The Proposed Cleanup of a Baltimore County Superfund Site Stirs Questions and Concerns in a Historical, Disinvested Community

The dimly lit community hall of the Sollers Point Multipurpose Center in the historic African American community of Turner Station was only partially full. 

A handful of residents from the Baltimore County neighborhood had turned up to hear Environmental Protection Agency officials present the $45 million clean up plan for a section of Bear Creek, located to the west of the Sparrows Point peninsula, where steelmaking and ship building industries prospered between 1887 and 2013. 

Founded in the late 19th century, Turner Station is a classic example of a post-industrial American community that attracted Black workers from the South, many of whom found employment at Bethlehem Steel’s nearby shipyard. When it ceased operations in Baltimore, the company left behind a huge legacy pollution site at the doorstep of the adjacent community. 

Industrial wastewater discharges contaminated a 61-acre parcel of the creek with hazardous materials including heavy metals, oil and grease, cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) associated with lung diseases, asthma and cardiovascular illnesses. 

In 2022, the EPA added the Bear Creek site to its Superfund National Priorities List, which freed up finances for the remedial and cleanup action under the federal superfund program.

“We want to prevent the PCBs in the sediment at the Bear Creek site from entering into fish species … entering crab species,” said Mitch Cron, a project manager with the EPA. “And by doing that we want to protect birds, mammals, and of course human beings as well,” he added, while flipping through presentation slides.  

The second objective of the proposed cleanup plan, Cron said, was to minimize the possibility of the contaminated sediments moving to other areas of Bear Creek and the Patapsco River. “We want to ensure the community is protected even while the remediation is ongoing. That’s a number one priority for us,” he said.

The Maryland Department of the Environment has already issued a fish consumption advisory for the Patapsco River and Baltimore Harbor, limiting consumption of certain fish species and blue crab due to widespread PCB contamination.

A 2017 joint letter by the community group Turner Station Conservation Teams and the Environmental Integrity Project, a national nonprofit, drew attention to Turner Station’s proximity to multiple sources of pollution, among them a dump site called Grey’s Landfill and nearby chromium fill leaching toxic chromium into public waterways. 

It said asthma data compiled by the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene showed “that ZIP code 21222, which includes Turner Station, had an average asthma hospital discharge rate that was 39% higher than the state rate during the 2011-2013 period.”

The Superfund site cleanup plan would involve dredging about 30 acres of the contaminated site to a depth of two feet, Cron explained, removing the contaminated sediments from the creek, drying them out, and then disposing of them at an approved off-site facility. 

Once the dredging is complete, the EPA would then place a two-foot layer of plain sand to cap over the entire 60 acres of the Bear Creek Superfund site. The cap is expected to act as a boundary to protect the contaminants from spreading to the neighboring waters, Cron explained, adding that the agency would monitor that cap over time to ensure that it stays in place and protects human health and the environment as intended. 

“We would like to perform this work during calendar years 2025 and 2026,” Cron said, adding that the agency also considered alternatives, including dredging the entire 61-acre site, which, he said, would have involved significantly more dredged material and would inflate the cost to $70 million compared to the preferred $45 million plan. 

When he opened the floor for questions, affected residents asked EPA officials to explain if they had tested beforehand that their preferred plan would work as expected. 

Around World War II, Turner Station thrived as one of the largest Black communities in Baltimore County as an increasing number of wartime workers moved to the area for work at Bethlehem Steel. During the 1960s and ’70s, the wave of deindustrialization and a trail of pollution resulted in a 50 percent decline in the population, with fewer than 3,000 residents currently estimated as residing in the neighborhood. U.S. Census data estimated that roughly 66 percent of the population is Black.

Resident Charmaine Aponte asked if the dredging would resuspend the contaminants in the waters adjacent to her community, adding to its pollution problem. 

What’s the guarantee that the layer of sand to cap the dredged site will actually stay in place over time, asked Linwood Jackson, a Vietnam veteran who worked at Bethlehem Steel for more than 30 years. “I’m already dealing with the effects of Agent Orange and I’m not ready to deal with contaminants as a result of this dredging,” said Jackson, who lives in a shorefront house that faces the area the EPA has marked for dredging.   

A number of residents were also concerned about the impact of the proposed cleanup operation on flooding, a major concern for the low-lying community with inadequate stormwater drainage infrastructure. The community suffers from perpetual flooding because of limited drainage capacity and being right next to tidal water that floods whenever there’s a high tide event.

Adding to the residents’ worry is the potential of a future dredging operation for new construction at Sparrows Point. Tradepoint Atlantic, which currently operates the facility that used to be Bethlehem Steel, will build a container terminal for the supersized shipping center. Elevated noise and air pollution from trucking freight is already a cause of concern for the environmentally stressed community. 

A representative of the company who was present at the community meeting said the company was still applying for the requisite permitting and the dredging would likely take place in two years. If the EPA stuck to its timeline, the Bear Creek cleanup would likely be done by the time Tradepoint Atlantic would start dredging, he said.  

Jackson, who said he was disabled because of exposure to Agent Orange decades ago, said he was not willing to trust the EPA’s dredging proposal unless he got answers to his questions. “They need to be precise about what they’re doing. My suggestion is that they should do the testing before they start the operation and then collect the information as they go. Only then we will know what the impact of dredging will be on our community,” he said. 

The EPA and the Maryland Department of the Environment sued Bethlehem Steel in the late 1990s for committing a range of hazardous waste violations. In 1997, the parties agreed to a consent decree that required the company and subsequent owners to take corrective actions, carry out site evaluation, and clean up the on- and off-site pollution. 

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, an environmental nonprofit, filed a lawsuit in 2010 against the former owner of the steel plant, RG Steel, seeking an investigation into off site contamination and pollution prevention measures. The court stayed the case after the company filed for bankruptcy in 2012. Separately, CBF commissioned a study in 2014 to assess potential human health and ecological risks associated with exposure to sediments and water in Bear Creek. 

The property has changed hands several times since Bethlehem Steel declared bankruptcy in 2000, which dragged out the cleanup process, much to the chagrin of the community. In 2014, Baltimore-based Tradepoint Atlantic bought the property to turn it into the “largest privately owned industrial site and terminal on the east coast,” and committed $51 million for cleanup and remediation of off-site contamination.

“The community rightly identified as a potential threat if there are contaminants resuspended by the dredging operation that are now at the surface and a flooding event could bring those right into their community through the storm drains,” said Doug Myers, senior scientist at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

“I’ve already requested an additional 30 days public comment period because I think it’s difficult to assess what we can do between now and March 10 when the public comment period ends,” Myers said. He added that he would not dismiss outright the $70 million cleanup option the EPA had outlined that suggested dredging the entire contaminated site. “If it would have done a better job at cleaning up the sediments then we should reconsider that option.” 

The EPA should coordinate the timelines of its clean up operation with Tradepoint Atlantic, Myers added, in order to avoid the possibility of two dredging operations in close proximity to one another, which could have an adverse impact.   

Gussy Maguire, a Maryland staff scientist for CBF, said climate change is supercharging the intensity of rainfall in this area, which would require the EPA to factor in the frequency of rainfall and the resulting flooding events.

”When you have a whole bunch of water coming down at once you have exacerbated flooding. We want to make sure that contaminants stay where they are and don’t get washed into Turner Station residents’ backyard,” she said. Maguire added that the EPA thinks it can get through a superfund clean process in two years, which, she said, was extremely fast. 

“Usually federal environmental cleanup takes a much longer time,” Maguire said. “And I think they’re going to get a lot of dangerous contamination out of the sediment, which they do need to weigh being adjacent to a community that has already had more than their fair share of impact.”

“Now that you know what the community’s concerns are, we would recommend that you do not do anything until you are able to provide the data that tells us what the quality of the water is before the dredging starts in Bear Creek, which is literally in our front yards,” said Aponte, gesturing how close her house is to the dredging site. “They told us their plans. And we then gave them our feedback. So now we’re looking forward to good communication and more answers. Not just fancy slideshows.” 

Adam Ortiz, administrator for the EPA’s Mid-Atlantic Region, said that Turner Station is one of the 37 priority engagement communities the agency has identified across the region. “These are environmental justice communities that are overburdened with environmental stressors and we’ve determined that these places are going to be our focus because they’ve been historically forgotten,” he said. 

Ortiz added that the agency will work with local community groups to dispel the impression among some community members that it had not undertaken monitoring of the Bear Creek Superfund site in advance. “We have done monitoring in advance. And we will be doing monitoring throughout the stages. The existing condition is exponentially more dangerous than the contained removal, which is being proposed,” he said. 

In addition to the $45 million in cleanup funds, another $500,000 is for air monitoring, Ortiz said, “so the community can independently do their monitoring and find out what the stressors are.” The EPA will also galvanize support from other federal and state partners, as well as nonprofits and academic institutions to help communities like Turner Station, which are overburdened with environmental pollution, he added. 

The agency plans to announce a new round of funds in the coming weeks for environmentally stressed communities on its priority list, which includes the Ivy City neighborhood in Northeast Washington, D.C. and south Baltimore’s disinvested neighborhoods next to polluting industrial sites.