[music]
You’d be forgiven for looking at the Route 66 State Park as just another quiet plot of
land in eastern Missouri.
Located off of exit 265 on Interstate 44, the park’s 419 acres provide plenty of trails
for hiking, cycling, and even fishing on the Meramec River.
The park's visitor center, a former roadhouse, is filled with plenty of vintage Route 66
memorabilia showcasing the former beauty of the buildings and towns that once graced the
roadways of the state from the 1930s to the 1960s.
On the surface, all seems fairly straightforward, but tucked away in that simple visitor center’s
museum is a small plaque vaguely commemorating one of America's "greatest triumphs over environmental
disaster" in a place called Times Beach.
Yet, strangely, this supposed town is nowhere to be found in the surrounding 419 acres.
Because Times Beach is a ghost town.
And to know the story, you must first turn the clock back almost 100 years.
[music]
The town of Times Beach was founded in 1925 by, of all things, a newspaper: the St. Louis
Star-Times.
The publication owned a large plot of land along the Meramec River, and decided to sell
lots meant for summer homes packaged with a 6-month subscription of the paper for the
low price of $67.50.
This bargain was an attempt at creating a resort town near St. Louis meant for high
society, and was perhaps seen as a financial wager to ensure the St. Louis Star-Time’s
economic survival into the coming decades.
For a while things worked, but a combination of factors, including the socioeconomic state
of Missouri after the Great Depression, and the fact that the town was built on a flood
plain spelled an almost certain end to the high hopes of the town’s founders.
By June of 1951, The Star-Times went out of print and the dream of Times Beach quickly
began to fade.
By 1970, the town had morphed into a suburb of mostly low-income housing, with a population
of only about 1200.
To call the town poor was an understatement.
Unable to secure enough money for infrastructure, its 23 miles of roads and streets went unpaved,
resulting in constant and unbearable dust during the summer months.
In order to combat the dust, various neighborhoods hired a man from Ellisville named Russell
Bliss to spray a layer of oil onto the dirt roads.
Bliss ran a company that disposed of waste oil, and as a side gig, he would occasionally
spray this material to treat unpaved streets.
This crude method kept the dust from rising, and was an affordable solution in for an annoying
problem.
Bliss gladly agreed to treat various dust-filled neighborhoods for a small fee.
By 1972 he had become so widely used by the town's residents, that the city officially
contracted with him to spray at will throughout the entire town for the next two years.
But unbeknownst to the residence of Times Beach, a terrible truth lay behind Bliss’s
oil... a tale of shady bureaucracy, and dangerous government dealings.
[music]
Three and a half hours away from Times Beach sat the town of Verona, Missouri, and in it,
a chemical facility owned by the company Hoffman-Taff. Hoffman-Taff was, among other things, contracted
by the United States military to produce the chemical 2,4,5, T - a pesticide, which, when
combined with pesticide 2,4, D, produced the chemical we refer to today as Agent Orange,
used during the Vietnam War.
The production of Agent Orange creates an excess waste stream filled with Dioxin, a
highly toxic carcinogen.
Hoffman-Taff’s facility contained this waste in a still residue tank, which they kept on
site.
By the time the United States military ended their use of Agent Orange, Hoffman-Taff was
left with this Doxin-laden holding tank, and began looking for new business.
Unable to find much work, eventually the company began leasing part of their facility as a
way to make money.
They contracted with a company on the east coast of the United States called the Northeastern
Pharmaceutical and Chemical Company, Inc., or NEPACCO.
NEPACCO produced the compound hexachlorophene, which at that time was widely used as a disinfectant
in antibacterial handsoaps, toothpaste, and other topical products.
Today, we know that hexchlorophene is toxic, but during the 1970s, NEPACCO produced it
at the facility around the clock.
Manufacturing Hexachlorophene also produces Dioxin, and so NEPACCO piped this waste into
the still residue tank already in use by Hoffman-Taff.
The tank can only hold so much, and soon the facility needed to empty its contents to free
up space.
But, how to get rid of this toxic material?
The most effective way to do this was incineration, but that was costly.
NEPACCO began looking for less expensive options and was soon approached by the Independent
Petrochemical Corporation, or IPC, who offered to transfer the waste off-site and dispose
of it for a fraction of the price.
NEPACCO quickly agreed and the company was contracted.
From here, things get very, very, murky.
NEPACCO agreed to pay IPC 25 cents for every Gallon of Dioxin taken off the facility, or,
about $3,000 per load.
However, rather than transfer the material directly, IPC decided to subcontract the work.
While NEPACCO paid IPC, IPC in return paid a local waste disposal company close to the
facility to cut their OWN costs.
In short, NEPACCO hired the lowest bidder, who, in return hired their own lowest bidder.
That subcontractor was Russell Bliss.
While NEPACCO agreed to pay IPC 25 cents a gallon, IPC offered to pay Russell Bliss a
nickel.
In total, IPC would be paid $3,000 per load.
They would then pay Russell Bliss $125 of that amount to do the actual work.
There are varying accounts of the agreement between IPC and Russell Bliss, but they all
center around this main question: Did IPC tell Mr. Bliss what he would be hauling?
Bliss maintains that IPC simply told him the barrels contained waste oil, which was, after
all, the purpose of his company.
"It never entered my mind what they were doing, or what they were making.
Uh, I was told at one time they were making lady's face cleanser.
Whether that's true or not, I don't know.
I know one time some of the workers down there said, 'What do you do with this old oil?'
and I said, 'Well I spray it at horse arenas and sell it for rerefined oil, and they make
heavy industrial fuel out of it, and spray it on country roads,' and nobody said nothin'."
IPC claims that Russell Bliss agreed to take the barrels to an atomic waste site in Rolla,
MO for proper disposal.
For whatever difference it makes, no such atomic waste site exists.
Regardless of who knew what and when, eventually Russell Bliss came into the possession of
the dioxin-filled waste containers.
Opening one up, Bliss decided the waste could be used as a supplement to his own oil supply…
so, he mixed them.
In addition to the waste oil company, Bliss owned a farm and horse arena plagued by dust.
One day, Bliss decided to spray some of his oil on the ground to control the problem.
Several visitors on Bliss’s property were impressed at how well the technique worked,
and eventually, he was asked various customers to spray the oil on THEIR property to control
their OWN dust issues, including several horse arenas, one in Moscow Mills, and, eventually,
on the dirt roads of a struggling town called Times Beach.
Due to their frequent use, the town’s roads needed to be sprayed every few weeks.
By the end 1973, Russell Bliss is estimated to have sprayed more than 100,000 gallons
of his oil.
It didn’t take very long for signs that something was terribly, terribly amiss.
Within a few days of Bliss’s work at the arena in Moscow Mills, birds began to drop
dead from the rafters, and the horses developed sores and lost their hair.
The owners of the arena began exhibiting signs of illness, too: headaches, nosebleeds, abdominal
pain, and diarrhea.
At another stable Bliss treated near Jefferson City, twelve horses dropped dead, and several
children developed chloracne, a skin condition associated with dioxin poisoning.
A third arena near St. Louis also experienced evidence of poison soon after hiring Bliss
to spray.
Almost immediately, these events attracted the eyes of the CDC (the Centers for Disease
Control), and an investigation was launched.
Little was known about the effects of many carcinogens during this time, so it took almost
four years of investigation and tests on soil found in these stables to confirm a dioxin
contamination.
All the while, Russell Bliss sprayed the streets of Times Beach.
During this time, many residents experienced cases of hives, lip and face swelling, and
other unexplained general sicknesses.
In 1972, the FDA issued a ban on hexachloropene manufacturing after 32 infants in France died
when exposed to high levels of the substance through household baby powder.
As a result, NEPACCO went out of business that year.
Two years pass, and in 1974, the CDC, busy tracking down the source of the dioxin contamination,
confronted Russell Bliss.
Bliss denied any knowledge of the existence of dioxin contamination in his oil, and, in
fact, denied any knowledge on the substance of dioxin, altogether.
"I wouldn't have known what it was if they HAD told me what it was, if you want the truth!
You could tell me it was some kind of a new jelly, and I'd put it on toast and eat it.
I didn't know what dioxin was, and STILL don't know exactly what it is."
In return, the CDC produced a list of possible production sites for the toxin.
On that list?
NEPACCO.
The chemical facility in Verona, by this time operated solely by Syntex Agribusiness (formerly
Hoffman-Taff), was soon inspected.
There, the CDC found a tank filled with 4,300 gallons of toxic waste, containing a concentration
of dioxin leftover from NEPACCO's time at the facility.
Syntex had no incinerator to dispose of the waste, and so kept it on site, planning to
dispose of it sometime in the next five years.
Soil samples around Verona revealed a small concentration of dioxin, too - and the EPA
was slowly brought in.
By 1975, a confidential report from the CDC to the EPA advised the removal and burial
of the contaminated soil, however, later in this report, the CDC stated that the half-life
of dioxin was one year, and based upon THAT estimate, Missouri officials determined a
cleanup would be too costly, and unnecessary.
We know today that this estimate is false.
The half-life of dioxin is now believed to be anywhere from seven to eleven years.
The EPA report triggered four more years of backdoor bureaucracy, testing, and investigation
until 1979, when a former NEPACCO employee finally tipped officials off to the burial
of toxic waste on a farm near Verona.
At this point, the EPA turned their full attention to the situation, and during their investigation
of the farm, unearthed ninety barrels of waste, all of which were heavily corroded and leaking
into the soil.
Eleven of the barrels tested positive for dioxin concentrations as high as 2,000 parts
per million - above hazardous levels to humans.
The EPA’s worst fears were confirmed: NEPACCO had been dumping toxic waste at this Verona
farm site, and, as they soon discovered, into the nearby Spring River, where preliminary
tests showed Dioxin at 62 parts per billion.
A quarter mile from the chemical plant, a dairy farmer’s cows who drank from the river
began dying and losing calves.
To this day, rumors still persist of hundreds of toxic barrels still buried deep underground
near Verona.
In June of 1982, the EPA revisited the infected horse arenas and took new soil samples.
To their horror, the levels of dioxin had not decreased since the initial tests years
earlier.
Though a decade had passed since the stables had been sprayed, they were still hazardous.
Realizing their misunderstanding of the effects and the extent of dioxin contamination, the
EPA collected and tested several hundred more soil samples, urging all of the locations
to close permanently.
Later that year, documents from the EPA leaked to the public revealed 14 confirmed and over
40 possibly contaminated sites in the the state of Missouri.
One of them was Times Beach.
At the release of this report, residents were shocked to learn that for over a decade, they
had been living on poisoned soil.
That November, the EPA finally arrived at Times Beach and took samples.
Residents were understandably uneasy about the presence of men in hazmat suits canvassing
the small town, and as December approached, it brought rain.
Rain in Times Beach means flooding, and the EPA raced against the clock to gather samples
before the rising tide washed their progress away.
A day after the agency completed its sampling, Times Beach suffered the worst flood in its
history.
The entire town was evacuated.
Two days before Christmas, as the waters finally began to recede, the EPA’s test results
came in.
Dioxin.
Concentrations on the town’s roadways were as high as 100 parts per billion.
Doxin is hazardous at 1 part per billion.
The EPA recommended that Times Beach be abandoned.
Due to the constant risk of flooding and the possible spread of contamination, it was further
recommended that the entire town and its soil be incinerated.
The government set up barricades to block people from re-entering the town.
Its residents, now displaced, vented their frustrations at government officials.
Many in Times Beach suffering from ill-effects of the dioxin demanded to know why the EPA,
which had known about the contamination for over ten years, had failed to inform them.
"I'll tell you what, if you want people to be assured, first of all, you'd better find
out who was exposed, how much they're exposed, and get your show together before you start
doin' a study!"
Before long, lawsuits were filed between various parties, and caught in the middle was Russell
Bliss.
Seen as the Grim Reaper by many of the townspeople, Bliss endured constant attacks and harassment,
all the while maintaining his innocence.
"I swear to all of you, I had no idea this material was bad."
The national news media coverage added more fuel to the fire as blame was passed around
from one governmental department to another.
What was to be done for the people of Times Beach, who now found themselves homeless,
many without a dime to their name?
Estranged residents of the town demanded a buyout from the federal government, threatening
to hit the EPA, CDC, and others with lawsuit after lawsuit.
After repeated public outcry, then-President Ronald Reagan created the Times Beach Dioxin
Task Force on January 7, 1983, which consisted of representatives from the EPA, CDC, FEMA
and the Army Corps of Engineers.
A month of non-stop media coverage later, the federal government announced that they
would pay $33 million dollars to buy every single residential property and business in
the town.
By 1985, the residents of the town had fully relocated, and Missouri Governor John Ashcroft
issued an executive order to dis-incorporate the town.
For 10 more years, the town was gated off, and patrolled around the clock by government
officials to keep people out.
During this time, the entire town was bulldozed and placed into a massive landfill, erasing
every square inch of Times Beach from the map.
By 1995, the EPA installed an incinerator on the site, and the government finally began
destroying the dioxin-laden materials.
The massive cleanup project was completed in 1997, and in total, cost close to $200
million.
In 1999, the area was finally reopened to the public as a state park.
The only hint of the town that once stood there?
On a small plaque tucked away in the park’s visitor center.
Plenty of questions still go unanswered... mainly, who is to blame?
The chemical companies certainly share some blame for their poor handling of toxic materials,
and yet, at the time, there were no regulations in place for how such materials WERE to be
handled.
The government certainly could have put safe guards in place, but research and understanding
of the harmful effects of dioxin at that time was limited, and to be fair, you don't usually
regulate things that you don't know will kill you.
Then, there's the IPC.
Their questionable subcontracting practices were negligent at best, and criminal at worst.
And, of course, there's Russell Bliss.
His decision to mix the toxic material into his oil led to the destruction of an entire
town, and the poison of both humans and animals.
Whether intentional or not, many to this day still lay the blame at his feet.
Others are more sympathetic, feeling that Bliss Oil was used as a scapegoat by all the
chemical companies involved to take the heat for the toxic material that they chose not
to properly dispose of.
In 1993, a lawsuit between Time’s Beach residents, Syntex, NEPACCO, IPC, and others
was settled.
2,140 residents received anywhere from $2,000 to $90,000.
Russell Bliss was never found guilty of any criminal behavior.
In the summer of 2012, the EPA revisited the Route 66 State Park to test the soil again.
Later that November, they reported that "soil samples from Route 66 State Park show no significant
health risks for park visitors or workers."
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