While the legal wrangling continued, new residents were being assigned to Washington Park. Before she moved in last summer, young mother Kenisha Tyson said she asked a housing authority manager whether the place was still contaminated. If she had told me yes, I would have asked for something else. They were cleaning the lead up out of the soil. By then, she had no option but to stay.
Officials say race played no role in the decision to build it next to the foundry.
And back then, Ms. Person said, residents didn't mind. We were grateful, not knowing. In the 1980s, residents knew that the EPA had found some kind of lead problem. By 1990, the agency had told residents that their neighborhood was now a Superfund cleanup site. But residents who heard the technical explanations say they never fully understood what it meant until they met in 1992 to discuss planting a community garden.