After Kacy Loyd and her family moved into their home in 2022, they were surprised to find environmental consultants at their door.
“They showed up one day for testing, and we let them know who the new owner was,” Loyd said.
She said she knew she moved near the Valley Pike Superfund site in Riverside which has contamination. But what exactly the concern is, she said she can’t really spell out.
“We have our amazing water, our aquifer. We don't want to ruin that. So I know that's the worry here, that it could somehow contaminate our water also," she said. "What those VOCs really are and those big long names you can look up in Google, but I don't really know what they do to you.”
Those VOCs — volatile organic compounds — are what landed Valley Pike on the U.S. EPA’s National Priorities List – also known as Superfund sites – in 2016. Soon, the U.S. EPA will share recent groundwater sampling results taken there. These results may identify more homes and businesses eligible for free environmental testing and in need of remediation.
With that, the local, state and federal effort to inform neighbors of their potential exposure continues.
“It can travel up through the soil and then get into those homes and businesses through cracks in the foundation, then that's where we would get concerned where people are breathing this stuff in and not even knowing about it.”
Decades of contamination from manufacturing
The federal Superfund program cleans up some of the nation's most contaminated land. The EPA says the Valley Pike site was polluted by Mullins Rubber Products after decades of using certain VOCs as degreasers in manufacturing. The ones it used,called PCE and TCE, were widespread in the 20th century. The company didn’t respond to WYSO’s request for comment.
In 2024, the EPA passed rules to phase out PCE and TCE within 10 years and one year, respectively, because they're hard to control and known to pollute the land, water and air.
The chemicals travel as vapors into soil and groundwater, said Matt Tyler, director of environmental health for Public Health — Dayton & Montgomery County. And from there, end up in people’s homes, where it can build up over time.
“It can travel up through the soil and then get into those homes and businesses through cracks in the foundation, then that's where we would get concerned where people are breathing this stuff in and not even knowing about it,” Tyler said.
That exposure can be dangerous for human health.
“They're just generally carcinogens. And anytime they're ingested or get on or in the body, they can start to produce different types of health effects such as headaches, dizziness, nausea. In high enough doses, they can start causing organ damage,” Tyler added.
Valley Pike is being monitored for these compounds and tested to identify clean-up plans. Mullins Rubber is responsible for paying for remediation and removal costs.
500 homes at risk, more could be identified
In 2016, the EPA identified about 500 homes at risk and eligible for free testing by creating boundaries on a map, but those boundaries haven’t been updated since then.
The company’s paid to install vapor intrusion mitigation systems in 95 homes. This system vents the vapors outdoors. Loyd’s home has one of those systems; the contractors have told her the levels in her home are good and the system’s working like it should.
The U.S. EPA wants to make sure neighbors know these resources might also be available to them soon.
Lauren Bumba is the remedial project manager for Valley Pike and works with the U.S. EPA. She said at an April community meeting that she’s currently reviewing results from three recent rounds of groundwater sampling.
“The goal is to understand the groundwater and the source of those vapors a little bit better,” Bumba said. “We have the boundary of the vapor intrusion study area, and now we're kind of trying to backtrack to develop some plume maps with the wells that were installed last year.”
The plume maps are used to identify the testing boundaries. In an email, an EPA spokesperson wrote “boundaries may change based on future sampling information.”
That could mean more homes and businesses are eligible for free testing through these results.
Some residents ‘receptive,’ others ‘skeptical’ of testing
That information was shared at the Behr, Valleycrest and Valley Pike Community Advisory Group meeting in April.
Only one Riverside resident attended.
Trying to get buy-in from affected Riverside residents has been difficult, according to Jerry Bowling, president of the Community Advisory Group. He lives in the McCook Field neighborhood, next to another Superfund site called Behr.
The group goes door to door near these sites to inform people about the history of the sites, the contamination, and other resources like the meetings, Bowling said
“Some people are very receptive," he said. "Others are skeptical. Either they don't fully understand the issue, which we try to inform them and educate them as much as we can, or they just have either distrust of the government. And they really don't want somebody on their property or in their home.”
Officials from Public Health — Dayton & Montgomery County, Ohio Department of Health, City of Dayton, and the U.S. and Ohio EPA join the group’s meetings to provide updates on the three Dayton area Superfund sites.
When Bowling speaks with neighbors, he explains that he has a mitigation system installed too.
“I explain that process and I encourage them (that) the best thing that they can do is to have their home tested,” Bowling said. “That's the one thing, the contamination is there, but they have the power to have their home tested.”
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Many of the 500 homes identified as at risk for contamination are in Loyd’s neighborhood, Valley Street Plat. But people here don’t often talk about Valley Pike and results from the EPA, Loyd said. She said, like herself, others likely don’t have the time.
“You've got a lot of older people that have lived here forever. You've got a lot of families. There's a lot of rentals in this neighborhood,” she said.
Loyd said the updated results shouldn’t affect her family too much since she has a system installed, but these new results could change things for her neighbors.
“Unfortunately, it would just include more people. And maybe more people will get the systems,” she said.
Loyd said if her house requires the mitigation system, others around her likely do too. She said neighbors should request testing, so they’ll know if they're exposed.
Upcoming results will be made available on the EPA's Valley Pike VOCs website.
