Word: southbend
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...scene in Harris County's Southbend subdivision is eerie, like something out of a doomsday movie. Once busy streets with names like South Autumn Drive and South Valley Lane are largely still and deserted. Houses are boarded up. There are few signs of life in this blue-collar neighborhood 18 miles south of downtown Houston, where 2,800 people once thrived...
...reason for the stillness is the neighborhood's proximity to something called the Brio Superfund site, a place that once housed two waste-disposal plants and now contains a witches' brew of toxic effluviums. Southbend's wells have been polluted by such chemicals as chloroform and xylene, while a black, oozing tar has bubbled upward into driveways and garages. Residents say air contaminants, such as trichloroethane, have been responsible for personal tragedies. Among them has been a rash of birth defects: in one four-month period, 11 deformed children were born; other children suffered serious heart and reproductive-organ problems...
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