After several months of speculation and testing for soil contaminants at the Julia C. Hester House, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis declared the area safe.
During a meeting on June 3 hosted by Ellis and held at Hester House, Fifth Ward residents heard directly from and asked questions of EPA representative Casey Luckett-Synder. Yet, many walked away doubting the area’s safety and requested the entire neighborhood, not just Hester House, be included in future testing.
Meeting synopsis
In February, testing at Hester House found evidence of dioxin levels in two areas. Dioxins are harmful chemicals found in sources like cigarette smoke and industrial pollution. Fences were erected on the Hester House grounds to protect neighborhood residents from playing in the cited area.
The EPA’s most recent testing of the soil at Hester House, a neighborhood hub, especially for youth and seniors, was announced at the June 3 meeting.
“I wanted the residents of Fifth Ward to know that this property at Hester House is safe,” said Ellis. “We’re going to take the fences down. The dioxin levels are not high enough to warrant making it look like a prison.”
Ellis acknowledged several attendees’ questions about additional contaminants found in other parts of Fifth Ward, namely creosote, a toxic substance linked to cancer. In 2020, Fifth Ward, which is home to six cancer clusters, learned of reports of creosote contamination with Union Pacific Railroad (UPR) named as potentially one of the main culprits.
“Those issues related to creosote were not addressed tonight,” shared Ellis. “Obviously, it came up because we had the EPA here. But Hester House is safe and Hester House is going to be here for as long as you can think about it.”
Luckett-Snyder said she appreciated Ellis inviting the EPA to share the results from their “expanded removal site evaluation.”
“The message to the community is that there is no reason to avoid the recreational area at the Hester House; that the hundreds of kids who are at their early Head Start program and of the kids who are doing afterschool programs here are completely safe playing in the green space behind Hester House,” Luckett-Synder shared with the Defender. “You can picnic there. You can play soccer. There is no level of dioxin contamination that could potentially cause a health risk.”
Residents doubtful
Yet, even with the “all clear” messaging, many meeting attendees weren’t convinced.
Erica Hubbard, coordinator of Fifth Ward’s Hershey Street Community Garden, left the meeting even more concerned than when she entered.
“We operate a community garden that is 2,600 feet away from the Old Wood Preserving site, and I tried to get our garden included in this study, but they never responded to our emails,” said Hubbard. “So, the community got together and put funds together, and we got our own soil tested, and the results were horrendous. If we have contamination and we are on Hershey Street, two blocks away from Lyons, I promise you, everything between the garden and the Union Pacific site is contaminated. So, it’s a false sense of security.”
Lizette Fernandez Prestwich, who lives a stone’s throw away from Hester House, wasn’t “buying” what the EPA was “selling.”
“Despite the information, the data that they’re showing us, the data also shows that our community has increased levels of cancer, increased levels of asthma, increased levels of rare skin disease within our most vulnerable communities, within our kids and our elderly community,” said Fernandez Prestwich. “So, I think the data that they’re telling us that ‘everything is fine,’ I find it a little jarring, and I think we need to dive deeper to see what is wrong and make sure that we’re solving the root problem.”
Longtime Fifth Ward resident Sandra Edwards left the June 3 meeting “very unsatisfied.”
“We as residents out here know that it’s way worse than they are ever letting on, and I’m concerned about the gardening and people that do gardening,” said Edwards. “But the residents know that we need to be more careful because they’re not going to tell us the complete truth.”
History
In addition to the 2020 reports of creosote in Fifth Ward, in early February of this year, new EPA and UPR test results showed elevated levels of “highly toxic” compounds, known as dioxins, outside Hester House. The dioxin levels found in the dirt outside the Fifth Ward recreation center exceed the EPA’s screening standard for children by five times.
In 2023, the EPA first ordered UPR to conduct testing for dioxins and other harmful compounds in the neighborhood after state officials identified a cancer cluster in the same area where the railroad had spent decades using cancer-causing chemicals to treat wood. Still, testing didn’t happen at Hester House until February 2025.
More testing was promised.
In March of this year, Fifth Ward residents were given access to free cancer screenings as part of a new initiative addressing environmental health concerns in the neighborhood. City Council member Letitia Plummer partnered with the National Minority Quality Forum (NMQF) to launch the program, which aims to enroll 100,000 participants nationwide over the next five years. The screenings came as the EPA continued testing soil and water in the area for toxic chemicals linked to the former Houston Wood Preserving Works site.
Before that, when Sylvester Turner was still Houston’s mayor, the City of Houston offered residents a $5 million Fifth Ward Voluntary Relocation plan, which would cover the relocation costs for residents directly above or within two to three blocks of the contaminated site (UPR’s 4910 Liberty Road operations).
