HOUSTON – Soil samples were being collected by a private company in a community inside the Fifth Ward where residents have been claiming the earth is contaminated, resulting in illnesses including cancer.
“We’re out here doing a lot more than Union Pacific has ever done in the past,” said attorney Jason Gibson.
Gibson along with his partner Casey Gibson are representing more than 3,000 people who claim that they were impacted by operations inside the Union Pacific Railyard.
“More than half of those clients are people currently suffering from cancer or who have died from cancer or they are surviving loved ones”, said Casey Gibson.
Jason Gibson believes there is one obvious reason as to why this issue has dragged on.
“It’s a lower income neighborhood, it just hasn’t gotten the attention it needed,” said Gibson who added if a situation like this, “happened over in River Oaks, I don’t think you would have seen this go on for very long right? It would have been cleaned up, it would have been the end of it.”
The Whitmire administration is now evaluating a problem former Mayor Sylvester Turner failed to fully address according to officials. It is the reason why homeowners tell KPRC 2 Investigates they are skeptical.
“It’s been going on for so long, I want to trust the city but it’s so hard to trust anyone,” said LaTonya Payne, a homeowner since 2005 who not only has endured multiple battles with breast cancer but also lost her 13-year old son to Leukemia in 2021.
Gibson and his team had private drillers in the neighborhood on Monday extracting samples from the earth to see the level of potential contamination. It comes as the neighborhood is seeing new homes going up beside the rail yard.
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“Well, there is definitely property in this area that has been bought by developers that are in what we recognize to be the contamination zone. We’ve reached out to some of those developers to request access to their property to conduct some testing either because, people we represent formerly lived on those parcels and are suffering from cancer or died from cancer,” said Casey Gibson who also made it clear that there are developers “refusing to participate in the testing”.
Next week marks the end of a one-month evaluation period by Mayor John Whitmire and his team.
“We’re doing our due diligence. The worst thing you can do is fool people, the government saying they’ve got a solution when they really don’t,” said Whitmire to KPRC 2 Investigates last week.
The mayor also wants to hold Union Pacific accountable over the complex environmental problem he inherited, “Union Pacific needs to definitely be at the table and be held accountable, it was their facility. They created it,” said Whitmire.
A spokesperson for Union Pacific tells KPRC 2 Investigates, “Union Pacific’s goal is to listen, maintain transparency, and work collaboratively with the community while keeping safety at the forefront of our actions. As part of this, we are committed to a data-driven approach to identifying and addressing the concerns surrounding the former Houston Wood Preserving Works site, which Union Pacific inherited from Southern Pacific in 1997. We are currently working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to complete vapor testing and finalize additional soil testing in and around Fifth Ward. This additional testing will provide the data needed to make informed decisions about next steps.”
A meeting will take place on Tuesday evening, where an election will take place for members of a new community advisory group. Leaders of that group will be chosen by members of the community.