DUNBAR'S TOXIC SLUDGE

Fifty-six years later, Fort Myers prepares to remove toxic sludge

Patricia Borns
The News-Press

Half a century after the City of Fort Myers dumped lime sludge from its water treatment plant on South Street -- sludge tainted with arsenic that became the playground for a developing African American community -- work crews on Tuesday began undoing the damage.   

The tasks are anything but remarkable. While day laborers cleared morning glory vines from the fence and hung a protective dust barrier on it, a contractor bushwhacked shrubs so the Australian pines dappling the 4-acre property can be felled and mulched.

But the significance wasn't lost on 84-year-old Clarence Mitchell, a former city employee, sitting on his porch two blocks away.

"They thought they would have it easy, but it didn’t turn out that way." - Clarence Mitchell, former city sludge hauler

“There was a white fella who dug out that field and sold the dirt to a builder,” Mitchell remembers the man who sold the property to the city in the early 1960s, when he began running truckloads of sludge to dump there. The pit, filled with water, was alive with bream, gar and alligators.

“He wanted to sell it, and they were only too glad to have a place to dump it," Mitchell said. "They thought they would have it easy, but it didn’t turn out that way.”

In Florida and across the country, the Environmental Protection Agency maps thousands of contaminated sites; more than are ever remediated, many but not all in minority communities like the South Street neighborhood, 

Lee County has at least six brown fields and many more undesignated sites besides the sludge dump whose hazards are being monitored, often for decades, before they are cleaned up.

In the same way, the city’s sludge dump was moth-balled with assurances its arsenic was disappearing. Tests as recently as September show otherwise. Six out of 10 wells tested above the EPA’s safe standard for arsenic, on and off site.

Cleaning up their forefathers' mess

After strenuously resisting a cleanup for 10 years, the city changed its mind in a relative heartbeat as events unfolded in 2017:

  • June 2017 A News-Press story revealed the existence of the contamination,  known to the city and state Department of Environmental Protection, but not to residents.

City of Fort Myers dumped toxic sludge in Dunbar

  • June – Dec. 2017 Residents call on legislators for help pressure the city for a cleanup. The University of Miami Law School’s environmental justice clinic agrees to look into the potential health effects of arsenic exposure from the site.

Dunbar's toxic sludge brings University of Miami law students to town

State rep wants inquiry into DEP’s handling of toxic sludge site

Sen. Bill Nelson urges EPA to act on city sludge site

  • Dec. 2017 Arsenic spikes higher than it’s ever been after Hurricane Irma. For the first time, the city tests the groundwater off the site and finds elevated arsenic levels there, too.

Breaking: High arsenic levels found outside Fort Myers' toxic sludge dump

  • Dec. 2017 The city hires outside counsel to fight an anticipated lawsuit by residents.
     
  • Jan. 2018 City consultants say the dump is not the cause of the arsenic in the groundwater. 

Breaking: Consultant says Fort Myers not responsible for toxic sludge dump pollution

  • March 2018 Attorneys file a federal class action lawsuit against the city, demanding the removal of the tainted sludge, compensation for property damage, and medical monitoring for neighbors of the site.

Property owners sue Fort Myers over toxic sludge

  • May 2018 The city submits a cleanup plan to the DEP. The agency tells the city to get a move on or face further offsite testing that could expose it to legal liability.

Breaking: Fort Myers submits plan to clean up toxic sludge

DEP gives city marching orders to remove toxic sludge

  • Sept. 2018 Fort Myers council members budget $3.9 million for the cleanup. 
     
  • Late Sept. 2018 Lawyers for the city and residents agree to a potential settlement on the cleanup, if the city approves. The other claims of the residents' suit have yet to be settled.    
     

Fort Myers leaders approve $3.5M toxic sludge clean-up plan

Looking ahead  

Watch for these milestones in the coming weeks and months:

  • Oct.15 (approximate) Excavation of some 30,000 tons of lime sludge begins. Groundwater monitoring will continue throughout the process. Soil samples will be tested to assure the excavation is complete. 
     
  • Dec. 27 (approximate) Dump trucks bearing sludge will roll to a Crystal River limestone quarry, pending DEP and Citrus County approval. There the sludge will be mixed in 10 percent batches with native limestone. From there, the limestone blend will be barged to a LafargeHolcim cement plant in Theodore, Alabama and put to commercial use. 
     
  • Indeterminate The remediation won't be complete until the city does the remaining tests required under its DEP-approved site assessment plan. The DEP says it will require the tests after the excavation.
     
  • Indeterminate Once excavated, the city will decided to do with the South Street property, taking residents' wishes into consideration. Like the cleanup, a new use could be years in the making.
     
  • Dec. 2, 2019 A Jury trial of the residents' case against the city unless a settlement is reached beforehand.

Follow this reporter on Twitter @PatriciaBorns. For news tips call (239) 839-5931.