“EPA Administrator Michael Regan, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Biden Administration are taking important steps forward to help the people in my Congressional District, who live in Kashmere Garden, 5th Ward and Northeast areas of Houston and Harris County that comprise the 18th Congressional District. The announcement today is going to change lives by focusing needed resources on a problem that has gone too long without a remedy. Over the years I have been holding discussions and meeting cancer victims and listening to the stories of families who lost loved ones to cancer and other diseases over generations. We are desperate for relief. I have been disappointed by the unwillingness of previous Administrations to act to protect residents. Biden Administration has changed that by taking action.

Washington, DC - Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, a senior Member of the House Committees on Homeland Security and the Judiciary, released this statement following reports of another cancer cluster involving children discovered in the Kashmere Gardens area

“There have been critical, tangible health consequences to the residents who live in cancer clusters discovered in the 5th Ward and Kashmere Gardens areas of Houston. In an April 2019 community meeting, which prompted the cancer cluster reports by the DSHS, I heard stories that were stark in their nature, compelling in the accounts of illness and death and for this reason, I demanded immediate action. Speaker after speaker at this community meeting in April 2019 spoke of the existence of the cancer, either in themselves or in their relatives. It was startling. One participant spoke of having a vegetable garden and concerns about whether it was safe to eat the food grown. Another told of seeing the runoff that would fill ditches with an oily residue after a heavy rain and the smell of creosote near where they lived. I walked Lavender and Lily streets and engaged with residents who had thyroid cancer or lung cancers in their households

“Through a major community meeting I held on this issue in 2019, I secured through the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) an urgently needed study on the incidences of cancer clusters, as a function of the operations of the Northeast Railroad Yard operated by Union Pacific.

As a senior member of the House Committee on Homeland Security and a representative of Texas, I know that creosote contamination is a health and safety issue for my constituents. Creosote is listed as a hazardous substance by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has been found in the groundwater of the Kashmere Gardens community in Houston, Texas. This is due to years of wood treatments that contained Creosote by the Northeast Railroad Yard. The wood treatments in question ceased 12 years before Union Pacific acquired the Northeast Railroad Yard and the rail yard was closed in 1996. However, Union Pacific has since been required to conduct tests on the toxicity of the groundwater, monitor the chemical plume, and extract creosote through wells drilled on the property and in the surrounding area. Many years ago, “[t]he Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and Union Pacific had worked to establish an environmental management zone where it would use “monitored natural attenuation” to address the contamination. This means their primary method of treatment is to let the contamination dissolve in the ground. There were two purposes of my April 2019 meeting; first, it was to learn more about the process because creosote is known to emit fumes and pass-through ditches when it rains or floods, contaminating the groundwater; and, concomitantly, it was to allay fears, and provide the community with facts about the ongoing efforts to address the creosote contamination and its potential impacts on health and safety.

“In August 2019, at the request of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (“TCEQ”), and pursuant to our meeting, the Environmental Surveillance and Toxicology Branch (“ESTB”) and the Texas Cancer Registry, the DSHS issued a report which examined the occurrence of cancer in Houston. “The study analyzed a half-dozen types of adults referencing cancers in the Texas Cancer Registry. It concluded that “the numbers of esophagus, lung and bronchus and larynx cancers were statistically significantly greater than is expected based on cancer rates in Texas [writ large]. A follow up study published in January 2020 on the incidence of cancers in the Kashmere Gardens area of 5th Ward revealed a higher incidence of liver cancers. The DSHS’s work was incomplete. The city of Houston demanded a study of children and cancer in the Kashmere Gardens area, that the Texas Department of State Health Services released in January 2021 revealed that the number of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) cases was greater than expected based on cancer rates in Texas. It is clear that these reports confirmed the fears of constituents in my district, as expressed at my April 2019 and January 2020 town hall meetings.

“I remain concerned about the existence of cancer clusters in Houston’s Fifth Ward. The safety and well-being of the Kashmere Gardens Community and surrounding areas is my overriding concern. My advocacy on this issue and on behalf of those identified in the city is longstanding and unwavering, and I will not relent until the community and its citizens are under the protection of a Federal Superfund designation.”