EPA announces start for cleanup of Atlanta neighborhood contaminated with lead
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced the cleanup of Atlanta's Lindsay Street Park area in the English Avenue neighborhood had started.
The northwest Atlanta community is including in the EPA's work to clean up the Westside Lead Superfund Site.
Over the next three months, the EPA will have work crews excavating up to two feet of lead-contaminated soil, dispose of it off-site, then replace the contaminated soil with clean fill and topsoil. They'll also restore the landscaping.
On the city's end of things, Atlanta will replace the park's playground equipment before it reopens.
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The playground itself has been closed since 2022.
Channel 2 Action News covered in years past when the federal government started its efforts to clean up lead waste in the soil of several Atlanta neighborhoods, including Vine City and English Avenue.
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The EPA proposed adding the Westside Superfund site to the Superfund National Priorities List so resources could be assigned in the long-term for cleaning up the area in 2021. It made the list in 2022, according to the federal agency.
In 2023, $1 billion in funding was allocated to clean up nearly two dozen sites with lead contamination.
'This federal-state-local partnership between EPA, the Georgia Environmental Protection Division and the City of Atlanta will get children back on the playground and residents back to enjoying their park,' Administrator Kevin McOmber of EPA's Southeast Region said in a statement. 'We are proud to play a role in making Lindsay Street Park safe for children.'
According to the EPA, the park first opened in 2015 as the English Avenue community's first public park. It was built across six once-blighted lots with support from the community and several companies and organizations, but three years later, researchers found lead contamination, leading to the need for cleanup.
Now, the EPA says the work is underway.
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