Lessons from Louisiana: Livingston's long road to recovery
The 1982 toxic train derailment had long-lasting consequences for residents and businesses.
In part three of ‘Lessons in Louisiana,’ – 21 News spoke with the people who lived through the disaster, about the long-term aftermath and where this town stands today.
If the train derailment in Livingston, LA. is any indication – the people in East Palestine should prepare for the long haul.
Where once a major disaster happened, today sits a beautiful gathering location for the community, Circle Drive Park.
The park is a point of pride for Livingston Mayor JT Taylor.
“40 years ago, it looked like we may not have any quality of life here and now this town is known even in our area for the quality of life,” Taylor said.
A quality of life that can be traced back more than 35 years – when a class action lawsuit against the railroad was settled for $39 million – money that helped people get back on their feet and reshape the town.
Attorney Calvin Fayard, who led the class action suit said the settlement handed out money to more than 3,000 residents, set up a commission to oversee long-term environmental clean-up, and funded a medical clinic that offered free yearly checkups and the ability to monitor long term health effects.
“We formed a pretty good blueprint of what people should do,” Fayard said.
But if Retired Judge Bruce Bennett has one regret – and a lesson for East Palestine - it’s they were never able to monitor the healthcare of the people involved properly.
“I don’t know how you make it mandatory for people to go to the doctor, but to properly document it, it ought to be treated like it’s a clinical trial with tracking each individual,” Bennett said. “That way, when you are in an East Palestine situation, they could have come to Livingston and said ‘here are the odds of a,b,c happening 30 years from now or 20 years from now,” he added.
THE PATH FORWARD
However, the return to normal was a long road for Livingston.
After more than 3 decades of remediation, Livingston’s then-mayor Derral Jones decided to gamble on finding a permanent solution for cleaning the toxins for the water and protecting his town.
The town had seen lawsuits and health monitoring following the derailment, and cleanup efforts had been ongoing since 1982, but remaining funds were dwindling.
Jones hired Bradley Droy, President and CEO of T.E.A. Inc. of Baton Rouge, an environmental company that investigates hazardous spills, designs and handles remediation, and assesses the toxicology issues and risk assessments for communities involved.
In 2013, Droy’s company came in with an innovative solution, one from an agency whose focus is actually out of this world, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
In 2002, NASA approached Drory about a product the engineers had developed for cleaning up of source area contamination in water through a process involving vegetable oil called Emulsified Zero-Valent Iron, or EZVI.
He began manufacturing the carcinogenic industrial cleaning agent and took this solution to his neighboring town of Livingston, about 30 miles to the east. Drory mixed EZVI, or SourceKill, the product’s name with TEA, with vegetable oil and injected it deep into the soil in Livingston. Within weeks, his company was seeing progress in the cleaning of the toxins. After six months, the contamination was nearly complete. By April of 2016, the city was given a letter from the state declaring no additional work was needed.
Droy said that SourceKill, along with a combination of compounds, was able to clean the site within three years.
Understanding the biogeochemistry of any site is important long-term Droy said, and responding to the situation will help to reduce potential damage and would also reduce costs for cleanup, by identifying the source areas and beginning remediation.
He said when toxic derailments like East Palestine or Livingston happen, it initiates a sequence of events to add carbon to the soil. The spill leads to many naturally occurring natural organisms that become activated by receiving the right "food."
Droy said by understanding biogeochemistry, or how the bacteria and natural sulfate materials interreact, so they understand what is happening with the contaminated area and come up with a plan to amend the issues at hand.
Droy said the timetable would, unfortunately, be years before everything is given an all-clear for East Palestine. But noted that the fast the remediation plan and monitoring of water begins, the quicker the turnaround will be.
Droy said while the issues of today are overwhelming for many, it is fixable.
STAYING STRONG
Former resident Delia Taylor believes the incident really took a toll on people’s mental health – she saw it first-hand after her parents house was destroyed.
“Stress is the killer, so it’s that type of living with that worry, living with that concern of losing your home, losing your valuables and of course being very concerned about their children what was a lasting effect not only on them but on us that i know weighed very heavy on them for those first years.”
But over the course of time – the town of Livingston slowly began to redefine its identity.
People here say there was no amount of money that, in the end, could make the town whole again, but with no long-term environmental impacts expected – and the foresight to add those quality-of-life upgrades – Mayor Taylor says Livingston is now thriving and feels the same can happen in East Palestine.
“We’re a resilient people, South Louisiana, I know the people of East Palestine, Ohio, are as well and right now it may look bleak, but with the help of outside assistance, they are going to be able to live their life. And hopefully, 40 years down the road, they are going to be able to turn around and be able to say the same things we’re able to say here in the town of Livingston.”
