Highlands, Texas is a small community on the outskirts of Houston, located next to the San Jacinto River Waste Pit Superfund Site. Two 34 acres of shy pits were originally built in the 1960s to house paper mill waste.
Last month, based on requests from the Texas Health and Environment Alliance (THEA), Texas announced a cancer rate rating, determining that a 250-square-mile area along the San Jacinto River, including the super fund site, is a cancer cluster.
“Highland, Texas, is located in the bank next to the super fund site and is just struck by environmental issues one after another,” Jackie Medcalf, founder of Thea, told Ehne.
Waste holes are contaminated with cancer-causing dioxins and furans, and were classified as a super fund site by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2008.
In addition to the waste hole, the San Jacinto River is located within the country’s petrochemical corridor along the Houston Ship Channel. The 52-mile-long channel hosts over 600 petrochemical plants that produce products such as plastics, fertilizers and pesticides. Contamination from these industries raises many environmental health concerns, including increased exposure to other carcinogens such as benzene.
The Texas Health and Environment Alliance (THEA) was founded by former Highland resident Jackie Medcalf to provide the community with the technical and regulatory expertise needed to make environmental laws work.
Thea created this video op-ed to highlight the cumulative impact of multi-source contamination on environmental health in Highlands, Texas.
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect attribution errors. Jackie Medcalf, founder of Thea, provided a quote that, as originally noted, Highlands, not Ken Wells, is being hit by environmental issues.
