Cleanup of contaminated soil begins at plant
Posted on Monday, November 19, 2007
A cleanup is under way at a transformer manufacturing plant in Pine Bluff after a hazardous chemical was found seeping from the ground.
The effort is the latest in a series of cleanups that have taken place over the years at the Central Moloney plant, authorities said.
Officials with the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, who learned of the contamination from company officials and an anonymous complaint made to another state department in September, are investigating and say there are still many “unknowns.”
The soil is contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls. PCBs are odorless or mildly aromatic organic chemicals found in oily liquids, such as those used to insulate transformers. Those who come in contact with the chemical can develop “acne-like eruptions” or in severe cases, cancer, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which banned the use of most PCBs in 1979.
Department officials say the contamination does not pose a health hazard to workers, nearby residents, or schoolchildren at Greenville Elementary School. The school property adjoins the plant’s property to the north.
Officials at the Central Moloney plant first noticed “softening of the ground” around one of the two contaminated areas in August, said Chris Hart, manager of industrial engineering and human resources at the plant. The company had soil tested and the samples tested positive for PCBs.
“We had it tested and that’s when we went to the [Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality ],” Hart said.
Since the contamination had been there and was not the result of a spill, officials were not required to report it to the department, spokesman Doug Szenher said. But the department can require additional cleanup if it is needed, he added.
The plant’s attorneys scheduled a meeting Sept. 12 to discuss a “potential cleanup,” said Ryan Benefield, chief of the Department’s Hazardous Waste Division. “Actually the meeting was on the schedule before we received the complaint, but we didn’t know what facility or substance.”
During that meeting, the plant’s representatives said initial test results on the soil showed a PCB contamination level of 54 parts per million, according to the order.
The department, following Environmental Protection Agency standards, considers long-term levels higher than 0. 22 parts per million an “unacceptable risk to human health,” the order said.
The two contaminated areas are in front and back of the building, Hart said.
The plant has closed its stormwater drains and is monitoring groundwater. It also has fenced off the contaminated sites.
Those actions “eliminate” threats to drinking water or any long-term health hazards, Benefield said.
Laboratory results on soil samples taken in the past few weeks ranged from less than. 05 parts per million to 4. 36 parts per million, according to a status report that Pollution Management Inc. of Little Rock sent to state environmental officials on Nov. 2. Central Moloney hired the environmental testing firm to clean up the contamination.
The Environmental Protection Agency requires that soil testing above 50 parts per million of PCBs be removed and replaced.
An underlying rail bed that has since been taken out of the ground probably caused the contamination, said Doug Ford, a principal engineer with Pollution Management Inc.
The company will have to complete a site investigation work plan detailing further steps to clean up the site. Work on that plan, which should take about a week, will begin around the first of December, Ford said.
Each phase of the cleanup has to be approved by state environmental inspectors, Benefield said.
Neither Benefield nor Ford could say how long the cleanup would take.
The Central Moloney plant, which stopped using oils containing P CBs in 1962 and changed ownership in 1994, has had a number of cleanups. The employee-owned company operates two plants in Pine Bluff. It has about 730 employees, but announced recently it would lay off 100 workers, citing a downturn in the housing market.
In 1987, Lake Pine Bluff was drained due to PCB contamination that officials believe came in part from Central Moloney, Szenher said.
The department is also overseeing cleanup at the site of trichloroethylene, or TCE, and perchloroethylene, or PCE, Benefield said. That cleanup, which started in 1996, will continue until the chemicals are down to an acceptable contaminant level, he added, without giving a specific time frame.
TCE is a liquid commonly used to remove grease from metal parts, and PCE is a liquid used in the textile industry as a component of aerosol dry-cleaning products, according to EPA’s Web site.
“We have been working with them through our processes of cleaning up contamination from previous activities,” Benefield said. “The PCBs specifically, they were mentioned as something of concern previously, but never found at these levels or magnitude.”
Shortly after Department of Environmental Quality inspectors visited the plant, the Jefferson County Health Department received complaints from employees concerned about areas inside the plant that they claimed were contaminated with PCBs.
“The major concern was for their health. This stuff was getting on everything [according to the complaint ],” said Daniel Smith, an environmental health specialist with the Health Department. “Their concerns were that everybody was focusing on outside the building, and they wanted people to know that there are problems on the inside, too.”
A Sept. 17 report that Smith sent to officials at the Department of Environmental Quality said that an anonymous caller complained to the health department about an “oil-like substance oozing up [through ] floors in [the ] basement.” The caller was also concerned about breathing the chemical and it getting on materials, the report said.
In a Sept. 19 e-mail to the department, Smith wrote: “Both complaints were centered around the ‘black’ oil that’s permeating into the building into an area called the ‘pit’. At least one person was vacated from that area but supposedly, behind locked doors, in that area there is still a problem.”
Central Moloney’s Hart said there were no problems with PCBs inside the plant.
“We’ve identified two areas. They’re both outside the building,” he said. “The one that they’re referring to is in a substation that’s out back. Obviously a substation is not going to be located inside the plant.”
The “pit” area, or lower bay, leads to an outside substation, Hart said, adding that nobody works in that area.
Department of Environmental Quality inspectors checked inside the plant for anything that could have caused the contamination found outside.
“We did not find any coming up through the floors during our inspections,” Benefield said, adding that the department did not take samples from inside the building.
The department has not fined Central Moloney for the contamination.
“We haven’t determined that they have committed a violation at this time,” Benefield said, adding that the standards for reporting a hazardous waste vary depending on the quantity involved and the risk the materials pose to the public.
Hart said that the company had had no complaints from employees — “just questions.”
Sites are normally fined after investigations are complete, but those that are historically contaminated often don’t get fined, Benefield said.
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