Superfund Site, But No Cleanup Necessary

By: Duane Craig
Perhaps in a case of the federal government bending over a bit too far at a state’s request, the Portland Harbor Oil Superfund site may not get a cleanup with federal dollars, according to this article. The reason is because after closer scrutiny, the pollution isn’t serious enough, and the local fish aren’t plentiful or old enough to warrant a cleanup.

An oil spill from storage tanks owned by Harbor Oil in 1974 was the first warning shot of a minor disaster unfolding. That incident killed the fish in Force Lake. Then, just five years later, a massive fire melted five oil storage tanks. Nearly 100,000 gallons of petroleum products spilled into the lake and fouled its wetlands.

Polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, are the biggest threat to life at the 19-acre site with levels at 2,000 parts per billion. However, the current owner has paved over the contamination, effectively capping it to prevent precipitation from disbursing it. The lake’s sediment has been found to have PCBs at 80 parts per billion. The EPA believes the greatest threats to humans now lie with eating fish from the lake because PCBs are classed as bioaccumulative, meaning they concentrate in living tissue.

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.

Michigan Canals Still Hide Their PCB Sources

Two canals in Michigan are dangerously contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, according to this advisory. The seriousness of the contamination was underscored by the Michigan Department of Health when it wrote in the advisory that the PCB levels were 2,000 times higher than those typically seen in fish taken from Lake St. Clair.

The advisories cover the bottom feeders -- carp and catfish. That’s because they feed closest to the contaminated sediments and have high concentrations of body fat to store the PCBs. The canals affected are the Lange and Revere off Lake St. Clair.

Residents who live along the canals are concerned about how long it’s taking to find the source of the contamination. The Environmental Protection Agency has been sampling and cleaning up problem areas for years but hasn’t been able to determine just where the contamination originated. PCBs have been linked to cancer and are a persistent pollutant, meaning they accumulate in the environment and in the tissues of living things.

By: Duane Craig

Metal Recycling Operation Spills Contaminants

 Author: Duane Craig

The Environmental Protection Agency put a metal recycling company on notice for allegedly contaminating San Francisco Bay with lead, mercury, PCBs, copper and zinc, according to several news reports.

The company shreds about 300,000 automobiles each year, as well as appliances and other metal products, and loads them onto ships that go to Korea and China so they can be made into new products. It is believed the pollution resulted from debris that fell off a huge conveyor belt used to load the oceangoing ships. Nearby, a 140-acre property that was to be transferred to a nearby wildlife refuge has also been contaminated. A fluffy gray material was reported blowing from the metal recycling site across the nearby land and into waterways.

The company involved, Sims Metal Management, has previously been in the news for a fire five years ago that sent a plume of black, polluted smoke across Silicon Valley. The pollutants this time were discovered in the soil and in the sediment near Redwood Creek. Mercury exceeded the protective levels by 110 times, and copper exceeded the levels by 86 times. Worse yet, polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, were recorded at levels 10,000 times the acceptable amount.

You can read more about it at The Kansas City Star, the Sacramento Business Journal and Environmental Leader

Ignorance Serves as Path to Unintentional Contamination

By: Duane Craig

There are few better examples of how ignorance enables widespread contamination than a tale about Monsanto, National Cash Register Company, the paper industry and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. This story started in 1957 and is still playing out across the country. Recently, new evidence of PCB contamination on the rise comes from Portage Creek in Kalamazoo, Michigan, according to this report in MLive.com.

PCB contamination on the rise in Kalamazoo

Four paper mills operated in that area, and today an 80-mile stretch of the river is part of the Superfund cleanup known as the Kalamazoo River Project, according to this background paper from the Environmental Protection Agency.

There are nine places along Portage Creek where PCB levels have increased from their 1993 level of 79 parts per million to 590 parts per million, and those particular places are known as hot spots. It is thought that erosion over the years moved the material and concentrated it in those hot spots. The cleanup will focus on about two miles of the creek and will involve a small portion of Axtell Creek from John Street to Portage Creek as well. The work area begins at Alcott Street and continues to where the creek meets the Kalamazoo River at E. Michigan Avenue.

In 1966, PCBs showed up in Swedish fish and wildlife so in 1967 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration started testing this country's food supply for PCBs and found them in fish, eggs, milk, poultry, grain and cereal. Apparently, a particular type of packaging called greyboard, used to package cereal, had the highest concentrations of 433 parts per million. The greyboard was widely being made from recycled carbonless copy paper and carbonless paper was being made by the National Cash Register Company using a Monsanto product called Arochlor 1242. Archlor 1242 contained a cocktail of PCBs with 42 percent chlorine, according to this study. While NCR was the sole marketer of the carbonless copy paper it also licensed other paper mills in Wisconsin to make the product.

But, there was also another way PCBs were entering the environment from the paper industry. Paper mills in general were found to have PCBs higher than background levels in their wastewater and the culprit, once again, was carbonless paper. In 1977 there were nearly 800 paper mills using recycled wastepaper and those mills were using about 12,000 gallons of water to create each ton of paper. That water was flowing out to the rivers and streams or being disposed of as sludge in landfills. It was finally determined the PCBs were concentrating more in solids than they were in water, so as water carried the PCB-laden solids the solids were often distributed in clumps as sediment. Where that happened the PCB concentrations rose rapidly.

NCR stopped making the carbonless paper in 1971, but forty years later the world is still dealing with the legacy of unintentional contamination born from ignorance.

Whoops, TCE and PCE on the Move Again at Bennington Superfund Site

By: Duane Craig

A very deep trench is proposed to subvert the movement of contamination from a former landfill in Bennington, Vermont, according to this article in the VTDigger.org. The landfill is also a formerly active Superfund site with remediation completed in 1999, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Groundwater contamination found in Barney Brook

Trichloroethylene, or TCE, and tetrachloroethylene, or PCE, have escaped from the landfill which was previously capped and adorned with a soil vapor extraction system. Apparently the groundwater flow changed and some contamination has been found in a tributary to Barney Brook. For six years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the landfill was a dumping place for industrial wastes from local companies. Those wastes included polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, organic solvents and lead. These wastes were dumped into a lagoon that was not lined to prevent absorption into the soil.

In 1976, a system was installed to lower the groundwater beneath the landfill by carrying it away to an unlined, pond area. Ten years later PCBs, lead, arsenic, benzene and ethylbenzene were flowing into the pond, according to this EPA report.

The new trench will be 25 feet deep and 200 feet long. Because it goes down to impervious soil it is expected to catch the contaminants. The bottom of the trench will be filled with sand and iron shavings to break down the contaminants and stop their movement.