"The EPA wants to test soil for lead contamination in two historically Black neighborhoods on Atlanta’s west side. Residents, eyeing the creep of gentrification, worry that the cleanup is part of an effort to push them out."
"ATLANTA—As a little boy, Byron Amos often played with dark, volcanic-like rocks that he found among the lush greenery that drapes the houses and yards in Vine City and that makes the historically Black neighborhood worthy of its name.
Now 49, married and a grandfather, Amos still lives in the west side Atlanta house where he grew up and represents the area on the Atlanta City Council. He found out during a neighborhood meeting that those rocks he had tossed around as a kid actually weren’t rocks at all. They were chunks of slag—a byproduct of smelting that can contain high levels of lead—and Vine City was rife with it.
“I actually had to look at it real good because I remember playing with pieces of rock growing up, and that was it.” Amos said. While the news made Amos do a double take of denial thinking, “that’s not lead,” he was ultimately not surprised. “We’ve been known it’s contaminated,” he said.
In 2018, a graduate student found high levels of lead, a powerful neurotoxin, in a few urban gardens across the west side of Atlanta and alerted the Environmental Protection Agency. Since 2019, the EPA has been testing soil in the study area, but mistrust from residents has slowed that process. Many who live in the two historically Black neighborhoods in the study area view the federal government’s efforts with a jaundiced eye. They suspect the remediation is part of an effort to help gentrification flourish by pushing them off the now-valuable land where Black Atlantans have lived with toxins for a long time."
Aydali Campa reports for Inside Climate News July 24, 2022.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24072022/superfund-atlanta/
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