Last mayor of Times Beach shares her story with EP and surrounding communities
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DARLINGTON, Pa. -- Marilyn Leistner feels a kinship with the people of East Palestine. It's a connection she would rather not have.
Leistner was the last mayor of Times Beach, Missouri, before state and federal health officials declared the town uninhabitable in December of 1982 due to heavy dioxin contamination. Leistner, during a meeting Tuesday in Darlington, Pa. with residents impacted by the Feb. 3 Norfolk Southern train derailment and the subsequent chemical release, said the similarities between East Palestine and her former hometown are harrowingly similar as she feels an ugly part of history has repeated itself.
"I listen to your stories and they sound like our stories," Leistner told the packed room. "The nosebleeds, the menstrual problems, the headaches, the rashes and not getting answers from the EPA. We've been through it, and now, you're going through it. It's happening again."
The beginning of Times Beach couldn't be any more contrasting to its ending. Founded in 1925 as part of a St. Louis Star-Times promotion in which $67.50 bought a reader a six-month subscription to the newspaper and a plot of land in over 400 acres of unused farmland, Times Beach was heralded a resort town. Both its geographical location and its picturesque setting seemed perfect for the town's purpose. It was located just 17 miles from St. Louis on Route 66, which was set to open the following year, and nestled along the scenic Meramec River. The newspaper promised "the sweltering heat and discomfort of the city are unknown at Times Beach," and people bought what the Star-Times was selling, flocking to the town to spend their summers. However, the tourism was short-lived. The stock market crash of 1929 led to the Great Depression. War World II followed and Times Beach became a permanent community of perpetual struggles for low-to-middle class residents.
Times Beach sat in the river's floodplain and, historically, the town was prone to rising waters. As the 1960s came to a close, the town was also prone to dust, as it could not afford to pave nearly 30 miles of dirt roads in and around Times Beach.
It was how Times Beach chose to solve the dust problem that completed its decline from resort town to ghost town. In 1972, the town contracted Russell Bliss, the owner of a small local waste oil business, to spray the roads with his product and suppress the dust. What was hiding in that oil would eventually sign the town’s death warrant.
Bliss had previously been paid by Independent Petrochemical Corporation (IPC) to dispose of Northeastern Pharmaceutical and Chemical Company’s (NEPACCO) heavily-laced dioxin oil -- a by-product of a purification of hexachlorophene, an antibacterial agent that was used in soap. Dioxin is a highly toxic compound produced by combustion and the process of purifying the now-banned disinfectant. NEPACCO paid IPC $3,000 for every load it disposed of with the belief IPC would incinerated it. Instead, IPC paid Bliss $125 a truckload to haul it away. In 1971, Bliss mixed the toxic oil with used motor oils and used it to spray the floor of his horse farm arena. One application of the purple-tinted concoction controlled the dust on Bliss’ property for months at a time. The technique worked so well, neighbors asked Bliss to do the same at their horse farms, and a year later, Times Beach hired Bliss. He earned $2,400 to spray 160,000 gallons of the noxious-oil mixture all over the town’s dusty roads. He would continue to spray the roads until 1977.
For years, the residents of Times Beach unknowingly lived in the contamination and would pay high prices for it. Cancers, infertility, birth defects and chloracne -- skin lesions that develop as a result of chemical exposure -- plagued the people. Leistner recalled a mother who gave birth to two babies with neuroblastoma -- a rare cancer that develops in nerve tissue. A short time later, the grieving mother would lose her husband to the same disease. Dogs, cats and birds turned up dead and 62 horses died or became so emaciated that they had to be euthanized.
It would later be revealed that the Centers of Disease Control (CDC) had made the connection between dioxin poisoning and Bliss as early as 1971 and notified the Environmental Protection Agency of the dioxin pollution in Missouri in 1975. The EPA entered the investigation in 1979, but it wasn't until a leaked EPA document was published in August of 1982 in the local newspaper that Times Beach residents found out the ugly truth -- their hometown was poisoned and one of 14 confirmed contaminated sites in Missouri. In an ironic twist, the town that was created from a newspaper would ultimately end because of one. The newspaper article was the first time many in town had ever read the word “dioxin”.
"If it wasn't for a newspaper reporter and a few people who didn't like what was going on and decided to do something about it, we would've never known," Leistner said. "We had no idea why we were getting sick or why our friends were getting sick. We just didn't know. We lived on that contamination for over a decade. It was all over the place, all over the town."
The public was outraged and demanded a full-scale investigation of Times Beach by the EPA. The agency complied and, on Dec. 3, 1982, the final soil sample in town was collected. The next day, the Meramec overran its banks and Times Beach was under water. It was the worst flooding in the town's history. The water eventually receded but the damage was done. The test results would later report dioxin levels in Times Beach were staggeringly high and the EPA concluded that further flooding in the region would only spread the contamination. Twenty days after the river crested 14-feet above flood stage, the CDC publicly recommended that Times Beach not be inhabited.
"Those who had evacuated because of the flood were told not to come back and those who were still in town were told to leave and not take anything with them," Leistner explained. "We weren’t supposed to take anything. We were told to leave everything behind.”
But people in Times Beach couldn’t simply walk away -- they couldn’t afford to. Already economically depressed before Bliss sprayed his toxic oil, years of dioxin exposure left many in the town sick and financially crippled. For some, all they had left was modest equity in their houses. If their homes were worthless, it meant they were penniless.
Leistner led a charge for a buyout program. It wasn't a popular idea in the town and neither was Leistner. Despite having been just elected mayor, she became a target. Decades removed from those days, she can see it for what is was -- displaced anger from displaced people. Leistner said she received death threats, was even slapped by a resident and had to perform her mayoral duties under police protection for a time. Times Beach was deeply divided. Some never wanted to step foot back in town, while others wanted to save the only home they had ever known. Eventually, Leistner's side prevailed. In February of 1983, the EPA announced the federal government would buy out all of 800 homes and 40 businesses at the cost of $33 million. The state of Missouri chipped in an additional $7 million. The town was disincorporated on an executive order from the governor. By 1985, every one of Times Beach’s 2,000-plus residents had been relocated.
Leistner saw relocation as the only real option.
"We had to remove ourselves from the threat," Leistner said. "And there were people who wanted to stay, and we faced a lot of opposition and a lot of anger, but there are no safe levels of dioxin, so there was other choice but to leave."
As for the belongings left behind, Leistner said those things were buried as was everything else in the town -- books, photographs, clothing, furniture, houses, commercial buildings, the school, churches and even the water tower that once stood proudly over Times Beach. Everything that once existed in the city limits is now underground. The earth heaves up where it all lies, a rolling green hill that holds a terrible secret. That man-made hill is now known as the "town mound."
"They literally buried everything," Leistner said. "We were hoping the water tower would be saved but they said 'No. It had to go, too.' It's all in there. There's a lot of memories buried there."
No longer a town, Times Beach is now Route 66 State Park. It's still a picturesque countryside nestled along the Meramec River, but any trace of Times Beach is long gone and long buried. The EPA retested the soil at the park in 2012 and concluded that visiting the park posed no significant health risks. Former residents often make their way there. For some, it’s a somber experience much like visiting the grave of an old friend. In 1991, Dr. Vernon Houk, the director of the CDC's Center for Environmental Health, who made the recommendation for permanent relocation in 1982, had a change of opinion. He said he no longer believed the relocation and demolition of Times Beach was necessary. Leistner, however, still believes the buyout saved lives and salvaged what was left of others.
The contamination in East Palestine has too been debated, and much like Times Beach, the community is divided. There are residents who trust the data the EPA has provided. They strive for the village to get back to a sense of normalcy and believe no danger exists in the soil, water or air. So far, all of the sampling and testing results reported by the responding agencies indicates East Palestine is safe. There are also residents who are skeptical and say independent testing contradicts the released data. They have no faith in the EPA or the CDC. They say they are sick from dioxin exposure and chemical poisoning. They want out of their homes and out of East Palestine. They fear what the derailment will mean in 10 or 20 years. Indeed, East Palestine’s story is told in two different narratives with one side viewing the other as gullible or hysterical -- depending on who is telling the story.
Leistner isn’t surprised by the division but she is saddened by it. Discord and dysfunction are often common in places like Times Beach and East Palestine, and relationships, even life-long ones, can become collateral damage. She urged the community members to support one another, but she also urged them to get out.
"You have to be united and you have to stick together," she said. "But you have to put your health first and you have to remove yourself from the threat."
selverd@mojonews.com