Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-31-2025
Abstract
The Donna Reservoir and Canal System (Donna Lake) in Texas has been a persistent source of environmental contamination for over a century, exposing surrounding communities to dangerous levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Originally built for agricultural irrigation, the system became a recreational fishing site before PCB contamination was discovered during public health investigations in the 1990s. This study examines patterns of demographic vulnerability, evaluates remediation efforts by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and explores residents’ ongoing challenges related to toxic exposure. Using publicly available demographic data, EPA reports, and previous health assessments, the study analyzes variations in community characteristics by proximity to Donna Lake and reviews the effectiveness of interventions implemented to date. The results show that communities closer to the contamination site are predominantly low-income and Spanish-speaking, and that remediation efforts, although initiated, have been slow and insufficient to fully eliminate health risks. The residents continue to face gaps in risk communication and protection. The findings underscore the lasting impacts of historical contamination on vulnerable populations and highlight the urgent need for more effective, community-centered remediation strategies to address persistent environmental health disparities.
Recommended Citation
Kyne, Dean. 2025. "From Contamination to Consequence: Tracing Donna Lake’s Human Environmental History" Geographies 5, no. 2: 24. https://doi.org/10.3390/geographies5020024
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Publication Title
Geographies
DOI
10.3390/geographies5020024
Comments
© 2025 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).