16 years after buying a slice of paradise, Columbia Heights family learns home is on a toxic site

When the Sterling family bought their home in Columbia Heights in 2008 they figured they had a little bit of paradise.

They had a little pond in the backyard where the deer grazed with an expansive view of Columbia Mountain. The lot was big enough to where they had planned to put in rental cabins for extra income.

But what Luke and Leslie Sterling didn’t know up until a few weeks ago was that the soil in their yard was contaminated with dioxin, a known carcinogen and what the Environmental Protection Agency calls a persistent organic pollutant, meaning it takes a long time to break down once in the environment. Tests done by an EPA contractor in October 2023 show that the Sterlings have levels of dioxins/furans (furans are another toxic substance) at about 111 nanograms/kilogram in the soil.