EPA visit to Atlanta highlights pollutant cleanup and public services – WABE
The EPA visited Atlanta on August 14 to celebrate investments in transforming a contaminated site into a green space and civic service on the Westside.
Deputy EPA Administrator Janet McCabe and representatives from the EPA’s regional office in Atlanta began the morning at the Chattahoochee Brick Company site. The EPA is providing $2 million from the bipartisan infrastructure bill to rehabilitate the industrial site and turn it into a park with Access to the river.
Donna Stephens, founder and chair of the Descendants of Chattahoochee Brick Company Coalition, is committed to protecting the site from becoming another industrial site and transforming it into a memorial and green space.
Donna Stephens, founder and chair of the Descendants of Chattahoochee Brick Company Coalition, photographed at the Outdoor Activity Center in southwest Atlanta on Friday, June 26, 2020. (Bita Honarvar/For WABE)
“There’s not a lot of hope in this area. Being able to sit on the banks of the Chattahoochee River, take a walk on the path that leads to the plan for this area, come here with the kids and have a good time, means a lot to this community,” Stephens said.
“People are ready for this space,” Stephens said. She said neighbors have been asking her when the park will open and that the area needs access to nature.
In 2022, the City of Atlanta, with the help of the Conservation Fund, purchased the old brickworks site. At the moment, it is a brownfield site – an old, unused and contaminated industrial site.
The factory was in operation at the turn of the century, making bricks. Its owner was former Atlanta mayor and Confederate captain James English. The factory used forced labor, a post-Civil War system in which people – mostly black – were arrested for trivial reasons or often for minor crimes and then forced to work in slave-like conditions.
Former Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter and writer Doug Blackmon wrote about the site in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Slavery by Another Name.
“Thousands of men and some women came through that place and lived there in horrific circumstances, conditions that we find hard to imagine today,” Blackmon said. “Especially the idea that they were there officially as a government action and not just for commercial reasons.”
The planned renovation of the site includes a memorial to the victims and dead of the brickworks as well as a much-needed green space for the community in the midst of the industrial facilities.
The $2 million from the EPA will speed up the work. McCabe said the bipartisan infrastructure bill has made it easier for the EPA to pump more money into existing programs like the Brownfield program, which have long waiting lists.
“The great thing about the Brownfields program is that there are thousands of sites across the country that are ready or nearly ready and all they need is funding,” McCabe said.
These sites can include large industrial facilities such as the Chattahoochee Brick Co. or smaller ones such as laundromats, which often leave behind legacy waste.
According to Atlanta city officials, a contractor has already been selected and it will take about 18 months for equipment to arrive on site to clean up the site.
Rosario Hernandez (green shirt, far right) and visitors to the historic Westside Gardens on English Avenue. (Marisa Mecke/WABE News).
After visiting the Chattahoochee Brick Company, the EPA headed to English Avenue to tour the Historic Westside Gardens.
Volunteers and staff from Historic Westside Gardens prepared the garden for a market that takes place every Friday.
Rosario Hernandez stood shoulder to shoulder with her team – gardeners in green T-shirts with the Historic Westside Gardens logo. She said this garden on English Avenue is not her only location, and with a mobile market, gardening projects at senior centers, other gardens and farms, and composting programs, Historic Westside Gardens is a bustling network.
What Hernandez didn’t know was that the EPA wasn’t just visiting to see an urban garden—they were here to celebrate.
“Our Office of Land and Emergency Management gives out something they call the Citizen Excellence in Community Involvement Award,” McCabe said. “It’s a national award. I believe there’s only one given out each year.”
Hernandez not only grows fruits and vegetables – she also played a central role in the EPA’s efforts to clean up lead contamination from soils in western Atlanta.
McCabe said Hernandez served as a liaison between the EPA and the community, sharing information, answering questions and taking a strong stand for the health of her neighbors and environmental well-being.
Hernandez worked with an Emory researcher who found lead in her and other properties on English Avenue and in Vine City. She then brought a soil sample from her yard to the EPA at a local science fair.
“And the guy said, ‘Where did you get that?’ And I said, ‘It’s all over my yard, it’s all over the side, it’s all over the street,'” Hernandez said. “And he said, ‘That’s cinders, and that’s where the lead is coming from.'”
Lead poses a major health risk, especially for young children.
Therefore, the EPA began investigating the extent of the pollution and developed a cleanup strategy.
Hernandez was the first resident to allow the EPA to dig up her property and remove the lead.
“And I was convinced they would do the right thing … but the neighborhood didn’t. Because it’s the federal government and they believe you’re here to take everything,” she said.
She said it was really hard – she lost her garden and her daughter’s garden.
“The community is cleaner thanks to the work done,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez said it was initially difficult to get more neighbors on board with the EPA’s plan to remove lead from properties, a laborious process that requires digging up several feet of soil around people’s homes.
She said the EPA promised her her property would look even nicer than before, and they kept their promise. They did such a good job that other people asked if they could clean up their yards.
“You do things because you’re supposed to do them, that’s the right thing to do,” Hernandez said.
And that soil is important—it’s key to environmental health and the gardens she oversees—a network committed to improving access to healthy produce in West Atlanta.
