Ground Broken for Park on Once-Contaminated Land

Cynthia Babich was in her former backyard again Saturday on the spot where the pesticide DDT was found almost eight years ago.

Where she had once grown an organic vegetable garden, three bright orange bulldozers now sat. Instead of her home, there were piles of dirt baking in the morning sun.

But she was happy, as were some of those who still live in the neighborhood, to celebrate the groundbreaking for a park to be built on the once-toxic land off West 204th Street near Torrance.

At least 32 families eventually had to move, and their homes were bulldozed after white clumps of DDT the size of bowling balls were discovered in 1993.

The former neighbors have since scattered--some to Carson, Gardena and Long Beach. Others haven’t been heard from since.

A fireball of activism, Babich now heads the Del Amo Action Committee to promote environmental safety in the area. After she and her family were forced to live in hotels for about four years, they moved to San Pedro.

As politicians and neighbors shook her hand and thanked her for her efforts to make sure the DDT was removed, she reminded them that the fight was not over.

In fact, all the recent news for the neighborhood hasn’t been good.

Environmental Protection Agency officials have found a block on Kenwood Avenue west of the park where elevated levels of DDT under residents’ frontyards are now a concern.

“We put a temporary cover over the frontyard of one house last summer,” said John Kemmerer, chief of the Superfund site cleanup branch, in an interview Friday. No one has been forced to move yet, and Kemmerer said removal of the DDT may start this summer.

Agency officials have been meeting with community members, he said.

“We will be going into the soil from people’s frontyards. We can do this without extensive relocation, but we will offer to put people up in hotels,” he said.

There are two Superfund sites nearby: the former Montrose Chemical Corp., which operated a DDT manufacturing plant from 1947 to 1982, and the now-covered Del Amo waste pits, where toxic substances from a synthetic-rubber factory were buried during World War II.

Although they say the land to be used for the park is safe, Shell Oil Co. officials said one more test will be conducted just to be sure. An EPA official said the land is no longer contaminated.

When completed next year, the park will include baseball diamonds, soccer fields and a community center. Though many neighbors welcome it as the area’s first park in 20 years, others are still wary about the safety of the land.

“For the kids playing here now, I don’t know if it could cause cancer,” said Jo Ann Disk, who has lived in the South Bay neighborhood for 40 years. “Hopefully they have [completely] removed the problem.”

Shell bought 63 parcels from homeowners in 1998 to expedite efforts to clean up the company-owned Del Amo waste pits.

After the Del Amo Community Advisory Panel, made up of area residents, suggested that some of the land be used for a park, Shell donated 10 acres.

“We have something going for us now [in this community],” said Chuck Paine, project manager with Shell.

High levels of DDT were first detected during a series of surface tests in 1994 in two yards, including the one behind the home rented by Babich and her husband.

The discovery concerned residents because high doses of the banned pesticide, a suspected carcinogen, can affect the nervous system and the liver. They had also become frightened when they realized that some in the community suffered from bloody noses and rashes, Babich said.

So she began making phone calls to the EPA. “We figured it was something from the waste pits,” she said.

John and Carmen Jimenez, who live close to 204th Street and were at Saturday’s ceremony, recalled when their children played on the land where the park will be built.

After she learned that the land contained DDT deposits, Carmen Jimenez said, she “became scared for the children. On the hill behind us [where the Del Amo Waste Pits are] kids would come and ride bikes.”

Another family at the ceremony said they still miss their friends who had to move away.

“All of our friends and our daughters’ friends [were gone]. It was sad, real sad,” said Cynthia Martinez, 46, the mother of three girls. “Our daughters cried.”

Some neighbors say they are still feeling the effects of the toxins they say they ingested through food grown in their yards or water they drank.

Jimenez, 67, said her whole family was advised to get a clinical checkup for DDT, as were other families in the area. Even though she and her son John had high levels, she said she didn’t have the recommended treatment.

Many residents were examined at a federally funded clinic established in 1994 at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center to analyze the health effects of low-level DDT exposure. Some distrusted the results, and only about half actually went, Babich said.

But she still found something to be pleased about Saturday.

“The park makes me feel really good. I’m happy that we’re this far,” Babich said. “I’m so glad I don’t have to worry about anybody ever living there again.”