"Black slushie stuff"

Is it just me or is it weird that this story feels like such a niche thing this week? 

Initially, the city said they consulted scientists who told them the material was not harmful. We later learned that the hazardous material was Radium 226.

According to the Center for Disease Control, long-term exposure to Radium 226 can cause a number of health problems such as cancer, amenia, fractured bones and cataracts.

Since that information has come out, around 1,000 neighbors living in the area have filed a federal lawsuit against the city. The lawsuit claims the city knew about the radiation problem for years and should have relocated nearby neighbors while they worked to remove the material.

Instead, residents tell me they let neighbors sit out and watch, unprotected, while crews dressed in hazmat suits removed the radioactive.

"If you see the stuff they bringing out of that ground, it just didn’t seem real,” Clyde Williams, who lives in the neighborhood, said. “It looked like black slushie stuff. And the thing to me – what I felt so bad about – they allowed us to walk to the fence where they were digging, but the people that were digging it up had on hazmat suits like spacemen. So why didn’t you run us away from this fence? Tell us it may be hazardous to our health?”

Residents say that since crews began the removal, the area has flooded. They’re worried about radiation traveling to other parts of the neighborhood through the water.

Yeah I'd be more worried about that last bit if I thought there was any chance of Sewerage and Water Board actually pumping flood waters out of Gert Town with any sort of efficiency.  Certainly they don't have the "full capacity" necessary to move any "black slushie stuff."

In any case nobody is paying attention because what with the disappearing coast, the high river, the dolphin-killing algae, and the 15 year oil spill,  thick black radioactive material is like the third or fourth biggest environmental story in the news at any given time.