Menefee and Fifth Ward Residents Tell the EPA: Release the Health Report You Have Held for 396 Days
At a Monday press conference, Houston's congressman stood with Fifth Ward and Kashmere Gardens residents to demand the EPA publish a finished draft health risk assessment for the former Houston Wood Preserving Works - and open the 60-day public review residents were promised.
U.S. Rep. Christian Menefee joined community leaders and residents of Houston's Fifth Ward and Kashmere Gardens at a press conference Monday to press the Environmental Protection Agency to make public a completed draft health risk assessment for contamination near the former Houston Wood Preserving Works, the creosote site at the center of the neighborhoods' long cancer-cluster fight.
Menefee's office says the EPA has held the draft for about 396 days without providing a firm public release date or the promised public comment period. The congressman's earlier letter to the agency notes that the EPA entered a binding legal agreement in 2023 requiring a full investigation of the site, and that the final report residents were told to expect by late 2025 or early 2026 has still not come out.
Union Pacific, whose predecessor operated the rail yard, says it cooperated with EPA testing and submitted a risk assessment in October 2025 and a revised version in April 2026, and that it met the agency's deadlines. Releasing the draft would let residents evaluate the possible exposure risks through a formal 60-day public review.
For residents, Particle News reported, the wait is not abstract: families describe switching to raised garden beds and living with long-running worries about cancer clusters in the historically Black neighborhoods. What the assessment concludes could shape what happens next - agency action, cleanup steps, or relocation plans that residents and officials say are urgently needed.
