Don't bother trying to find Times Beach on a map. The government closed the Meramec River community in the early 1980s because the toxic chemical dioxin permeated the town.

Leading the intense media focus on dioxin contamination in Missouri at the time was the Post-Dispatch.

For a decade before 1982, doctors and scientists tried to solve the mystery of why children fell ill and horses died at stables and horse farms in eastern Missouri. Bit by bit they traced the maladies to dioxin-contaminated waste oil that had been sprayed on dirt roads and the floors of horse arenas to control dust.


The Post-Dispatch reported incrementally on these developments. From January though mid-October of 1982, for instance, the paper carried 30 stories about dioxin. Then in late October, the Environmental Defense Fund made public a list of 14 confirmed and 41 suspected dioxin sites in Missouri.

The next day, the newspaper began its main front-page story this way: "Dioxin, believed to be the most potent cancer-causing agent made by man, is more prevalent in Missouri's soil and roads 'than probably anywhere else in the world,' a federal health official says."

A team of more than a dozen reporters produced 188 dioxin-related stories in the final 10 weeks of 1982. In the incestuous media world, television and radio followed the newspaper's reports on developments -- and the newspaper followed the developments reported by television and radio.
Two elements kept the public highly interested in the story:

* A readily identifiable villain responsible for much of the contamination.

* An entire hard-luck town faced an uncertain peril.

Government officials, painfully slow to act on dioxin problems in the 1970s, suddenly paid attention in the 1980s.

A charming rogue

At almost all of what would turn out to be dozens of dioxin sites in eastern Missouri, the waste hauler responsible for spraying dioxin-contaminated oil as a dust-suppressant was Russell Bliss, whom the Post-Dispatch tabbed the Johnny Appleseed of dioxin.

In a 48-page special section, "Dioxin: Quandary for the '80s," published in November 1983, the newspaper described Bliss as a roguish character with folksy charm and smooth sales skills. He made a living by buying and selling used crankcase oil, and added dust spraying as a sideline.

Bliss had picked up dioxin-contaminated waste sludge in 1971 from a manufacturer of hexachlorophene in southwestern Missouri. The since-defunct company, Northeastern Pharmaceutical and Chemical Co., insisted that Bliss was told the material he hauled away was hazardous. Bliss maintained that he thought the material was harmless.

His explanation was undercut by the economics of the waste-oil business at the time: Waste haulers had to pay for used waste oil that wasn't hazardous. If the waste was hazardous, the hauler was paid to carry it away. Northeastern had paid Bliss to take away its sludge.

Bliss mixed most of the six truckloads of the dioxin-tainted waste with used oil in a storage tank from which he drew on for spraying in the early 1970s.

Bliss was never held criminally liable in the dioxin cases. But in the summer of 1983 he was convicted of federal tax fraud for overstating his business expenses, and he served a year in prison.

A town abandoned

St. Louisans knew Times Beach best for its periodic floods and as a speed trap along Interstate 44. The area was populated in 1925 when the old St. Louis Times offered 20-by-100-foot summer resort lots along the Meramec with a six-month subscription to the newspaper. Over the years, the modest cottages and mobile homes became year-round homes; the 1980 census counted 2,041 residents.

For five summers in the 1970s, Times Beach had hired Bliss to spray its unpaved streets to control dust. The consequences of that spraying were announced Dec. 23, 1982, at the town's annual Christmas party in City Hall: Dioxin had been detected at unsafe levels in streets and yards throughout the town. Federal and state officials recommended that people stay out of Times Beach.

Townspeople were stunned. Many had just started to move back after being forced out for weeks by the flooding Meramec. The government offered temporary housing while officials tried to figure out what to do.

Two months later, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that the federal and state governments would spend $36 million to buy all homes and businesses in Times Beach. The last residents, George and Ida Lorene Klein, moved out in September 1986.

Over two years ending in 1997, building rubble and contaminated soil throughout the town were scooped up and burned in a temporary incinerator erected in the abandoned town. In all, 265,000 tons of soil from Times Beach and 26 other dioxin sites in eastern Missouri were incinerated, at a cost of $200 million.

In September 1999, the former Times Beach reopened as the 409-acre Route 66 State Park. It has a picnic area, visitor center and seven miles of hiking, biking and horseback riding trails.