Four Companies Take Next Steps in California Superfund Cleanup

by: Duane Craig

The Environmental Protection Agency reached an agreement with four companies to get the Montrose and Del Amo Superfund sites cleaned up in Torrance, Calif., according to an EPA press release.

This agreement continues the process of closing the contamination books on these notorious sites polluted with monochlorobenzene, a raw material used in making DDT, as well as benzene, naphthalene and ethyl benzene. The two sites are adjacent to one another. Owners of the Montrose site made DDT from 1947 until 1982 while the Del Amo site was a rubber manufacturing facility.

The four companies will build and operate a groundwater treatment system that will pull and treat 700 gallons of water each minute. That equals a million gallons a day. Shell started cleaning up the Del Amo site in 1999 when it put impermeable caps on waste pits and set up a soil vapor extraction system. Over the years, DDT-contaminated soils have been removed from local neighborhoods as well. The cost of the new actions is expected to be a little more than $14 million, with construction of the water treatment facility taking 18 months.

Fish Bones Solve Lead Contamination

Pyromorphite used to mitigate lead contamination.

By: Duane Craig
What do you get when you combine a paste made from fish bones with lead? Pyromorphite. What's significant about that is it could be a much less costly way to mitigate lead contamination in soils.
A 2001 Environmental Protection Agency report noted how phosphate would bind with lead and cause it to become a crystalline substance known as pyromorphite. Calcium phosphate is a chief component of bone and once it reacts with lead the resulting material so far appears to decrease in solubility and bioavailability, meaning it remains stable while binding up the lead. Since pollock bones retain little meat residue after processing, they are especially well suited for this process.
Now, according to this report in Business & Health, the technique is set to be used on residential lots that are contaminated by lead. The area is in Oakland, California in the South Prescott neighborhood. So far it has been used on lead contamination at military bases, mines, universities and commercial labs.
It is widely reported that America has such a serious lead contamination problem that it will never be cleaned up. For many decades motor vehicles spewed out lead because the gasoline was leaded to prevent the valves from fouling. Another prime source of lead in soils is lead-based paint that was used on buildings.

Hexavalent Chromium Contamination Digs Into City Coffers

By: Duane Craig

2,200 residents exposed to hexavalent contamination

Corporations sometimes acquire strange bedfellows and for Merck & Co., a pharmaceutical maker, its ownership of a company that pressure treated lumber for building the frames of cooling towers couldn't be stranger. Now, as the company leads the remediation efforts to clean up hexavalent contamination in the Beachwood Subdivision of Merced, California, the City of Merced itself will be paying out $1.5 million to more than 2,200 residents who were exposed to the chemical for more than 25 years, according to this report in the Merced Sun-Star online.

Why is the city paying?

It seems its insurance carriers decided to back out of covering them in the earlier stage of this case back in April. So, since the city was also named in the suit it decided to settle out of court and forego attorney and expert costs of $1 million a year. The city is using sewer funds and reimbursements from insurance carriers to cover the bill.
According to Bloomberg Businessweek the first of three trial phases focused on whether contamination leaked from the plant and the second phase was set to determine if the residents were harmed by the contamination. The plaintiffs argued the companies involved did not try to notify residents even when they knew there was contamination released. Merck admitted knowing, but countered the contamination could not have affected the residents. Hmmmm, maybe land and water contamination is acceptable as long as it doesn't affect people?
I won't bore you with the multiple, identical reports on this one. Here is one and another that report something different from the stampede of identical reports. Here's one about the earlier trial.

UC Davis Addresses Leftover Contamination Below Animal Research Facility

by: Duane Craig

University of California, Davis Campus

Superfund Cleanup at UC Davis

A Superfund site with shared responsibility between the U.S. Department of Energy and the University of California Davis campus enters a new phase of the cleanup--the portion the university is responsible for--and it may be getting quite costly.
The university tested the effects of radiation on beagles, the animal research industry’s canine workhorse. According to this article in The Sacramento Bee, about 800 beagles endured various assaults by radioactive contamination before being dispatched. Twenty years ago their remains were hauled away along with toxic dog waste and contaminated gravel as the first part of the site cleanup. Now, the university must clean up waste pits where it disposed of a wide range of unwanted items, including perhaps an anesthetic.
The anesthesia of choice for the beagle experiments was chloroform, and a plume of that has migrated offsite and is contaminating soil and groundwater below nearby agricultural land. Always the intrepid experimenters, university researchers are using a pilot project to get rid of the chloroform. Air is being pumped into the ground to force the chloroform out of the soil and into a pipe that carries it into the air.
The Energy Department spent decades and millions of dollars on the first phase of this cleanup. But this next part has an amazingly wide potential cost, anywhere from $6 million to $100 million.

CA Residents Want Arco to Dig Out Contamination

March 30, 2010 - A group of five residents in Seal Beach, California has submitted a report to the Orange County Health Care Agency saying Arco's plan to clean up an old gas leak that has contaminated the soil in their neighborhood isn't good enough.

The Technical Advisory Committee, which is comprised of five residents who volunteered to take part in reviewing Arco's cleanup plan, said they want Arco to further study the impact, excavate the site and beautify the neighborhood in order to diminish fear and stigma of contamination in the community.

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Toxics battle in San Francisco neighborhood

December 14, 2008 - The Azevedos bought their acre of land because they wanted their son to grow up in the country. The Briggs family liked their home's low price. Melissa Standish loved her acre because it reminded her of her childhood on an Ohio farm.

Today Dawne Azevedo's husband is dead from cancer. Alameda Briggs keeps a list - now up to about 20 - of neighbors she says are dead or dying from cancer. And Melissa Standish says no one will want to buy her land here in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley.

These people are among 2,200 residents of Merced's Beachwood neighborhood who say a nearby cooling tower fabrication plant contaminated their drinking water and soil, exposing them to cancer-causing chemicals.

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U.S. EPA issues Order to investigate chromium contamination in Glendale, California

March 14, 2008 - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has ordered a Glendale, Calif. business to conduct a soil and groundwater investigation for hexavalent chromium contamination at the 718 West Wilson Avenue property.

The Wilson Avenue property is part of the former Drilube Company site, located within the San Fernando Valley Area 2 Superfund Site. Between 1945 – 2004, the Drilube Company operated an aerospace and aircraft plating, painting and metal finishing operation which used hazardous substances including chromic acid, muriatic acid, nickel compounds, sodium hydroxide, ammonium hydroxide, caustic potash, and sulfuric acid.

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Carcinogenic benzene contamination covers 16-acre area within California neighborhood

February 29, 2008 - Soil contaminated with toxic substances covers a 16-acre swath centered in the 2100 block of Del Amo Boulevard, with the highest concentrations found in a 4.5-acre tract, authorities said.

That smaller area is where an investigation has detected levels of carcinogenic benzene vapors at levels of up to 20,000 parts per billion, say officials from the ExxonMobil Torrance Refinery.

The state mandates remedial action - in this case testing and monitoring - when benzene levels in residential areas exceed 10 parts per billion.

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California family sues Union Pacific rail yard for pollution impact

February 20, 2008 - A Roseville woman and her husband have filed a lawsuit against Union Pacific Railroad, alleging pollution from the company’s J.R. Davis Yard is at fault for the thyroid cancer the woman was diagnosed with last year.

Plaintiffs Malia Benson, 29, and her husband Michael, 30, also allege airborne toxics stemming from the Roseville rail yard have substantially devalued their Fourth Street home, making it virtually impossible to sell.

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Tainted groundwater discovered in Torrance, California

February 19, 2008 - Toxic chemicals associated with gasoline production have been found in the groundwater beneath the 2100 block of Del Amo Boulevard in Torrance, officials said Tuesday.

Meanwhile, officials with the Los Angeles County Regional Water Quality Control Board have expanded the scope of an investigation, seeking evidence of possible chemical vapor intrusion to 10 homes in the area.

Those officials said the substances found are carcinogenic, but they do not yet know whether they exist in levels or in places that pose a threat to human health.

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California State law burdens unsuspecting residents with $250,000 cost to clean dump that was closed in 1953

February 18, 2008 - Three dozen frustrated homeowners north of Escondido Country Club want the city or local environmental groups to help them pay for cleaning up the remnants of a defunct trash dump that lies within their middle-class subdivision.

State law requires the homeowners to pay for cleaning up the 2-acre site, even though the dump ceased operations in 1953 -- 30 years before their subdivision was built. The law holds only current owners responsible for cleaning up toxic sites to avoid costly investigations to determine who owned them and who contaminated them.

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2.7 million gallons of sewage spill into Richardson Bay in Marin California

February 1, 2008 - SOME 2.7 MILLION gallons of partially treated sewage were accidentally released into Richardson Bay Thursday night after rains overwhelmed a Mill Valley treatment plant when an operator left two pumps off.

The sewage, enough to fill 100 backyard swimming pools, was partially treated, having been filtered of most solids. But it was not disinfected with chlorine, allowing bacteria to float into the bay.

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Toxic terror in San Francisco

January 29, 2008 - SAN FRANCISCO (FinalCall.com) - A cross section of Black, Latino, Asian-Pacific Islander and progressive Whites are determined to win a battle with city and congressional leaders over what activists call one of the most horrific cases of environmental racism and political double dealing in the country.

The fight began when children at the Muhammad University of Islam (MUI), which sits at the top of Bay View Hunters Point, were unknowingly exposed for months, maybe longer, to asbestos and other cancer-causing toxins when the Lennar Corporation a multi-billion dollar housing developer began grading a hill directly beside the school to make way for 1,500 homes on the site of the old Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.

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California state and county health officials to investigate concentration of pancreatic cancer in Oroville

January 27, 2008 - Judy McInturf is making a list of the sick and the dead.

On it are old friends, her son's former co-worker, her daughter's friend, family acquaintances, their adult children. And, of course, her late husband, Haskel.

In hindsight, McInturf wonders if there could be a connection: Were her family and friends caught up in some sort of toxic web – and if so, what's the deadly thread that connects them?

State and county health officials are asking similar questions. Soon, they'll descend upon this industrial city in central Butte County to investigate an unusual concentration of pancreatic cancer diagnoses and deaths – 23 people in 2004-05, more than twice what would be expected. They will interview the patients still living and the families of the dead, looking for environmental clues.

It's rare for the state to go to such lengths in pursuit of a possible cancer cluster – a signal there could be cause for alarm. It's even rarer in such cases for researchers to identify a single toxic culprit.

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State officials hunt environmental cause for cancer cluster in Oroville California

January 10, 2008 - The discovery of a cluster of pancreatic-cancer cases in Oroville has state and local health officials hunting for an environmental cause, with initial attention focused on the koppers wood-treatment plant, a former Superfund site that closed in 2001.

An analysis of state cancer data showed found 23 cases of the pancreatic disease in 2004 and ’05, twice the expected number.

Beginning in 1973, officials found significant amounts of carcinogenic pentachlorophenol and other toxic chemicals in residential wells near the Koppers plant.

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Clean water finally coming for Chica California residents with contaminated wells

January 11, 2008 - Clean water is coming to a south Chico neighborhood — a neighborhood where wells were contaminated years ago by chemical pollutants.

About 60 homes in the Skyway Avenue subdivision will be hooked up to the Cal Water system and the bill will be footed by ABB, the corporation being held responsible for clean-up costs.

Bottled water was first provided to the homes, then filters, soon after a plume of groundwater contamination was identified about four years ago, but the residents wanted a more permanent solution.

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Rialto California seeks Superfund designation for perchlorate

December 5, 2007 - The city of Rialto will ask federal environmental officials to recognize the severity of its perchlorate-contaminated groundwater and to help clean it up.

At its meeting Tuesday night, the Rialto City Council unanimously approved a resolution requesting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to add the 160-acre industrial site in northern Rialto where the perchlorate contamination occurred to the EPA's National Priorities List.

The list details sites across the country that "pose risks to human health and the environment," the EPA says.

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Residents concerned about contamination and health problems in South Merced California

November 16, 2007 - "For years on this side of town, it has been a dumping ground for everything bad. It ends up on this side of town," said Ira Jones, South Merced Resident.

People in south Merced say paint was being dumped illegally for years on county public works property within the city limits.

Now they're worried the paint pit may be responsible for health problems in the area.

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Santa Clara County Leads California In Contamination From Old Orchards

October 19, 2007 - Santa Clara County's most neglected environmental problem sits right under our feet.

While officials have spent decades cleaning up toxins from the technology industry, no state or county agency has tried to gauge the scope of an older hazard - agricultural pesticides left by the farms and orchards that once covered Silicon Valley.

Santa Clara County has more toxic cleanup sites involving old orchard pesticides than any county in California, as well as a significant number of other sites contaminated by other types of farming or pesticide handling, according to a Mercury News analysis of state records.

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Old Dump Impacting Current Property Values for Dozens of Home Owners in Escondido, CA

October 1, 2007 - Three dozen frustrated homeowners near the Escondido Country Club spent two hours Monday night wrangling with county and state officials over the cheapest and most efficient way to clean up the remnants of a defunct trash dump that lies within their middle-class subdivision.

State officials offered Monday night to cover the costs of devising a "cap" that would safely seal lead and some other toxins in the 2-acre dump site, but the homeowners said they must thoroughly consider that proposal before committing to anything.

The homeowners, who live in the 39-home Country Club Woods subdivision, said they are worried that the state plan would cost more than they can afford. They also said that before paying for any cleanup, they would like to consider suing the county or city, two agencies that used the dump when it operated between 1949 and 1953.

Since they were notified about three years ago that there was a former dump in their neighborhood, the residents have balked at a 1989 state law requiring current owners of contaminated properties to clean up such sites, even if they had nothing to do with the contamination.

The homeowners, who packed into a small and stuffy meeting room Monday night at the country club, said they knew nothing about the dump when they moved into the subdivision, which was built more than two decades ago. They also said that the contamination problems have made it virtually impossible to sell their homes.

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