[Brownfields-CPEO] Lead contamination in Omaha, Nebraska

[Lenny Siegel <LSiegel@cpeo.org>]

The EPA Doesn’t Typically Retest Homes in the Country’s Largest Residential Lead Superfund Site. So We Did.The Flatwater Free Press and ProPublica independently tested hundreds of homes in eastern Omaha, Nebraska, and found toxic levels of lead in soil throughout — including in yards that the EPA remediated years ago. Here’s how we did it.


by Cassandra Garibay, ProPublica, and Chris Bowling, Leah Keinama, and Destiny Herbers, Flatwater Free Press
Propublica and Flatwater Free Press
August 4, 2026

Decades after the last plume of lead-laced smoke rose from a smelting plant in Omaha, Nebraska, the Flatwater Free Press and ProPublica found lead in concentrations that pose a threat to people’s health in soil throughout east Omaha.

Our investigation began more than two years ago, when Leah Keinama, who previously worked for a food security nonprofit, could not find up-to-date information about lead contamination for gardeners in Omaha. Keinama, now the director of civic journalism at the Nebraska Journalism Trust, and reporters at the Flatwater Free Press knew about the city’s refining history, so they teamed up to find out whether concerns about lead exposure were still warranted all these years later.

The Environmental Protection Agency declared a 27-square-mile area within the city a hazardous waste zone, known as a Superfund site, after the American Smelting and Refining Company closed in the 1990s. That prompted a lengthy period of testing and remediation. Today, unless Omaha residents pay for private testing, there aren’t many avenues to find out how much lead is in their soil if their property had been tested by the city and EPA in the past.

…

For the entire article, see
https://www.propublica.org/article/omaha-nebraska-lead-testing-superfund-methodology


—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)

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