A Brief History of: The Times Beach Dioxin Disaster (Documentary)

a town that was once originally the dream of a nice summer resort would take a downward spiral to a low-income suburb and ultimately a contaminated and abandoned lesson on waste disposal if you were to travel to this town today not much would tell you of the disaster that befell its residents but the story involves a lot of dioxin-contaminated waste being sprayed on the roads of times beach missouri [Music] time speech has a strange story that was an odd side effect of the vietnam war many thousands of miles from the battlefield in missouri an unknown contractor would spread deadly darks and contaminated oil as part of a dust reduction service for dirt tracks now i know this is an odd picture i'm painting but as i said times beach is a strange story and as such i'm going to rate it here seven on my patented playing difficult disaster scale and also seven on my historical legacy scale due to the seemingly obvious lessons that had to be learnt our story starts with a newspaper advert in an effort that reminds me of london's metro land during the early 20th century a purchase of a plot at times beach came with a six-month subscription of the st louis times newspaper okay okay the comparison is a bit of a reach but it is similar in the sense that a company would sell you a lifestyle to further an ulterior company goal in metroland's case it was to pay for new railways but in times beach's case it was an effort to prolong the newspaper's longevity the location of tynes beach was a 480 acre area around 17 miles west of saint louis on the i-44 highway next to the merrimack river and had previously been a flood plain used for farming the cost of 120 feet by 100 feet lot in times beach was 67.50 but in reality to build anything worth habitation a couple of plots were needed the community was doomed from the start as the area was prone to flooding as such the properties were built on stilts and because you had to build a summer house yourself or get someone else to do it wasn't the uniform affair of modern day holiday resorts the community not long after its conception would have to bear the brunt like many other communities throughout the world of the great depression in the late 1920s understandably summer houses weren't necessarily a necessity during a period of economic downturn so those that could sold up however many didn't and instead took to living by the river to ride out the financial storm the community would once again get a kick in the stomach when during the second world war gasoline shortages would discourage many from visiting their holiday homes leading to more properties being sold off for permanent residency by the 1950s the area saw redevelopment with many of the summer houses rebuilt into low-income residential use the properties were not built on stilts as flooding had become a thing of the past the roads throughout the community were unmade dirt arrangements and this caused a pretty large nuisance for the residents and that is dust as a car trundles along a dirt road it unsurprisingly in dry weather kicks up dust into the air not great if you have clothing out in the line or are just generally outside and this problem had a solution that is probably tarmacking the road and maintaining it which is what didn't happen at times beach and instead old engine oil was used to suppress the dust kick-up to be fair to the cast strap city paving the roads wasn't exactly affordable used oil is a cost effective solution but it doesn't exactly last forever and needs reapplication which is why someone can make some money out of servicing an area and this brings on waste hauler russell bliss bliss's solution was to spray the roads around the community with waste oil at a bargain price of 6 cents per gallon and he would begin a job in 1972 but let's pause here because you might be thinking how has this got to do anything with the vietnam war around 230 miles down the road in verona missouri a company called hofmann taft opened up a chemical production facility in 1949. the site was used to produce several different products including prist and aerofuel additive pantaplex and animal feed fortifier and a more well-known chemical agent orange asian orange was an equal mixture of two phenoxy herbicides two four dichlorophenoxy acetic acid and two four five trichlorophenoxy acetic acid which contain traces of the dark sin 2378 tetrachlorodibenzyl p dioxin a deadly carcinogen the agent was used as a defoliant in an effort to try and deny the vietcong competence food and concealment hoffman taft started to experience financial difficulties towards the end of the 1960s and started to lease out some of its verona facility to the north eastern pharmaceuticals and chemicals company nepacco used the site to produce hexachlorophene an antibacterial agent used in soap toothpaste and disinfectants dioxin as we found out at ceveso is highly toxic and can cause cancer reproductive and developmental problems damage to the immune system and hormone interference the contaminants started to mount up on site a problem was created which was how to get rid of the dioxin the proper method was that of incineration but the verona site didn't have an incinerator meaning nepacco had to pay for disposal and this isn't cheap looking for a cheap alternative nepacco contracted independent petrochemical corporation to remove the contaminants a price was settled upon but ipc didn't have the experience in disposing of darks in contaminated bottoms so the company subcontracted the work to russell bliss the waste oil hauler that had a good thing going spraying dirt tracks bliss claimed later on that he wasn't aware of the toxic contamination or the materials he was paid to dispose of bliss took the darks and contaminants to his facility and mixed it with the used oil for roadway spraying operations bliss also had a side business in training and breeding horses he found that his oil spray worked well in horse arenas and as such he had treated his own land with the oil this does make me think that he was unaware of the deadly chemicals he was using as why would you spray your own land bliss's oil spraying service impressed some of his horse breeding buddies as the mixture kept down the dust for a few months during may 1971 bliss's services were employed at a number of horse stables most notably the shenandoah stable located near moscow mills missouri what was odd was that bliss's oil was unusually thick and had a strange odour and many animals exposed to the treated soil would die including birds and eventually the prized equestrian livestock a month later in 1971 bliss was employed to spray at another stables near jefferson city missouri not long after a child developed chloracne and some of the horses became ill a third stables was also done around the same time all three sites suspecting bliss's operations ended up removing the topsoil around august the cdc got involved and took samples of the affected area but the results were inclusive however they would conduct more tests finding trichlorophenol which can contain dioxin in the meantime bliss continued to spray waste oil anywhere he would get paid for and this leads us back to times beach between 1972 and 1976. blitz had been contracted to spray times beaches 16 odd miles unknowingly the some 2000 residents would become exposed to the darks and contaminated oil just like in 1971 times beach received a strange odor and saw birds die in the vicinity after bliss has sprayed his oil in total including times beach around 40 sites have been contracted by bliss to do dust treatment in missouri whilst all this was going on the cdc were trying to find the source to the mysterious illnesses reported in animals and local residents around missouri the cdc searched for companies that had manufactured trichlorophenyl and only one place was found nepacco in verona now in 1972 nepacco had gone out of business due to the fda issued ban that limited the use of hexachlorophene which is a source of the byproduct dioxin the facility in verona became fully under the control of syntax agribusiness leaving behind 4 300 gallons of darks and contaminated bottoms in 1974 dark side poisoning was tied to the mysterious illnesses in the stables after a more in-depth sampling was ordered after the detection of trichlorophenyl there was one link between all the contaminated sites and that was bliss but the investigators had to find a link between bliss and nepacco the closure of nepacco would reveal a deadly secret in 1979 which would finally give the cdc and the epa the missing link into the source of the contamination an ex-employee had blown the whistle on their own employer informing authorities about seven miles away from verona darks and contaminated material had been illegally dumped in a farm the epa discovered 90 rusty seeping barrels buried at the farm revealing large quantities of dark sim a dump site showed that nepacco wasn't adverse to just using anywhere or anyone for dumping bliss was questioned and claimed no knowledge of darksin but he did admit to being hired by ipc to dispose of the oils from the nepacco site the link was finally proven time speech wouldn't know the cause of the sickness until 1982 some 10 years after the first application of bliss's waste oil the information at times beach was one of the many contaminated sites from the dark scene from verona was leaked to the residence and the epa confirmed their suspicions but still needed to conduct more tests darksim was confirmed at times beach that things were going to get a whole lot worse for the town in early december 1982 the epa had conducted some initial testing but the merrimack river had other ideas flooding almost the entire town and the area was inundated with backwaters from the river most of the residents had fled to town but if it wasn't bad enough the water had spread the darks and contaminated topsoil to almost every corner of the community by the time the flood waters have receded results were in from the epa's testing and darkson was found to be a hundred times that of a safe level the contamination was recorded at 0.3 parts per million by mid-december some of the residents of times beach have returned to begin the drying and rehabilitation process but that wouldn't last for long on the 23rd of december 1982 the epa released the infamous christmas message if you're in town it is advisable that you leave and if you're out of town do not go back the message was essentially the death warrant for the community and on the 7th of january 1983 president ronald reagan created the times beach darks in task force on the 22nd of february 1983 the epa announced that the federal government would front 33 million of the estimated 36.7 million costs to buy out residential properties and businesses of times beach leaving just under 4 million to be picked up by the state the site was placed on the super fund national priorities list two years later pretty much all of the residents of times beach had been bought out and relocated and now the abandoned town became the perfect location for the much needed incinerator to dispose of missouri's dioxin which would finally be completed in 1997 about 265 000 pounds of contaminated soil and debris from times beach and 28 other sites in missouri was burned after the completion of the incinerator activities and cleanup of the site the abandoned community was taken off the superfund national priorities list in 2001. the site today has been redeveloped into a state park called the route 66 park and there is also a visitor center on the site there's little much left to tell you that once a small community resided here as you can see here in the satellite photos that the town is pretty much gone not surprisingly nepaco ipc and bliss were hit with multiple lawsuits for the contamination all over missouri due to the era in which bliss operated he was not required to and did not record the sources of his waste operations and all throughout the event he claimed no knowledge of the darks and contaminants but we will never know for sure nepacco and ipc had to pay out a lot of money as many lawsuits were brought against them and they had no excuse for not telling anyone what the oil contained syntax agribusiness the company that took over the verona site was fined 200 million dollars for their part in the disaster thanks for watching i hope you enjoyed the video this video is a plain difficult production all videos on the channel are creative commons share attribution like licensed plain difficult videos are produced by me john in a sunny south eastern corner of london uk help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing check out my twitter for all sorts of photos nuts and sods as well as hints on future videos i've got patreon and youtube membership as well if you fancy supporting the channel financially and all that's left to say is thank you for watching [Music]

Channel: Plainly Difficult

Views: 209,892

Rating: 4.9638133 out of 5

Keywords: Times beach Mo, Missouri times beach, Dioxin contamination, Ghost town, Abandoned town, A brief History of:, Plainly difficult documentary, History Documentary, Chemical exposure, Times beach dioxin, Centralia, The love canal, Times beach dioxin disaster

Id: e2zVN5whO1w

Length: 13min 54sec (834 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 20 2021