Lead Contamination Is Still a Problem in Omaha. Why Is the City Cleaning Up Some Yards and Not Others?

ProPublica and the Flatwater Free Press have found a troubling inconsistency in Omaha's lead remediation effort: decades into cleanup following a century of smelter pollution, the EPA and city are applying their rules unevenly. The investigation discovered that yards exceeding the EPA's four-hundred parts-per-million cleanup threshold receive vastly different treatment. One resident whose soil tested high qualified for full-yard retesting because a shed had been demolished—potentially disturbing the soil. A neighbor with similar contamination was denied because she'd done no recent construction. Per ProPublica's testing, some homes where children have tested positive for lead in their blood were never retested or deemed ineligible for cleanup. The EPA says remediation decisions hinge on site changes, but the pattern across Omaha suggests the rules are applied unevenly, leaving families in similar circumstances with unequal protection.

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