Harman Says DDT Cleanup Is Finished

The Environmental Protection Agency properly removed DDT from properties along a stretch of Kenwood Avenue in unincorporated Los Angeles, according to an independent report released by Rep. Jane Harman’s office Friday.

“Kenwood Avenue residents should feel reassured that soil with high levels of DDT has been removed from their yards,” said Harman, a Venice Democrat whose district includes the Kenwood Avenue neighborhood east of Torrance and south of Gardena.

Some neighborhood residents raised concerns that the EPA’s cleanup was not complete because it did not include backyards, excluded the street’s east side and allowed low levels of DDT to remain.

Homeowners on the west side of South Kenwood had wanted a developer or the federal government to buy their homes instead of having 25 front lawns “gutted out” by the EPA, but the level of contamination did not meet the criteria for a buyout, officials said. Residents relocated while the soil was being replaced last year.

Environmental regulators said the DDT contamination came in storm-water drainage from a chemical plant that once operated three blocks away. The Montrose Chemical Co., a 13-acre plant that produced about 1.6 billion pounds of DDT, operated in the area from 1947 to 1982. The DDT spread when a storm-water ditch was replaced in the 1960s and ‘70s with underground pipe drains, EPA officials said.

The contamination caused the EPA to place the plant site and several neighborhoods, including Kenwood Avenue, on the national priority list for cleanup under the Superfund Act. The agency took more than 1,000 soil samples from 1999 to 2000.

DDT, a pesticide, is considered a dangerous toxin. High-level, long-term exposure among agricultural workers has produced liver problems, infertility and cancer.