Exile Ends : First of 30 Families Displaced by Toxic Waste Cleanup Returns Home

They were labeled “toxic refugees,” these families who packed up and left their quiet neighborhood because of a black goo lurking underground.

Today, one refugee couple will move home again, to a house newly painted by the federal government and a back yard free of hazardous waste. And as the smiling couple watched the movers collect their possessions Monday, they looked less like refugees than proud new homeowners. “It’s the most gorgeous thing you ever saw,” 59-year-old Clare Ross said of the neat, blue and white house on Sowell Avenue where she and her husband, Bobby, will return after nearly 11 months in temporary housing.

The Rosses are the first of 30 families to move back to houses cleaned and restored as part of a $20-million federal project at the Ralph Gray Trucking Co. Work began last summer, and about a dozen families will return this month, with all families slated to be back in their homes by the end of the year.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is overseeing the cleanup of tar-like petroleum sludge at Gray Trucking because it is one of 1,275 federal Superfund sites nationwide. These are sites at which health and environmental threats from toxic waste are believed most immediate.

And although the Superfund cleanup program has been labeled slow and overly bureaucratic by some Capitol Hill critics, it is winning kudos from the Rosses, who praise the EPA for conducting a swift and smooth cleanup.

“Everyone we dealt with, I would call a friend,” Clare Ross said as movers loaded a van parked outside the rented house where she and her husband have stayed with their Rottweiler and four cats during the cleanup. Cardboard cartons were stacked high on the grass, along with a bureau, assorted fans, a vacuum cleaner and a laundry basket filled with towels.

Since last fall, this couple has lived in limbo, with two-thirds of their possessions packed in cartons. Said Bobby Ross, 62: “We’d find out we’d need something, we’d have to go out to the garage and start digging through boxes.”

The federal government paid the rent on their temporary quarters and issued monthly $100 “dislocation” payments to cover extra costs. The Rosses continued to pay the mortgage and utilities for their Sowell Avenue home.

The neighborhood cleanup was prompted by government officials’ concern regarding the potential health threat posed by an estimated 40,000 cubic yards of buried petroleum waste.

Some residents blamed the smelly ooze for headaches, nausea, coughing and breathing problems. While Bobby Ross says he and his wife suffered no such problems, he wonders whether the waste may have been linked to an eye irritation suffered by Inga, their Rottweiler.

The Westminster project was conducted on a new, fast-track system because of a desire to speed up Superfund cleanups generally and because “people were literally living on top of the waste,” said EPA project manager Richard Vesperman, who said the agency hopes to use the project as a model at other sites. Total cleanup and restoration is expected to take 18 months.

Amid the chaos of moving, the Rosses remained cheerful Monday. Bobby Ross talked with anticipation of the now-restored back yard that awaits them, of the family swimming pool--and of the newly sodded back lawn that will need to be mowed.

In his rented quarters, Ross said, he didn’t feel inclined to spend hours each weekend on yardwork. But once he returns home, he’ll be out tending the yard “because it’s mine.”