The EPA Doesn’t Typically Retest Homes in the Country’s Largest Residential Lead Superfund Site. So We Did.

Flatwater Free Press reporters Chris Bowling, pictured, and Leah Keinama and ProPublica reporter Cassandra Garibay led the collection of soil samples to test 620 homes in Omaha for lead contamination. Lily Smith/Flatwater Free Press 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.