Ex-Residents Pay Final Respects to Times Beach, a Town Ready for Burial : Environment: 2,200 evacuated the poison-riddled community eight years ago. Now, as crews prepare to bulldoze it under, the pain lingers.

They journey here for one last look into their past, one final farewell to the ghost town that uprooted their lives and still haunts their future.

Every few days, people who called Times Beach home come back to say goodby to this poisoned place. Nearly a decade after dioxin was discovered here, the abandoned town--the empty houses, rusted cars and weed-filled yards--is about to be bulldozed and buried.

But not even the internment of Times Beach will close the book on one of the nation’s greatest environmental disasters.

“Times Beach will never be over for those people who lived there,” said former Mayor Marilyn Leistner. “They’ll spend the rest of their lives wondering if their health problems were a result of their exposure.”

“When any one of my kids or one of my grandkids gets sick, it’s the first thing that comes to your mind: Can this be caused by dioxin?” said LaVerne Baker, who lived here 30 years. “We still don’t know down the road what it could cause in the next 10, 20 years.”

Times Beach, dubbed by one environmentalist as one of the best-known obscure places in America, became a dateline for disaster after dioxin was found in the soil in concentrations hundreds of times above allowable limits. That discovery led to the evacuation eight years ago of the town of 2,200.

Now, Times Beach is being prepared for burial as part of a $118-million cleanup approved in December by a federal judge. It’s the final chapter in a sorry saga, and it’s a relief.

“Most people feel like the sooner that they clean it up and the sooner that it’s out of sight, the sooner that they can begin to put that part of their lives behind them,” Leistner said. “At least some good will have come of the tragic thing that’s happened here, because the land will be usable again.”

Others, somewhat facetiously, say this town, in all its shame, should be left standing.

“I think that Times Beach should be preserved the way that it is,” said Larry Curtis, an accountant who grew up here. “It’s the most perfect memorial for what Times Beach represents--a town totally destroyed through irresponsibility and neglect.”

It’s an ignominious end, after such promising beginnings.

The St. Louis Times in 1925 promoted Times Beach--thus its name--as a working-class summer resort 25 miles southwest of St. Louis. That plan never was realized.

The troubles began in the 1970s when a waste hauler sprayed dioxin-tainted oil on streets, stables and parking lots to control dust. It also was scattered in several other eastern Missouri areas, which also are slated for cleanup.

Dioxin, an unwanted byproduct in the manufacture of other chemicals, has been linked to cancer and liver, kidney, bladder and nervous system disorders in laboratory animals. Though researchers suspect that these illnesses may occur in humans, studies haven’t confirmed it. The toxin does cause chloracne, a severe skin condition.

In late 1982, the government began conducting soil tests at Times Beach and the Meramec River flooded the town. A chain of events followed: the evacuation of 2,242 residents, a $33-million federal government buyout, dissolution in 1985 and, then, lengthy debate over cleanup.

According to the agreement, Syntex Agribusiness Inc., a California-based firm, will provide the bulk of cleanup services. Syntex says it didn’t produce the dioxin, but the government considered it responsible because the toxin came from a tenant in a Missouri plant Syntex later acquired.

The cleanup of all the sites could take up to 10 years. Landfills will be built this spring, then 520 homes, trailers and businesses will be demolished. A temporary incinerator will be constructed and dioxin-polluted soil from here and 27 other eastern Missouri sites--totaling about 135,000 tons--will be burned into non-hazardous ash and buried.

“The irony is by digging the material up and incinerating it, there’s going to be more exposure to the atmosphere than just by leaving it in place,” argues Roger Pryor, director of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment.

St. Louis County residents worried too; they opposed the incinerator last fall in a non-binding referendum.

Less than 10% of Times Beach will be excavated to remove dioxin, which was found in levels up to 587 times greater than the 1 part per billion considered excessive for residential areas, officials say.

State officials describe the Times Beach health picture as “so far, so good.”

“We haven’t seen any chronic health effects associated with long-term exposure to dioxin,” in several studies, said Kathleen Allen, dioxin program coordinator at the Missouri Department of Health. “That doesn’t mean we’ll stop looking.”

Former residents aren’t comforted by the state’s findings, which they believe did not include enough people to draw conclusions. They said they saw too many mysterious tragedies: dogs that bled and died, children with birth defects, neighbors with seizures, family members with cancer.

“There’s absolutely no doubt they suffered physical problems and they will in the future,” said Mark Bronson, an attorney representing 400 former residents. “Some of the cancers probably are still to come.”

More than 1,200 people, mostly ex-residents who claimed physical and emotional injuries or property loss, already have shared in a settlement of about $29 million paid by two Syntex subsidiaries and three other companies that allegedly produced the chemical or were negligent in its disposal.

However, Syntex says it doesn’t believe injuries have occurred.

Not all damage claims are physical. Many say their psychological scars never will heal.

“I’m angry that I don’t live in Times Beach,” Baker said. “I went into debt to buy another home. I’ll be 60 this summer. It’s hard to start over again.”

Most have. Yet they return.

They come to be photographed in front of a warning sign that cordons off the community. And they come to seek state officials’ permission--usually denied--to drive along the roads where deer graze among lumber piles, ramshackle houses stand with curtains fluttering and rusted swings sit motionless.

It’s as if time stopped at one moment, a moment that remains a bitter memory.

“Here was a town of 2,200 people that made an open cry to anyone who would listen and said, ‘Please help us,’ ” said Curtis. But, he said, it was if “offering help might be construed as accepting blame.”

“I don’t go around brooding over it,” he said. “I am upset by it, but I have gone on in my life.”

His father, who had a church here, is philosophical too.

“The best way I can explain it,” said James Curtis, “is we got involved with big government and big companies as a result of this. Even the attorneys were big. . . . It seems like everyone around us benefited from this except the people that were injured.”

Experts say there is a positive legacy to Times Beach: tighter hazardous waste regulations.