Members of civic justice organization Open Buffalo have released a full report of findings from their East Side Soil Project, which was launched to identify how much lead is contaminating residential properties across Buffalo’s East Side.
Volunteers collected soil samples from properties across Buffalo’s East Side, and the results were alarming.
“The average lead level in the soil from the 249 samples we collected was 642 parts per million, so that's three times that level of concern at the EPA,” said Max Anderson, deputy director for Open Buffalo.
The Environmental Protection Agency deems lead levels of 200 parts per million (ppm) and over in residential soil to be hazardous. The report revealed one "hotspot" near the Masten District where some front yard soil levels were as high as 2,583 ppm.
Many of the residential areas tested were within Superfund Sites — areas contaminated with hazardous materials that require long-term clean-up under EPA oversight.
Ten acres of the Northland Corridor where several manufacturing sites once resided, for example, were designated as a Class 2 Superfund Site in 2008. Less than a mile away was the former site of a General Motors plant that reported a leak of nearly 110,000 gallons of oil laced with PBCs (chemicals with probable carcinogens) in 1991. GM sold that plant three years later without ever addressing the contamination, according to Open Buffalo's report.
Open Buffalo executive director Franchelle Parker said the results concern her both as an advocate for ecological justice and as a mother, and she hopes that solutions will lead to safer land for generations to come.
“When we think about what is the legacy, what is the lasting legacy that we can give our children, our neighborhoods, those that we love? It's a safe community and even safer land,” she said.
There are no safe levels of lead in the human blood stream and children are most susceptible to the irreversible effects of lead poisoning, which include developmental delays and behavioral issues. Members of Open Buffalo are working to correlate the prominence of elevated blood lead levels on Buffalo's East Side with a prominence of low educational attainment, community violence and school suspensions.
Open Buffalo’s report provides 38 pages of historical context of lead contamination in East Side neighborhoods, the process and results of their soil sampling, and recommendations for helping residents remediate their land.
Hamlin Park resident Deborah Fugate was one of 138 residents who completed the soil sampling process through Open Buffalo. As a homeowner, a landlord and a gardener of edible crops, she said it was important for her to participate in the East Side Soil Project.
“I wanted to really know, what's in this dirt?" Fugate said. "It was very helpful, and I was really shocked to see how much lead is actually growing on my property.”
Anderson and his cohorts laid out a number of proposed solutions. One of those includes creating a city ecological justice oversight board to coincide with the amendments to the City Charter that will take place this year. Some others are continuous testing and mapping of lead-contaminated sites and public funding for residents to remediate their properties.
