Dangerous levels of lead and other toxins taint soil at Minnesota homeless encampment

Randolph Avenue meets Shepard Road in St. Paul near the banks of the Mississippi River, hemmed in by railroad tracks still serving the industrial corridor. Beyond the intersection, nearing the river, a winding network of dirt paths and pitched tents have become a makeshift neighborhood – St. Paul’s largest encampment – for hundreds of people without permanent shelter.

Posted around the site are Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) “no trespassing” signs, many of them defaced by graffiti, warning of a stew of toxins in the soil, including lead, arsenic and mercury. The levels are so high, the signs say, that the area is listed as one of Minnesota’s permanent environmental priority sites.

The MPCA has tracked the toxins for years and has labeled the area that is now home to the encampment as a state superfund site , meaning it is eligible for state-funded cleanup. (The site is not a federally-designated Superfund Site .) But while the agency has included cleanup funds in its budget requests, they’ve been turned down by state lawmakers in favor of higher-priority projects.

The site has become a perfect storm – land never intended for human habitation has become a home for people who say they have no place else to go. And as St. Paul and Ramsey County authorities wrestle with how and when to rehouse the homeless individuals who live there, the health impacts mount.

Ownership of the land is murky, especially given that the encampment has no specific boundaries. An MPCA assessment from 2022 shows that at least part of the land is City of St. Paul parkland and public right-of-way. Adjacent portions are owned by Xcel Energy and Union Pacific Railroad.

The same assessment reports that from 1968-1989, the area was an automobile salvage yard whose operator filled the land with soil mixed with materials like asphalt, glass, wood and plastic in order to raise the ground level to prevent flooding.

Along with charred automobile parts, construction debris and battery casing fragments found on the site as deep as 16 feet underground, MPCA testing done in the early 2010s identified lead and carcinogenic chemical hotspots.

MinnPost gathered three soil samples at the Randolph encampment in late September and sent them to University of Minnesota biology researcher Emilie Snell-Rood, who co-leads a lab studying how urban contaminants move through the Twin Cities.

Of the three samples, one collected on the outskirts of the encampment did not show elevated lead levels and another, collected on a main pathway, showed lead levels at 355 parts per million (ppm). Chronic exposure to any level above 200 ppm is considered a health risk, Snell-Rood said.

The third sample, taken near the center of the encampment where some residents have lived for years, showed lead levels of 646 ppm, well over triple the safety threshold. At anything above 600 ppm, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommends the removal of soil from residential areas.

Snell-Rood said she would be “very concerned” for people with daily interactions with the soil. “If there is exposed soil and people are walking on it and it gets dusty and they inhale that, or they’re sitting on the ground and touching it, and it gets on their hands or it gets in their mouth, those would be the exposure routes I would worry about,” she said.

The health risks posed by lead depend on factors such as a person’s age, how the lead is absorbed and how long a person is exposed. Snell-Rood said with long-term exposure, the human body can confuse lead with calcium and store it in the bones. This can lead to multiple serious issues with cognition, executive function, the cardiovascular and nervous systems and more.

Lead is particularly harmful to pregnant women, as it can enter the bloodstream and reach the fetus, increasing the likelihood for miscarriage, premature birth and developmental complications. Vanessa Rojas, a mutual aid worker who volunteers almost every day at the Randolph encampment, said she knows of six pregnant women currently living at the site.

Rojas, who has been visiting the encampment for about a year and is currently co-founding a nonprofit focused on homeless outreach, estimates about 50 residents were living at Randolph before St. Paul officials cleared the Pig’s Eye encampment in early August. Many of the people forced out moved to Randolph, bringing the population to over 400 people, Rojas said.

St. Paul has offered more conservative estimates of about 150 to 200 residents at any given time, but city spokesperson Matt Wagenius said in an email to MinnPost on Oct. 23 that the onsite city outreach team is “tracking work” with about 330 residents.

Following the clearing of Pig’s Eye, the influx of newcomers carting their belongings and pitching tents kicked up dirt and brought deeper soils to the surface, Rojas said, leading residents to voice more health-related concerns.

Dan Campbell has lived at Randolph on and off for about 15 years. Known as “Luigi,” he is more familiar with the area than anybody, Rojas and other volunteers said, and has earned the respect of fellow residents.

Campbell needs back surgery and a hip replacement, but he blames the polluted land for contributing to his worsening respiratory system, swollen legs and feet injured by debris and irritants.

“My dog’s constantly licking their feet,” Campbell said. “Got something going on with them because of the soil, too.”

Tiffany Weber, another resident, has lived at the Randolph encampment on and off for 10 years. She told MinnPost she recalls several instances of vomiting after lying on the ground – a symptom she thinks could have to do with the soil health.

She expressed deep distrust of city and state officials, whom she said have turned a blind eye to people living on the polluted land while doing little to mitigate the environmental dangers.

“They know that it’s gonna make us sick or perhaps kill us,” Weber said.

St. Paul and Ramsey County officials pushed back, pointing out that MPCA’s warning signs are posted throughout the area and outreach workers have been onsite regularly connecting residents with available resources.

When asked about the contamination, Ramsey County spokesperson Casper Hill said via email the county knows about the pollution and has “implemented safety protocols for staff working onsite related to concerns about soil contamination,” as well as “focused on connecting encampment residents to benefits, services, and other resources that can improve their wellbeing and help get them out of the encampment and into shelter and housing.”

Wagenius said in an email to MinnPost that city outreach staff are onsite “nearly every day” distributing water, food and other basic necessities, as well as health supplies like drug testing strips and wound care kits. He added the onsite teams also help residents get approved for food and cash assistance programs, like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), perform housing assessments and assist with clearing warrants.

City outreach staff are encouraged to wear protective gear such as face masks and disposable shoe coverings when at Randolph due to the soil conditions, Wagenius said.

“The contamination on this land is a main reason we urged people to use shelter space rather than move to this location,” the email said. “The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency posted warning signs around the site before the encampment formed.”

Though numbers have swelled in recent months, evidence shows people have lived at Randolph for years. A 2014 Minnesota Department of Health health assessment sent to an MPCA hydrogeologist noted that a large tent was set up on the property during a site visit in late May of that year.

“… It is possible that a person(s) may be living there rather than just camping for the night. There was no signage to alert people to the contamination, nor was there signage or fencing to encourage people to stay off of the property,” the 2014 letter stated.

The City of St. Paul declined to comment further when asked when they became aware of people living at the site.

The site has been listed as a state superfund site since 1992 , according to MPCA records, following its acquisition by the City of St. Paul through tax forfeiture. Under state law, polluters are required to pay for cleanup. But when, as at Randolph, the polluter is unwilling to cooperate or no longer exists, the state has access to a “remediation fund” to cover cleanup costs. Seven other St. Paul sites are on the same “permanent priority” list, including the Pig’s Eye Landfill which was home to the previous encampment.

In 2016, an EPA evaluation found that the Randolph site, officially called “St. Paul Levee Site,” needed short-term stabilization and cleanup. But the site has largely gone untouched since then aside from soil sample collections and the installation of groundwater monitoring wells. A 2022 assessment estimated that cleanup, including excavating the tainted soil, would cost about $4 million, Ruiter said.

The state’s remediation fund is sizable but not unlimited: In 2022, the MPCA spent just over $59 million on remediation projects, according to the agency’s enacted biennial budget . This jumped to over $111 million in 2024, and the enacted budget for 2027 is roughly $164 million. Other, smaller funds also are used for various land cleanup efforts. Ruiter said that MPCA prioritizes projects based on their risk to human health and the environment.

“The site at Shepard and Randolph does not have buildings or drinking water sources and has signage to warn people to stay off the property due to contamination. If followed, this reduces the risk at the site,” Ruiter said.

In addition to the remediation fund, agencies like MPCA can request additional dollars through the Legislature’s bonding bills. In 2024, the MPCA requested $7 million to finalize plans to “excavate, stabilize, and treat” the majority of the soil at the site. Cleanup for the Randolph encampment would have begun in 2025 and continued through 2028, but the funds did not become part of Gov. Tim Walz’s recommended budget.

Walz’s office did not respond in time to MinnPost’s request for comment.

Sen. Sandra Pappas (DFL-St. Paul), who chairs the Legislature’s Capital Investment Committee and whose district includes the encampment area, said that prior to the closure of the Pig’s Eye encampment, she was not aware people were living at Randolph Ave., nor of its soil conditions.

Oftentimes, she said, legislators learn of issues through advocates at the local level. City leaders, for example, might make a case to their legislators for remediation funding or cleanup funding included in the MPCA’s budget. Then, the legislators might take that request into budgetary discussions and dealings. In the case of the Randolph Ave. site, that didn’t happen, Pappas said.

“I certainly haven’t heard from them that, ‘We need help with this. Can you advocate to put money in the remediation fund?’” Pappas said. “It’s been kind of a neglected property.”

The City of St. Paul declined to comment when asked if they had requested funding or advocated for an encampment cleanup.

On Oct. 21, with winter fast approaching, the St. Paul City Council took up the question of how the city should respond to encampments. They unanimously passed a resolution to establish a 60-day pause on encampment closures and ensure a “navigation tent” onsite to assist residents. The resolution also established plans for a temporary, indoor shelter to operate during the winter months and a separate indoor, permanent shelter.

Dozens of people showed up to the Council meeting to advocate for a longer pause. Councilmember Saura Jost called the Council’s resolution a first step.

“We currently have hundreds of residents that are spending their nights sleeping on contaminated ground, and we know that our first responders’ time is also occupied with calls to that same site,” Jost said. “But our city’s encampment clearing in August plainly did not produce the results that anyone was hoping to see … The magnitude of this task does not excuse us from the responsibility of trying to solve it.”

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This story was originally published by MinnPost and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.