The Carolinas Challenged by Water Woes

By: Duane Craig

Nearly 100 homes in southwestern Cumberland County, N.C., with wells threatened by contamination, will be able to connect to a public water supply by spring 2013, according to this article. The county is installing a water line that will provide connections for the affected residents using a Clean Water Revolving Loan from the state.

The project has been five years in the making even though the contamination causing the problem has been known about for 20 years. Benzene leaking from tanks at a long-closed gas station is considered to be the culprit. Surprisingly, only 40 of the homeowners surveyed said they were in favor of hooking into city water supplies.

Delays in getting the project started ranged from disagreements with neighboring counties on providing the water, requests for federal money being declined, and voters turning down the project because it also included Gray’s Creek.

Nearby in South Carolina, a public water company is pressuring two large, local businesses to help fund a filtering system it now has to install to clean up contamination in its water system, according to this article.

Named in a $450 million lawsuit brought by Alligator Rural Water and Sewer are McLeod Farms and Mar Mac Wire. The utility company says it has evidence the two businesses are the sources of three chemicals polluting the water supplies near McBee. Two-thirds of the wells used by the McLeod peach farm are contaminated, according to the state’s environmental department. News reports are unclear about Mar Mac Wire’s contribution to the problems. The United States Geological Survey is tracking the contamination to determine where it’s originating and how long it’s been present. The report is expected to be completed sometime in 2013.

Yellowstone Crude Spill Sparks More Landowner Lawsuits

By: Duane Craig

Landowners in Eastern Montana have filed a lawsuit against Exxon Mobil Corp. for property damage from last year’s crude oil spill that contaminated the Yellowstone River. The landowners claim damage to their property and livestock from exposure to the oil, and also claim Exxon had ample opportunity to shut down the pipeline and prevent the spill altogether. Another lawsuit by a separate group of landowners is pending.

A section of the pipeline that was installed in 1991 had been scoured by flooding over the years which eventually caused it to fail and spill 1,500 barrels of crude oil, investigators surmised. Officials from one town had warned Exxon about the risks on several occasions. Still, the company continued flowing oil through the pipeline even when flooding was predicted, according to the suit. Other pipeline operators had shut down their lines under the same circumstances.

The spill contaminated about 70 miles of Yellowstone’s banks causing more damage to property than all other accidents in Montana during the past 10 years. You can get more details on the story here, and here.

Upstate New York Residents Question Environmental Quality of Legacy Site

By: Duane Craig

Regardless of what Watertown, N.Y. residents might want, the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation says it won’t be doing any more environmental testing at the former New York Air Brake site, according to this article.

Besides residents, public officials are also concerned about high cancer rates and other illnesses that affect the north side of that community. Of increasing concern, is the possibility of vapor intrusion into nearby homes from high levels of chemicals that have made their way into the soils beneath the homes. DEC says it won’t be monitoring any indoor air quality in the homes, however monitoring does continue at the site every year.

Reassurances from the DEC largely fell on deaf ears at a recent neighborhood meeting that was also attended by environmental activist Erin Brockovich. One resident who orchestrated the meeting has been disabled by a neurological disease and another resident who attended claimed he remembers dumping chemicals from the facility’s operations.

Those operations started in 1876 when Eames Vacuum Brake Co. was founded as a vacuum break manufacturer. It was making a new kind of pneumatic brake for railroads operating in the area, according to this historical account. In 1919 the company had 7,000 employees making horse-drawn cannons and then during World War II it was busy making tanks and military hardware. General Signal Corp. bought the operations in 1967 and by 1980 had 2,200 employees making parts for aerospace and defense contracts, heavy machinery and farm equipment. The business’ makeup gets a little murky after that as a portion of it was purchased by a German company that eventually moved its operations to North Charleston, S.C. Other portions of the business still owned by General Signal continued to operate in the area as a foundry and maker of railroad car brakes.

General Signal admitted in 1988 that it disposed of toxic chemicals in a landfill on the site. Ten years of testing and cleanup followed, so that today, drainage from the landfill collects in a pond where the water is treated before it is released, according to this article. At one time, toxic chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, as well as trichloroethylene, or TCE, were present in two creeks that flow nearby. People in the area wonder today how much of those materials remain in the soils and continue to migrate to adjacent lands.

Mold Contamination Figures into Long Running Construction Defect Issues

By: Duane Craig
Approximately 70 residents in a housing development in Manatee County, Fla., want their homebuilder to buy back their homes because of structural defects, water intrusion, mold and sinking floors, according to this article.

Two former employees of the builder, KB Home, claim they advised management of the problems and recommended that home sales be stopped until the causes of the defects were discovered and corrected. Those employees were subsequently fired and they each brought lawsuits against the company in 2007 and 2009. A local, licensed contractor who inspected one of the residences said architectural plans had not been followed and the lumber used to build the home was contaminated with mold before it was ever installed. The mold contamination then spread throughout the structure. One homeowner had to move out of his house on more than one occasion so that repairs could be made. He is especially angry at the builder, now believing the company knew about the problems all along.

These cases at Willowbrook townhome community have prompted the Manatee County Board of Commissioners to support legislation at the state’s level that would remove mandatory arbitration clauses from contracts dealing with home sales and construction. The clauses effectively remove the option for homeowners to pursue civil lawsuits and often tie them up in mediation proceedings that exhaust their resources, according to this editorial

Lawsuits Highlight the High Environmental Cost of Fossil Fuel Energy

By: Duane Craig

Property owners in Arkansas’ Independence and Faulkner counties are up in arms over hydraulic fracturing activities they say are pumping drilling waste beneath their properties.

The property owners have filed a lawsuit against Southwestern Energy Company, Chesapeake Energy Corp. and XTO Energy Inc. The plaintiffs claim the drilling companies reduce royalties paid to landowners by the amount it costs them to dispose of drilling fluids. In this case, the plaintiffs say the companies are pumping the waste below ground and that waste is migrating below neighboring properties. The plaintiffs claim this is unjustly enriching the frackers by allowing them to make money for disposing of the waste on others’ land. You can read the whole article here.

Not far from there, in Plaquemines Parish, La., some residents have sued a local chemical handling company in the wake of leaks from two of its storage tanks. The company originally reported that about 39,000 gallons of chemicals had leaked from the two tanks but that same day it had also reported to other authorities that up to 191,000 gallons of chemicals may have spilled. The event caused local officials to evacuate homes near the facility and the area was closed off during cleanup operations. See the entire story right here.

PA Homeowners Face Environmental Covenants on Their Properties Because of Lead Contamination

By: Duane Craig

Property owners near Reading, Penn. got news recently that lead contamination left over from using old batteries as fill material will likely never be completely cleaned up. The affected area is on Mt. Laurel Road in Alsace Township. People who attended a recent town meeting about planned cleanup efforts also remembered collecting battery caps from the crushed carcasses of discarded batteries when they were children.

Samples taken at four residences showed elevated levels of lead, with one having concentrations seven times the acceptable limit. A nearby well also exceeded the acceptable levels of lead, however, an official with the Department of Environmental Protection said he thought that contamination was more likely from lead solder that was used in the plumbing system.

In 2011, property owners noticed what appeared to be battery casings in random places within their yards. The DEP investigated and confirmed the material was indeed battery casings. The agency took surface soil samples and confirmed the contamination at three of the properties. A check of surface water and stream sediment found no lead contamination.

Cleanup plans include excavating and removing the battery casing material as well as the contaminated soil. Following that, work crews will grade the area and plant grass. The cost of the project is expected to be $500,000.

Even after the cleanup is complete, the DEP said, the properties will still end up having environmental covenants on them that will alert future owners to the lead contamination history. You can read a news article on this topic here, and a statement from the DEP here.

Planned PBB Contamination Cleanup Opens Up Old, Bad Memories

By: Duane Craig

A $374 million cleanup of an old Michigan manufacturing site has resurrected bad memories from more than 40 years ago when one of the worst agricultural contamination cases caused the destruction of 30,000 cows and introduced a dangerous contaminant into the human food chain.

The contaminant responsible was polybrominated biphenyls, or PBB, a flame retardant produced by Michigan Chemical in St. Louis, Mich. In 1973 the company was making PBB as well as magnesium oxide, a supplement for cattle. Somehow, the two got mixed together and the contaminated supplement was fed to cattle across the state. Almost immediately cattle began losing weight, growing deformed hooves, and "developing abscesses and elephant-like hides." It was months before the state discovered the cause and quarantined more than 500 farms. In the meantime, nine out of 10 residents in the state consumed PBB in milk and other food products derived from cattle. Not only were 30,000 cows destroyed, but also an estimated 1.5 million chickens and thousands of pigs, sheep and rabbits that had either eaten the PBB directly or eaten food made with animal renderings that was contaminated with the material.

The animals were buried in two huge burial pits that have been monitored for seepage since they were backfilled. So far there have been no leakages of PBB from the burial grounds. Some of the state’s rivers have detectable levels of PBB, but not at concentrations the Michigan Department of Community Health considers to be risky.
You can read the whole, detailed story right here.

Coal Ash Spill Ruled Negligent

By: Duane Craig


Hundreds of property owners who have taken the Tennessee Valley Authority to court over the 2008 spill of contaminated sludge near Kingston, Tenn., were pleased with a judge’s opinion that TVA is liable for damages stemming from the spill, according to this report.

Still, many admit they will never recover what they lost and that any settlements will not change the damage that’s been done. The spill released 5 million cubic yards of ash that was being stored in a containment pond. The material contained all the by-products released from the burning of coal, including “arsenic, boron, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury and other metals.” The sludge flowed into a river and contaminated land all along its course, ultimately making the waterway unsafe for many of the uses residents previously enjoyed. After more than $1.2 billion has been spent on the cleanup, there remains more to do. A half million cubic yards of ash have settled onto the river bottom where it will simply remain, potentially be capped, or be removed.

TVA had claimed there was nothing it could have done to prevent the failure since there were things beyond its ability to control that precipitated the catastrophe. The judge, however, called into question the utility’s handling of the ash, writing that it did not follow its own procedures, policies and practices which caused it to miss the warning signs of impending failure. By not recognizing those signs the utility failed to take actions that could have prevented the disaster.
To date, the utility has purchased 180 of the affected properties and settled 200 other claims. Still, there is a case load involving more than 800 plaintiffs in the court system.

The Environmental Protection Agency published a list of the coal ash surface impoundments that have high hazard ratings. The list is published to help local responders and community officials adequately plan for other such disasters. As of April 2012 the agency had identified 676 places where coal ash is being stored and found 45 of those to be highly hazardous.

States with the heaviest concentrations of these ticking time bombs include Arizona, North Carolina and Ohio. Arizona’s problems are located in Cochise and Joseph City while North Carolina’s problems are more widespread at Spencer, Eden, Terrell, Belmont, Walnut Cove, Arden and Mount Holly. Ohio has potential spills in Brilliant, Cheshire and Waterford. Kentucky also has its share of troubled impoundments including Harrodsburg, Ghent, Louisa and Louisville.

Other states with troubled coal ash impoundments include Montana, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana and West Virginia.

Whiskey Friendly Fungus Damages Louisville Properties

By: Duane Craig

Residents in and around Louisville, Ky., have been dealing with a black material staining their siding, outdoor furniture, vehicles and anything else in the open air for as long as they can remember, according to this article.

But now, the culprit has been identified. It’s called Baudoinia, a naturally occurring fungus that is so hearty researchers haven’t found a single carbon source that it can’t use for nutritional needs. So far, there is no evidence the fungus is harmful to people and other living things, other than how it might reduce sunlight from reaching the photosynthesis layer in plant leaves. The biggest problem with it seems to be how it damages property, often destroying finishes on vehicles, buildings and other things outside.

Residents in Louisville were so tired of its effects that they sued local bourbon producers to recover damages caused by the fungus. Come to find out, the fungus multiplies in air that has concentrations of ethanol, and Louisville’s air has lots of that because it is the home to at least three major distillers. The distilling process releases ethanol at various stages. It only takes 1 ppm concentration of ethanol in air to support the growth of Baudoinia.

The lawyer handling many of the lawsuits says the distillers just need to stop off-gassing the ethanol. Distillers don’t really address that, instead saying they simply are not responsible for natural growth. More suits are going forward with one notable one in Scotland where the fungus is rampant.

California Community Pestered by Pesticide-Tainted Water

By: Duane Craig

Every residential property in Livingston, Calif. that relies on water from city-owned wells can now expect 1,2,3-trichloropropane to be present to some degree in that water, according to an article in the Merced Sun-Star. Livingston’s water supplies have also had problems with elevated levels of arsenic and manganese.

Some local officials appear to be hoping the community accepts the long-term contamination prospects as well as they have. One councilman played down the threat saying it wasn’t serious and that levels of 1,2,3-trichloropropane fluctuate. He said he continues to use the city’s water and also gives it to his children. Another official pointed out the chemical, related to agriculture, had been widely used in the area and had prompted other communities to sue companies that produced and used it.

Livingston itself sued and received a $9 million settlement from companies that participated in the contamination, and local officials say the money is being used to clean up the problem. One approach under development is a specially-designed filter that will remove the chemical. The first of its kind is expected to be completed in fall of 2012.

Livingston is one of many communities across California dealing with the chemical. Its shortened name is 1,2,3-TCP and it was originally found at a Superfund site in the southern part of the state, according to information at the California Department of Health. At about the same time it was found in several wells across the state and in 2009 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported its link to cancer in studies involving laboratory animals. The chemical was used to remove paint and varnish, to clean and degrease materials, as a cleaner during maintenance activities and as an intermediate chemical. It is a byproduct in the manufacture of pesticides based on dichloropropenes, and is used to make soil fumigants.

Land throughout the area near Livingston is heavily used for agricultural purposes leading many to think that its problem is related to pesticide use. Livingston is in Merced County and that county has 25 instances of 1,2,3-TCP being detected in water sources, but the number of detections is on the low side compared to other places in California. For example, Kern County has 108 detections, followed by Los Angeles with 46. Altogether California has 336 sources of water where 1,2,3-TCP has been detected. Still, that might be an optimistic measurement of the potential problem since it doesn’t include 36 inactive, abandoned or destroyed water sources, and doesn’t include agricultural water sources and monitoring wells.

Western Mines Continue Poisoning Water Supplies

By: Duane Craig
Colorado’s watershed continues being poisoned by the state’s mining legacy, according to this article. Abandoned mines so far have impaired 1,300 miles of the state’s streams and the headwaters of 40 percent of the Western rivers.
The toxic sludge flowing from just one of the more notoriously contaminating mines, the Penn Mine, released “186 pounds of cadmium, 4,496 pounds of copper, 21,529 pounds of manganese, 21 pounds of lead and 39,896 pounds of zinc in a single year.” That contamination left two waterways largely devoid of aquatic life. The solutions are complex and challenging, and whatever ones are chosen it will still be decades before the natural world and water supplies can begin to recover. Read the entire, in-depth story at the link above.