Last mayor of deserted town shares her own dioxin story with East Palestine, surrounding communities
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DARLINGTON, Pa. -- Marilyn Leistner feels a kinship with the people of East Palestine. It's a connection she would rather not have.
Leistner was the last mayor of Times Beach, Missouri, before state and federal health officials declared the town uninhabitable in December of 1982 due to heavy dioxin contamination. Leistner, during a meeting Tuesday in Darlington, Pa. with residents impacted by the Feb. 3 Norfolk Southern train derailment and the subsequent chemical release, said the similarities between East Palestine and her former hometown are harrowingly similar as she feels an ugly part of history has repeated itself.
"I listen to your stories and they sound like our stories," Leistner told the packed room. "The nosebleeds, the menstrual problems, the headaches, the rashes and not getting answers from the EPA. We've been through it, and now, you're going through it. It's happening again."
The beginning of Times Beach couldn't be any more contrasting to its ending. Founded in 1925 as part of a St. Louis Star-Times promotion in which $67.50 bought a reader a six-month subscription to the newspaper and a plot of land in over 400 acres of unused farmland, Times Beach was heralded a resort town. Both its geographical location and its picturesque setting seemed perfect for the town's purpose. It was located just 17 miles from St. Louis on Route 66, which was set to open the following year, and nestled along the scenic Meramec River. The newspaper promised "the sweltering heat and discomfort of the city are unknown at Times Beach," and people bought what the Star-Times was selling, flocking to the town to spend their summers. However, the tourism was short-lived. The stock market crash of 1929 led to the Great Depression. War World II followed and Times Beach became a permanent community of perpetual struggles for low-to-middle class residents. Times Beach sat in the river's floodplain and, historically, the town was prone to flooding. As the 1960s came to a close, the town was also prone to dust, as it could not afford to pave nearly 30 miles of dirt roads in and around the Times Beach.
It was how Times Beach chose to solve the dust problem that completed its decline from resort town to ghost town. In 1973, the town contracted Russell Bliss, the owner of a small, local waste oil business, to spray the dirt roads with used motor oil to suppress the dust. Bliss had previously been paid by Independent Petrochemical Corporation (IPC) to dispose of Northeastern Pharmaceutical and Chemical Company Inc. (NEPACCO)'s heavily-laced dioxin oil -- a by-product of a purification process of hexachlorophene (an antibacterial agent used in soap, toothpaste, and common household disinfectants) performed by NEPACCO. NEPACCO paid IPC $3,000 for every load it disposed of with the belief it would be incarcerated. Instead, IPC paid Bliss $125 a truckload to haul it away. In 1971, Bliss received over 18,000 gallons of the toxic oil and mixed it with used motor oils. From 1973 to 1977, Bliss sprayed 160,000 gallons of that mixture all over Times Beach.
For years, the residents of Times Beach unknowingly lived in the contamination and would pay high prices for it. Cancers, infertility, birth defects and chloracne plagued the residents of Times Beach. It would later be revealed that the Centers of Disease Control had begun an investigation into a connection between dioxin poisoning and Bliss as early as 1971 and made the Environmental Protection Agency aware of dioxin pollution in Missouri in 1975. The EPA entered the investigation in 1979, but it wasn't until a leaked EPA document disclosing 14 confirmed and 41 possibly contaminated sites in Missouri was published in the local paper in August of 1983 that the residents of Times Beach first heard about the threat of high dioxin levels.
"If it wasn't for a newspaper reporter and a few people who didn't like what was going on and decided to do something about it, we would've never known," Leistner said. "We had no idea why we were getting sick or why our friends were getting sick. We just didn't know. We lived on that contamination for over a decade. It was all over the place, all over the town."
The public was outraged and demanded a full-scale investigation of Times Beach by the EPA. The day after the final soil sample was collected in the town, the Meramec breached its banks and Times Beach was under water. It was the worst flooding in the town's history. The water eventually receded but the damage was done. The EPA test results reported dioxin levels in Times Beach were staggeringly high and it was concluded that further flooding in the region would only spread the contamination. The CDC publicly recommended that Times Beach not be re-inhabited.
"Those who had evacuated because of the flood were told not to come back and those who were still in town were told to leave and not take anything with them," Leistner explained. "We couldn't take anything. We just left."
Leistner led a charge for a buyout program. It wasn't a popular idea in the town. Leisetner said she received death threats, was even slapped by a resident and had to perform her mayoral duties under police protection for a time. Times Beach was divided -- some never wanted to step foot back in town, while others wanted to save the only home they knew. Eventually, Leistner's side prevailed. In 1983, the EPA announced the federal government would buy out all of 800 homes and 40 businesses at the cost of $33 million. The state of Missouri chipped in an additional $7 million. The town was dis-incorporated on an executive order from the governor and every one in Times Beach relocated.
"We had to remove ourselves from the threat," Leistner said. "And there were people who wanted to stay, and we faced a lot of opposition and a lot of anger but there are no safe levels of dioxin, so there was other choice but to leave."
As for the belongings residents left behind, Leistner said those things were buried as was everything else in the town -- books, possessions, furniture, houses, commercial buildings, the school, churches and even the water tower that once stood proudly over Times Beach. Everything that once existed in the city limits is now underground. The earth heaves up where it all lies. The man-made hill is now known as the "town mound."
"They literally buried everything," Leistner said. "We were hoping the water tower would be saved but they said 'No. It had to go, too.' It's all in there. There's a lot of memories buried there."
No longer a town, Times Beach is now Route 66 State Park. It's still a picturesque countryside nestled along the Meramec, but the "town mound" both conceals and exposes the ugly past. The EPA retested the soil at the park in 2012 and concluded that visiting the park posed no significant health risks. In 1991, Dr. Vernon Houk, the director of the CDC's Center for Environmental Health, who had made the recommendation for permanent relocation in 1982 said he no longer believed the relocation and demolition of the town was necessary. Leistner, however, still believes the buyout saved lives and salvaged what was left of others.
The contamination in East Palestine has too been debated, and much like Times Beach, the community is divided. There are residents who trust the data the EPA has provided. They strive for the village to get back to a sense of normalcy and believe no danger exists in the soil, water or air. So far, all of the sampling and testing results reported by the responding agencies and unified command has indicated East Palestine is safe. There are also residents who are skeptical and say independent testing contradicts the released data. They have no faith in the EPA or the CDC. They say they are sick from chemical exposure. They want out of their homes and out of East Palestine. They fear what the derailment will mean in 10 or 20 years.
Leistner said that the discord and animosity between family and friends is the saddest part when it comes to places like Times Beach and East Palestine. She urged residents to come together, but she also urged them to get out.
"You have to be united and you have to stick together," she said. "But you have to put your health first and you have to remove yourself from the threat."