Durham officials, consultants provide update on lead contamination in city parks

DURHAM, N.C. (WTVD) -- Durham city officials provided an update Monday night after analysis of the soil at several city parks showed elevated levels of lead and other toxins. Those findings -- which were first found in a report from a Duke researcher in 2022 -- had led to the closure of five city parks while additional testing takes place: East End Park, East Durham Park, Northgate Park, Lyon Park, and Walltown Park.

Monday's community gathering was standing room only at the Walltown Recreation Center -- just a few feet from one of the parks that have been found to have elevated lead levels. Though the gathering was an opportunity for the city to provide an update -- and what's still to come testing-wise -- it became a rapid-fire back-and-forth as residents peppered officials with questions, and many shared concerns about how the city arrived at this point.

"It's a shame for me to come back here and see that it took 76 years for somebody to discover that these parks were contaminated," said Thomas Long, a longtime resident of Walltown.

Long, 78, was born and raised in Walltown and said he's a cancer survivor. He said he now has serious questions about how the soil he grew up playing in may have affected his health later on.

"I've talked to several of my friends who stayed on my block. All of them had cancer. I had cancer. My brother got cancer," he said.

Other locals, such as longtime Durham resident Waldo Fenner, claimed it took changes to the city's demographics for Durham to notice the issue.

"You didn't even do anything about it until Walltown started to change," Fenner said.

ABC11 spoke with Durham city councilmember DeDreana Freeman, the only member in attendance at Monday's meeting, to ask about the public's health concerns and allegations the city was negligent.

Freeman said if there were serious issues with lead poisoning, that would show up in bloodwork through the years, and so far it hasn't.

"If there were elevated lead levels for children in our community 30 years ago, 20 years ago, or 10 years ago, that would show up in our data," she said.

Freeman said there will be more opportunities for a reckoning on what the city owes, but Monday's event was about seeing where things stand. Still, for residents such as Long, there's a lot of work to be done to restore trust.

"Until somebody come and address these issues, with someone, they live in a community and try to make this stuff right," Long said.

Monday's update included in-depth results from just one of the five contaminated parks, East Durham Park.

City officials said they hope data gathering at the other four sites would conclude by the end of 2025, but that it could take longer.

Then, the NC Department of Environmental Quality would need to take that data and publish its reports and recommendations, meaning the cost and timeline for fixing the contamination and reopening the five parks is still unclear.