Found: A Buyer

Worried residents of Times Beach, Mo., elbowed their way into the jammed courtyard of a Holiday Inn in nearby Eureka. They pressed against the locked glass doors of a large meeting room, their intense faces showing the strain of waiting in vain for years for state and federal officials to decide what to do about the potentially lethal dioxin that had poisoned their town. Over a loudspeaker came the voice of EPA Administrator Anne Burford. The Federal Government, she told reporters inside the room, would spend up to $33 million to buy all the houses and businesses of any or all of the 2,000 residents willing to move out of the 1-sq. mi. town along the Meramec River. With that announcement, the embattled Burford headed West for a speaking tour, leaving behind only the barest outlines of the first federal purchase of a polluted city in U.S. history.*

The precise details of how the buy-out will work remained to be determined. But the proposal was greeted by townspeople with vast relief, mixed with concerned questions about how much their homes and property would fetch from the U.S. and cynicism about the announcement's timing.

Only last November, just before residents Senator John Danforth barely beat back a challenge for his Missouri seat, EPA had dispatched a reassuring news release to the state, claiming that it had found a "promising" new way to detoxify dioxin, the chemical that a decade ago had been mixed with oil and spread on roads and the floors of horse stables in and near Times Beach. Now, with the EPA embroiled in a furor over whether it was truly committed to cleaning up the nation's toxic dumps, Burford made her offer. Said Laine Juniper, a leader of the town's drive to get federal help: "We can smell a political deal as easily as someone in Washington." Added Virgie Hance, a 25-year resident: "EPA may be looking for some good public relations. They've been in a lot of hot water."

EPA officials in Washington explained that no action had been possible until tests taken after a December flood could be confirmed. The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta only the week before had completed important quality-control checks on the EPA's postflood tests. The verified results showed that the dioxin level still ran as high as 300 parts per billion under the town's roads. The Atlanta center rates any level above one part per billion as posing a serious risk to health. A C.D.C. team in Atlanta worked through the weekend on the test results. On Monday Burford made the decision to use so-called Superfund money to buy out the town and informed the White House, which approved the idea. On Tuesday morning she flew to Missouri.

The deal will require a 10% matching grant of $3 million from the state of Missouri, forming a total fund of $36 million. At least 90% of the 800 families in the closely knit rural community are expected to move out of the town, which already is largely boarded up and empty because of the flood damage. "Most people here don't have much choice," says former Times Beach Mayor Charles Yarbro. But many insist they will go permanently only if they get what they consider a fair price for their property. And some, no matter how attractive the federal buyout money, still want to stay, the health dangers notwithstanding. "The damn dioxin doesn't bother me as much as the river," insists Michael Keeler, 42, a lifetime resident who owns a four-bedroom ranch house. Says Gerald Johnson, 51: "If we are forced out, then we're forced out. But we will not volunteer to leave our home." Wayde Dake, 54, who owns an auto repair business now doing poorly, takes a fatalistic view. "I've been living here for 21 years and I'm not ill yet. And when you get to be 54, how much longer can you expect to live anyway?"

Those who do plan to move admit to mixed feelings. "I am the type of person that establishes roots," says Hance, who has a daughter at home and two married children living within a few blocks. "When we go on a two-week vacation, I get homesick." And those who have left cannot easily forget what they went through. "I worry still about illness that may come up later from the dioxin and whether my kids will be able to have kids," says Keith Young, 29, who already has started life anew 25 miles south in Ware, Mo. But he feels that one indignity is behind him. "Before, some kids didn't want to touch our kids if they found out we were from Times Beach. Some people didn't even want to touch our money."

* The 1978 decision to relocate residents of New York's contaminated Love Canal area, at a cost of $15 million, was initially funded by that state. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.