The City of Houston recently announced plans to begin moving Fifth Ward residents away from a contaminated Union Pacific rail yard. But many residents are reluctant. It's the only home they've known.
PUBLISHED 1:08 PM CDT Jul. 25, 2023HOUSTON — Houstonian and community advocate Pamela Matthews has lived in this Fifth Ward/Kashmere Gardens neighborhood since 1972. She says uprooting would be devastating to her.
“The wooden blocks on the train tracks, they were treating them in this particular yard right here,” Matthews said. The City of Houston says Health Department and EPA soil and attic testing have linked creosote and cancer-causing dioxins to more than 100 homes sitting on a chemical plume around the rail yard. The lack of safe treatment of these toxins resulted in cancer clusters that have ravaged the long-standing Black and Latino neighborhood.
“What I want them to do is clean my neighborhood up,” Edwards said. “Tear my house down, bring me some dirt and buy me a new house.”
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