been unwilling to support relocations of the towns, said J.D. Strong, the director of environmental affairs in Oklahoma's environmental department. "It's just an unbelievable mess," he said. An even bigger lead mess was left behind by mining companies in Idaho's Silver Valley, where the EPA has spent more than $200 million cleaning up a Super fund site near Kellogg. Three months ago, the government proposed devoting $359 million more to remove contamination from a wider area. Bob Bostwick, spokesman for the Coeur d'Alene tribe, which has been pushing for wider cleanup, said last week that the EPA had made mistakes over the years but also had scored some successes. "The problem here that you don't have so much in Missouri is an anti-government, anti-EPA, anti-environmentalist attitude," he said. "People don't want to hear about their precious tourism spots being polluted with lead." Reporter Bill Lambrecht:\ E-mail: blambrecht@post-dispatch.com\ Phone: 202-298-6880 Published in the A-section section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Sunday, January 20, 2002. Copyright (C)2002, St. Louis Post-Dispatch