Cleanup funding stalled as contamination concerns grow at the encampment
MinnPost reporting by Maddie Robinson found lead concentrations as high as 646 parts per million in soil at St. Paul’s Randolph Avenue encampment, the city’s largest, where hundreds of people live without permanent shelter. Three samples collected in late September and sent to University of Minnesota biology researcher Emilie Snell-Rood showed 355 parts per million on a main pathway and 646 parts per million near the center, where some residents have lived for years. An outskirts sample did not show elevated lead. Some Randolph residents said they had no place else to go.
Snell-Rood said chronic exposure to any level above 200 parts per million is considered a health risk. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends removing soil from residential areas above 600 parts per million.
The Randolph Avenue site lies where the road meets Shepard Road near the Mississippi River, hemmed in by railroad tracks that still serve the industrial corridor. Minnesota Pollution Control Agency “no trespassing” signs warn of lead, arsenic and mercury in the soil, although many have been defaced with graffiti. The agency has tracked the contaminants for years.
The land is one of Minnesota’s permanent environmental priority sites and has been listed as a state superfund site since 1992, according to agency records. That designation makes it eligible for state-funded cleanup, but the site is not a federally designated Superfund site. The MPCA has included cleanup funding in budget requests, but state lawmakers turned them down in favor of higher-priority projects.
Ownership remains murky because the encampment has no specific boundaries. A 2022 MPCA assessment said at least part of the land is City of St. Paul parkland and public right-of-way, while adjacent portions belong to Xcel Energy and Union Pacific Railroad. From 1968 to 1989, a salvage-yard operator filled the area with soil mixed with asphalt, glass, wood and plastic to raise the ground and prevent flooding.
Charred automobile parts, construction debris and battery-casing fragments were found on the site as deep as 16 feet underground. MPCA testing done in the early 2010s identified lead and carcinogenic chemical hotspots. The city acquired the site through tax forfeiture. Under state law, polluters must pay for cleanup, but the state can use its remediation fund when a polluter will not cooperate or no longer exists.
Seven other St. Paul sites are on the state’s permanent-priority list, including the Pig’s Eye Landfill, which was home to the previous encampment. A 2016 EPA evaluation determined that the Randolph property, officially called the St. Paul Levee Site, needed short-term stabilization and cleanup. The site has since received little work beyond soil-sample collections and groundwater-monitoring wells. A 2022 assessment estimated that cleanup, including excavation of tainted soil, would cost about $4 million, Ruiter said.
Snell-Rood co-leads a laboratory studying how urban contaminants move through the Twin Cities. She 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.
Health risks vary with a person’s age, how lead is absorbed and the length of exposure, Snell-Rood said. Long-term exposure can cause the body to confuse lead with calcium and store it in bones, potentially leading to serious problems with cognition, executive function, and the cardiovascular and nervous systems.
She said lead is particularly harmful to pregnant women because it can enter the bloodstream and reach a fetus, increasing the likelihood of miscarriage, premature birth and developmental complications. Vanessa Rojas, a mutual aid worker who volunteers almost every day at the Randolph encampment, said she knew of six pregnant women living there.
Rojas, who has visited the encampment for about a year and is co-founding a nonprofit focused on homeless outreach, estimated that about 50 residents lived at Randolph before St. Paul officials cleared the Pig’s Eye encampment in early August. Many people forced out of that site moved to Randolph, bringing the population to more than 400, Rojas said.
St. Paul has offered more conservative estimates of about 150 to 200 residents at any given time. In an Oct. 23 email, city spokesperson Matt Wagenius said the onsite outreach team was “tracking work” involving about 330 residents. Rojas said newcomers bringing belongings and pitching tents kicked up dirt and exposed deeper soil, leading residents to voice more health-related concerns.
Dan Campbell, known as “Luigi,” has lived at Randolph on and off for about 15 years. Rojas and other volunteers said his familiarity with the area earned him respect among residents. Campbell needs back surgery and a hip replacement, but 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 has lived at the encampment on and off for 10 years. She recalled several instances of vomiting after lying on the ground and said she thinks the soil could be responsible. Weber expressed deep distrust of city and state officials and said they had 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,” she said.
St. Paul and Ramsey County officials responded by pointing to the posted warning signs and regular outreach work, and have been working through how and when to rehouse people living at the encampment as health concerns mount. Ramsey County spokesperson Casper Hill said the county knows about the pollution, has implemented safety protocols for staff working onsite and is focused on connecting residents with benefits, services and other resources intended to improve their wellbeing and help them move into shelter and housing.
Wagenius said city outreach staff are onsite “nearly every day,” distributing water, food and other basic necessities along with health supplies such as drug-testing strips and wound-care kits. Teams also help residents get approval for food and cash assistance programs, such as SNAP, perform housing assessments and assist with clearing warrants.
City outreach workers are encouraged to wear face masks and disposable shoe coverings because of the soil, Wagenius said. “The contamination on this land is a main reason we urged people to use shelter space rather than move to this location,” he said. He also said the MPCA posted warning signs around the site before the encampment formed.
Records indicate that people lived at Randolph for years before the recent population increase. A 2014 Minnesota Department of Health assessment sent to an MPCA hydrogeologist noted a large tent during a site visit in late May. “… 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. St. Paul declined to comment when asked when the city became aware of people living there.
Ruiter said the site has no buildings or drinking-water sources and has signs warning people to stay off the contaminated property. “If followed, this reduces the risk at the site,” Ruiter said. The MPCA prioritizes remediation projects according to risks to human health and the environment.
The state’s remediation fund has expanded but remains limited. The MPCA spent just over $59 million on remediation projects in 2022, more than $111 million in 2024, and roughly $164 million is included in the enacted budget for 2027. Other, smaller funds are also used for land cleanup.
Agencies can seek additional cleanup money through legislative bonding bills. In 2024, the MPCA requested $7 million to finalize plans to “excavate, stabilize, and treat” most of the soil at Randolph. Cleanup would have begun in 2025 and continued through 2028, but the funding did not become part of Gov. Tim Walz’s recommended budget. Walz’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Sen. Sandra Pappas, a DFL-St. Paul legislator who chairs the Legislature’s Capital Investment Committee and whose district includes the encampment, said she was unaware before the Pig’s Eye closure that people were living at Randolph or that the soil was contaminated. Pappas said legislators often learn of local problems through advocates, but the city did not make the case for remediation funding.
“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.” St. Paul declined to comment when asked whether it had requested cleanup funding or advocated for an encampment cleanup.
On Oct. 21, the St. Paul City Council unanimously passed a resolution establishing a 60-day pause on encampment closures. The measure calls for an onsite navigation tent to assist residents, a temporary indoor shelter during the winter months and a separate permanent indoor shelter. Dozens of people attended the meeting to advocate for a longer pause.
Councilmember Saura Jost called the 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.”