Frisco Kids Play Within Feet of a Hazardous Waste Dump

This is a 23 second video shot on the corner of Eubanks and 5th Street  in Frisco earlier this month. This corner is the northeast border for the property owned by the Exide lead smelter.

When it begins, the camera is looking south toward the now shuttered smelter. In fact, at the 3-second mark, you actualy see the smelter's smokestacks betwen two trees for a brief moment. In front of those trees is the fenceline separating the smelter property from the public. Immediately behind those trees is a berm that marks where the smelter's active landfill is.

This "non-hazardous" landfill holds approximately 9 million pounds of lead-contaminated waste. Lead itself is dangerous, but Exide got caught illegally burying hazarous waste in this non-hazardous landfill. The company's remedy is to dig the hazardous waste up, "re-treat it" and then re-bury it in exactly the same landfill. All this is to be done at the edge of the smelter's property at this corner of Eubanks and 5th.

This is an aerial pic of the Exide active landfill operation at the corner of Eubanks and 5th Street. The line of the trees at the top right are the same ones you see in the video.

Besides this waste from production, Exide is now using the landfill to dispose of as much smelter demolition waste as possible. That makes it the most active spot on the smelter property at this point, with trucks full of waste coming and going besides the on-going "digging and "re-treatment" there.

And when Exide is finished stuffing all the lead-contaminated waste it can into this landfill, it hopes to leave it buried in Frisco forever.

Directly across the street from this illegal hazardous waste landfill is the "Play Ball" rec center for kids – a batting cage business. On nice days, you  can usually find the south-facing/smelter-facing metal garage door wide open to allow for air circulation for the kids taking practice inside.You can also find their sibings and peers playing on the front driveway, only about 50-100 feet away from the lip of that landfill berm.

When the wind is out of the south, as it often is from March to October, the Play Ball batting cages and the kids there are are directly downwind of the smelter and the landfill operation. A lead-in-air monitor operated by the the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is located on Eubanks. It's that skinny white pole in the middle of the frame at the 5-second mark. This monitor has repeatedly found concentrations of lead in the air higher than the EPA's new national lead in air standard – since the smelter closed.

So not only are these kids subject to being downwind of all of the smelter's demolition activity. They're also just across the street from the most heavily used part of the smelter now, with a much larger risk of getting contaminated.

Exide, the City of Frisco and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality all would have you believe that everything is hunky-dory at the lead-smelter site. Look, the smokestacks are coming down! But in reality, this site is still posing risks for Frisco children who are still playing right across the street.