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Attorney Duane Miller, whose Sacramento-based law firm, Miller Axline & Sawyer, represents Modesto, said the jury’s verdicts could have statewide as well as national ramifications.
“We believe this is the first verdict of its kind anywhere to impose punitive damages on a manufacturer of PCE,” Miller said Wednesday. “I don’t know if this is going to lead to similar claims. Certainly, many cities are similarly affected.”
Read more at The Progress Report
Helping to distinguish two very different strategies and outcomes, the Stockton Record (CA) reports:
Lodi wrote new ordinances, floated new legal theories and spent about $30 million on a losing strategy to get its contaminated soil and groundwater cleaned.
Modesto used tried-and-true legal methods in a similar cleanup effort. On Tuesday, Modesto was awarded $175 million by a San Francisco Superior Court jury that found chemical companies acted maliciously in failing to disclose the harmful effects of a common dry-cleaning solvent.
Modesto’s victory comes after eight years of legal wrangling and a four-month trial. Like Modesto, Lodi also has waged a long legal battle to have perchloroethylene, or PCE, removed from beneath the central city. But unlike Modesto, Lodi sued property owners and businesses it claimed were responsible for discharging PCE onto the ground and into the city’s leaky sewers.
On June 4, 2004, a federal judge invited Lodi’s attorneys to copy Modesto’s strategy, but the city declined. Lodi’s water ratepayers are funding a majority of the cleanup through a 38 percent rate hike imposed last year by the City Council, even though the case against some suspected polluters is still open.
“It’s just sad,” said Jane Lea, who successfully led a grass-roots effort to place a measure on the November ballot that, if it passes, will rescind the rate increase. “What a difference a decision makes. Two similar cases, and one comes down to where the citizens have to pay for it all. It’s disheartening. I’m happy for (Modesto) that they found an equitable way for their citizens to have their water cleaned.”
According to this morning’s Los Angeles Times (CA):
Senate Democrats on Thursday accused the Bush administration of withholding key details about toxic waste sites that present risks of exposure to nearby residents.
At a congressional hearing, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said the Environmental Protection Agency had designated as confidential the details of about 140 Superfund sites where toxic exposure remained uncontrolled.
Boxer and other Democrats said the secret data included information about how much money and time it would take to clean up the dangerous sites, including one site where the EPA predicted it would take 26 years to close off access to toxics.
“This isn’t a question of left or right,” Boxer said, waving a document marked “Privileged” by EPA officials to prevent its release to the public. “This is a question of right and wrong.”
The EPA said that it had blocked only information related to law enforcement and that the public had access to all relevant health-risk data for the sites, seven of which are in California.
Read the full story here
According to this San Francisco Chronicle (CA) report:
A jury has hit two chemical companies with $175 million in punitive damages for failing to warn dry cleaners about the dangers of a solvent that contaminated underground water in the city of Modesto.
The San Francisco Superior Court jury awarded the city $100 million against Vulcan Materials Co. and $75 million against Dow Chemical Co. Tuesday. On Friday, the same jury assessed those companies and four other manufacturers more than $3.1 million to compensate Modesto for its costs in installing filters to keep the chemical, perchloroethylene, out of its drinking water.
The chemical, widely used in the U.S. dry cleaning industry, has been linked to increased levels of cancer in dry cleaning employees, Duane Miller, a lawyer for the city, said Wednesday. He said the city’s lawsuit accused the manufacturers of keeping quiet about the dangers from 1978, when they received the first warnings from the federal government, until 1992, when they started telling dry cleaners not to dispose of the chemical in sinks or sewers.
“We have conduct that went on for more than a decade involving a chemical that was considered to be a known human carcinogen, with effects on a large number of people,” Miller said. He said most of the contamination occurred from the 1960s until the mid-1980s, and cleanup is continuing at several sites in Modesto, one of which is a federal Superfund site, a designation reserved for the worst toxic pollution.
According to the Stockton Record (CA), the case stands in stark contrast to a “discredited” eight-year legal strategy pursued in Lodi:
Where Lodi sued property owners and businesses it held responsible for underground pollution, Modesto successfully sued manufacturers for failing to warn dry cleaners how to use perchloroethylene properly and how the solvent could harm the environment. The chemical, which also is found in industrial solvents, is a suspected human carcinogen.
“We’ll look back at the issues that concerned us and see if there are any new ideas,” Lodi City Attorney Steve Schwabauer said, adding that he expects city officials to be criticized for their decision in 2004 in light of the Modesto verdict. “Two years ago, we had so many huge battles going on … . We couldn’t be tied up in any more litigation.”
After Lodi fired its environmental law team in January 2004, its new lawyers briefly considered following Modesto’s lead. U.S. District Judge Frank C. Damrell Jr., at a June 4, 2004, hearing in Sacramento’s federal court, invited Lodi’s attorneys to sue manufacturers after a state appeals court ruled the previous week that Modesto’s suit could go forward.
Schwabauer said Tuesday that the city was in such turmoil at the time that it didn’t want to pursue another untested legal theory. Not only had it spent $30million on an unwinding legal theory, but Wall Street financier Lehman Bros. was suing the city over a $16million loan.
The Pasadena Star-News (CA) reports:
Toxic chemical perchlorate has been detected in small amounts in monitoring wells in the Alhambra Superfund site, although water experts disagree on its significance.
Because the levels fluctuate and have not been found in drinking water samples so far, the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the city water company are focusing on other contaminants.
But the regional water authority is more concerned.
“Usually you get a hit, and usually over time it increases,” said Gabriel Monares, director of resources for the San Gabriel Valley Water Quality Authority. “It means there’s a flow, and it’s starting to go that way.”
[...]
Production wells are deeper than monitoring wells and can run 600 to 700 feet deep, Montan said. While monitoring wells are designed to characterize underground contamination, they aren’t necessarily representative of water people are drinking, said Lisa Hanusiak, U.S. EPA remedial project manager.
“We intentionally install the wells where we think we are going to detect contamination – in former industrial areas and whatnot,” she said. “Monitoring well data is more conservative in measuring the highest levels of contamination.”
The EPA and city say focus should remain on cleanup of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, a major area contaminant. Driving current investigations is the search for VOCs, specifically those known as TCE, PCE and 1,2,3-TCP, Hanusiak said.
The chemicals are commonly used as industrial solvents. The city has awarded bids to construct a 7,000-gallon-per-minute facility to treat those contaminants.
However, the San Gabriel Water Quality Authority worries the perchlorate problem could worsen, making cleanup more expensive and complicated.
“If perchlorate is there, it takes a $4 to $6 million project and turns it into a $30 million dollar project,” Monares said.
[...]
“[Perchlorate is] the big bad word right now,” said Bob Kuhn, San Gabriel Basin Water Quality Authority board member. “That’s what everyone’s afraid of.”
[...]
“We’re having a hard time finding out where it’s coming from,” Monares said, adding that funding any necessary cleanup becomes trickier. “We need the state to step up and help us.”
Read the full story here
Somehow we’ve missed a fair amount of info re: vapor intrusion in Norco schools and concerns about contamination from Wyle Labs.
Since the The Press-Enterprise (CA) provides a helpful page dedicated to the Wyle Labs contamination story (free reg. req’d), we’re able to provide this news roundup, picking up from November of last year and continuing up to this past March:
Wyle reportedly claimed that Vinyl Chloride detected in the Norco High Science building wasn’t theirs. This put an unexpected snag in the state’s clean-up plan. Wyle’s claims didn’t appear to have everyone convinced, as it was reported that the mother of a female student said she believes her daughter’s leukemia (recently diagnosed) may be due to contamination from Wyle Labs. This was said to be the third case of leukemia from the high school within the past three years and the girl’s mother was told by the local doctor to pull her other child out of the school.
Experts from the state denied there is any connection between illness and the contamination at a meeting in which they tell the locals: the contaminant levels are low, the kids are not at risk, teachers are only sort-of at risk. Folks didn’t seem convinced; at least one called for the closure of the Science building.
In early March, state investigators found cracks in the bedrock under the community and hailed the discovery as a major breakthrough in tracking the Wyle contamination. At the same time, the state also indicated it would order Wyle to test the indoor air in homes.
Finally, in later March, another public meeting was held…and another parent called for the closing of the Norco High Science building.
–
And as far as we know, that brings us current with published reports. If we learn more, as always, we’ll keep you posted.
Lenny Siegel, Director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight (CPEO), has authored an eye-opening report on the state of trichloroethylene (TCE) contamination and TCE clean-up in and around Los Angeles. The report, available here as an MS Word doc (91KB), tells us:
The Los Angeles Metropolitan Area is a checkerboard of underground plumes of trichloroethylene (TCE), a cancer-causing industrial solvent, largely a legacy of military activities, military contracting, and support industries during the Cold War. At the request of Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles, the Center for Public Environmental Oversight has identified at least 114 major TCE sites in the Los Angeles area. Though state and federal environmental agencies have taken action to ensure that many of the sites are slowly being cleaned up, no one has taken a comprehensive look at the risks that TCE and similar compounds pose today to the metropolitan area’s population, in drinking water, indoor air, and outdoor air. In fact, there is not even a complete map of known TCE contamination in the region.
[...]
Though government agencies have been collecting this data for decades, there is no centralized list of TCE contamination sites. Instead, the information—along with oversight—is divided among agencies and between programs within agencies.
[...]
Ingestion is not the only risk posed by the huge reservoirs of contaminated groundwater in the greater Los Angeles area. For the past few years, it has been widely recognized that volatile compounds such as TCE tend to migrate from shallow groundwater into overlying structures. The mechanism, known as the vapor intrusion pathway, exposes residents, workers, students, etc. to continuous, low—but potentially health-threatening—levels of TCE in the air that they breathe. At some TCE sites in the LA area, ventilation systems have been installed to reduce exposures to legally safe levels. At others, mathematical models have been used to find exposures safe—at least, according to the less protective historical standard. But at most sites neither air sampling nor mathematical modeling has been conducted yet.
CPEO’s study shows that government agencies or others have identified a potential for vapor intrusion at nearly 40 of the TCE sites. In fact, there many be many more. Most of the descriptive records in government databases don’t even have place to note the possibility of vapor intrusion. On the other hand, some of those identified might not have an unacceptable level of toxic vapor indoors. CPEO believes that any site where TCE or similar compounds are found, above the drinking water standard in shallow groundwater, should be evaluated and perhaps sampled to determine if the building occupants are likely to be exposed to unsafe levels.
Furthermore, much of the outdoor air in urban Los Angeles contains a continuous, possibly hazardous level of TCE vapors. According to the California Air Resources Board, monitoring stations in Azusa, Burbank, and Los Angeles detected an average concentration of .3 micrograms of TCE in each cubic meter (µg/m3) of air. Though this is below levels detected a decade or more ago, it’s not far below the 1 (µg/m3) currently used to require mitigation of indoor air. And it’s substantially more than the .017 (µg/m3) that EPA scientists said in 2003—using the draft 2001 Health Risk Assessment—corresponded to a one-in-a-million excess lifetime cancer risk. That is, southern Californians are breathing TCE, at levels that many scientists believe unsafe, “24-7.”
[...]
CPEO believes that exposure to TCE in water, indoor air, and outdoor air must be better evaluated and probably more aggressively addressed. Its review of TCE sites in the Los Angeles area found that other toxic compounds are usually found at the same locations. TCE’s risk must be considered in light of ongoing exposures to a multitude of pollutants through all pathways. That is, the widespread emission of other air contaminants from both mobile and stationary sources doesn’t make the continuing presence of TCE less of a problem. Since exposures are often additive, cumulative, or synergistic, TCE is likely to be more of a problem than if it were a single, isolated pollutant.
To download CPEO’s list of 114 TCE sites in the greater Los Angeles area, click here (MS Excel, 52KB). Or, you can hop on over to CPEO’s publications page to download this and other reports.
The Lodi News-Sentinel (CA) reports:
Voters will be asked to weigh in on the city’s water rate increase, as the Lodi City Council voted to certify the initiative and place it on the November ballot.
But faced with the question of where to find $3 million for cleanup costs if the measure passes, council members also ordered city staff to pore over the city’s budget to see where that money would come from and what effect it would have on city services.
Resident Jane Lea, who along with resident Dawn Squires mounted a drive in February to get the rate-rolback initiative on the Nov. 7 ballot, said the council’s action, which was required by law, will give “disenfranchised” ratepayers a voice on the increase.
Read the full story here.
In December of 2004, Lenny Siegel from the Center for Public Environmental Oversight (CPEO) published this report, entitled “El Toro and the Potential for Vapor Intrusion.” After reviewing documentation and touring the base, Lenny concludes:
In summary, I am not satisfied with the Navy’s outright dismissal of
vapor intrusion – to indoor or outdoor air – as a risk at El Toro. I
think it’s unlikely to be a serious problem, but I believe air sampling
is necessary before ruling it out. The entire situation seems to be
saved by the reuse plan and the division of the property between sale
and lease parcels. The sections most likely to be sources of VOC vapors
are not being sold, and they are not planned for continuous human
presence. Measures, such as institutional controls, should be
implemented to keep it that way.
Read the full report here.
(This news has us thinking of creating a new post category: Ironic)
It appears the former El Toro contamination site, also known as Former Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) El Toro, was nominated for a 2005 Secretary of Defense Environmental Award in the category of Environmental Restoration.
From the 2005 awards guidance document [MS WORD, 416KB], the Environmental Restoration award was created:
To recognize efforts to protect human health and the environment by cleaning up identified DoD sites in a timely, cost-efficient, and responsive manner. Nominations may be: (a) from any level of the Military Departments or Defense Agencies and (b) any U.S. Military active or closing installation/civil works facility within the 50 United States and U.S. Territories.
Here’s why El Toro was nominated:
Environmental Restoration Supports $649.5 Million Sale of Former MCAS El Toro
During the past two years at the former MCAS El Toro, an extensively detailed Environmental Baseline Survey (EBS), Finding of Suitability to Transfer (FOST), and Finding of Suitability to Lease (FOSL) for Carve-out Areas covering 3,719 of the station’s 4,712 total acres were completed. Simultaneously, comprehensive environmental restoration efforts focused on the most stringent cleanup criteria – residential use. A total of 956 Locations of Concern (LOCs), consisting of 24 Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA)/Installation Restoration Program (IRP) sites and 932 Resource Conservation & Recovery Act (RCRA) Compliance Program and petroleum sites; comprise the environmental program. Thus far, 858 LOCs attained no further action status and have been closed out, 78 of those during the past two years. Only 19 of the closed out LOCs required advanced cleanup. A key reason for the ongoing success is the strong working relationships and partnerships the El Toro team has established with regulatory agencies on the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Cleanup Team (BCT*). Additionally, the El Toro team has reached out to other regulatory agencies and local entities and established new partnerships to gain valuable insight to further enhance cleanup and restoration.
The site did not win the award. They received an honorable mention. Read the full MCAS El Toro site nomination here [PDF, 1.4MB]
* As described later in the nomination document:
The BCT is a working group composed of representatives from the Navy’s El Toro team, U.S. EPA, Cal-EPA Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), and the California Regional Water Quality Control Board (RWQCB)
We found this news interesting in light of all that’s going on in Irvine right now. It’s from a Los Angeles Times article, approximately 6 years ago:
June 27, 2000, Tuesday, Orange County Edition
SECTION: Metro; Part B; Page 1; Metro Desk
HEADLINE: NAVY SEEKS LIMITS ON ITS CLEANUP AT EL TORO;UNIT WANTS TO CURB ITS RESPONSIBILITY TO $8 MILLION OF THE $35 MILLION NEEDED TO SOLVE THE BASE’S GROUND-WATER WOES.
BYLINE: SEEMA MEHTA, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Despite repeated pledges to clean up all pollution at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, the Navy now wants to be released from liability for any water contamination that might be discovered there in the future.
Under a proposed settlement signed by the Department of Justice this
month, the Navy would pay $8 million of $35 million required to clean up a 3-mile-wide tainted ground-water plume “in exchange for not being held responsible for any future liability that could result from ‘unknown contaminants,’” according to a report from the state Regional Water Quality Control Board in Santa Ana.
[...]
Trichloroethylene (TCE), a possible carcinogen, is also present from heavy use of a toxic solvent to degrease aircraft. The contamination plume, stretching one mile by three miles, is moving one foot per day, and is expected to contaminate local drinking water in 10 to 20 years if it is not cleaned up, said Ron Wildermuth, spokesman for the Orange County Water District.
[...]
But, according to regional water officials, the water districts are reluctant to sign the agreement because of recent concerns that the water is also contaminated by radionuclides and MTBE, a so-called oxygenate that helps gasoline burn more completely.
Read more here.
This map was published recently in the Sacramento Bee (click picture for slightly larger version):
According to the paper, “The migrating plume of contaminated groundwater found responsible [for] deaths and illnesses in a recently settled case has spread considerably. Aerojet’s cleanup efforts, however, have sharply reduced the concentration of pollutants.”
According to this report in Wednesday’s Sacramento Bee:
Aerojet-General Corp. has agreed to pay a $25 million settlement after a jury found the defense contractor responsible for the deaths of three former Rancho Cordova residents and the illnesses of four others who drank tap water contaminated with rocket fuel.
A Sacramento Superior Court jury awarded more than $14 million in damages to the plaintiffs last week following a twomonth trial. Aerojet officials, faced with possible punitive damages, agreed Friday to settle the case for an additional $11 million.
[...]
The jury found Aerojet “was negligent with respect to its operations, chemical handling, treatment and/or disposal process” of toxic chemicals.
“I was very impressed with the intelligence and attention span of the jury,” said Gary Praglin, a Los Angeles lawyer representing the plaintiffs.
[...]
The jury’s findings pertained to Aerojet’s operations in the 1960s and 1970s when the key clean-water and hazardous-materials laws were in their infancy and utilities did not routinely monitor drinking water for the chemicals Aerojet dumped. At the time, Aerojet disposed of residual rocket fuel and metalcleaning solvents in unlined open pits, allowing the contaminants to seep through the soil and into the groundwater tapped for Rancho Cordova homes.
The case involved three water contaminants linked to Aerojet operations: perchlorate, an oxidizing component of solid rocket propellant known to cause thyroid disorders; NDMA, a cancercausing combustion product of liquid rocket fuel; and trichloroethylene (TCE), an industrial solvent that has been linked to brain damage, liver cancer, skin diseases and immune disorders.
The jury found Aerojet’s negligence “was a substantial factor” in causing thyroid disease in the four surviving plaintiffs and in causing the deaths of three others from lymphoma, a cancer of the blood, and melanoma, a skin cancer, according to the verdict. The individual damages awarded ranged from $150,000 to $5 million. The suit was filed in the late 1990s on behalf of the stricken or their survivors: Cheryl Fischer- Smith, who died as a result of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma; Pamela Lowndes who succumbed to melanoma; Deangela Smith, Terilynne Steinman and Joan Van Den Berg, for their thyroid disorders; Donna Marinelli, who has thyroid cancer; and her father, Anthony Marinelli, who died of lymphoma.
“The settlement these people got was real nice, but it will not pay for the suffering they went through,” said Greg Voetsch, 72, whose family reached itsown settlement about two years ago in a similar case against Aerojet. Before moving to Rancho Cordova in 1970, the family lived in the Los Angeles County city of Azusa – in the shadow of another Aerojet plant. The water supplying that neighborhood has been found to be polluted with perchlorate and TCE.
In the 1980s, Voetsch said his wife, Doris, 70, developed breast cancer. Voetsch said he has had thyroid cancer as have two of his daughters.
Then early this year, after the family bought a new car and began making home improvements with the settlement money, doctors began to find one cancer after another in Doris Voetsch, first in her colon, then her lungs, then her throat and, most recently, a recurrence of breast cancer that led to a full mastectomy.
[...]
California has by far the most extensive perchlorate contamination in the country, with nearly 300 affected wells. Today, the Arden-Cordova Water Service and the Sacramento County Water Agency have 14 fewer wells to serve 60,000 Rancho Cordova residents because of Aerojet pollution. Regulators and affected industries have been wrestling over setting a “safe” limit of perchlorate in drinking water.
Though we’ve already quoted liberally from it, you can read the full story here.
Note: It looks like the story was carried by the Sacramento Buiness Journal two days earlier. They include an explanation of the size of the lawsuit (# of plaintiffs) over time:
Hundreds of plaintiffs were involved in four lawsuits against Aerojet over perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel, and other contaminants that leached into drinking water wells. Plaintiffs dropped out over time, leaving about 60 plaintiffs in three consolidated lawsuits by summer 2004. By the time trial began, it was down to two cases and 10 plaintiffs, according to courthouse personnel.
We’re starting to wonder, what the heck is really going on in Woodbridge/Irvine? Amidst concerns about cancer and other maladies associated with TCE exposure and reports that certain entities/authorities may not be leveling with the locals, Toxnews.org recently tells readers:
ToxNews has received emails from Woodbridge homeowners wanting more info about how a now former resident got out from under his home which was located in the contamination area. When we contacted the man who previously disclosed how he was able to successfully get out from under his Woodbridge house to see if we could release his email address, he said, “Tell homeowners to talk with their bank and advise them their realtor failed to disclose the existence of the contamination prior to the sale.”
They have also recently added a new detailed close-up map of the contamination plume/area (click here for a much better version – warning: will take you away from this site):
Note: We’ve added Toxnews.org to our blogroll (to the right). See their latest news section for regular updates. For readers coming here from Toxnews, welcome. Please let us know if there’s anything you need.
In light of the recently revealed financial stakes of further TCE regulation for the world’s most powerful polluter and the LA Times series on TCE’s politics and community impact, we found the following article, entitled “Pollution Cleanups Pit Pentagon Against Regulators,” both interesting and disturbing. From everyone’s favorite color newspaper, USA Today, in October 2004:
Across the nation, the Pentagon is taking extraordinary steps to limit the military’s accountability for a 50-year legacy of pollution, a USA TODAY investigation finds…
Since 2001, Pentagon officials have stalled cleanups at scores of military sites where contamination from training and manufacturing has fouled soil and water. They’ve used their political clout to sidetrack new regulations that could force the services to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more to deal with pollution. And they’ve challenged state and federal regulators’ power to make the military obey existing environmental laws…
Four years after President Bush campaigned on a pledge to make the military “comply with environmental laws by which all of us must live,” the White House is the Pentagon’s chief ally in pushing for relief from such laws.
Within the administration, “it’s no secret that the EPA is running into this wall with the Pentagon,” says Linda Fisher, who served two years as Bush’s deputy EPA administrator — the agency’s second-in- command — before returning to private work last year.
“Is the Department of Defense taking (regulatory disputes) to the White House more often? Absolutely,” says Fisher, who has held environmental jobs in every Republican administration since Ronald Reagan’s. “Is the Department of Defense more powerful than the EPA? Yes.”
Defense officials say state and federal environmental agencies have too much power to demand costly and intrusive cleanups on military land. The Pentagon wants to cut its $4 billion a year in environmental costs — less than 1% of defense spending — by gaining more authority over where and how cleanups will be done.
“Some of these regulators are doing wrongheaded things based on poor scientific evidence,” says Raymond DuBois, deputy undersecretary of Defense for installations and environment. “Shouldn’t we, as stewards of the taxpayers’ money, decide how we’re going to clean up?”
Ummm. No.
The article goes on to highlight key findings of the USA Today investigation:
•The Pentagon is thwarting environmental agencies’ efforts to set cleanup rules.
Since 2001, the armed services have delayed more than 70 federal cleanup agreements that would dictate the scope and timing of restoration at contaminated military sites…
The Pentagon also is fighting EPA efforts to set new pollution limits on two military contaminants: perchlorate, a munitions ingredient, and trichloroethylene (TCE), a solvent. After military officials complained to the White House that the EPA’s studies overstated the chemicals’ health risks, the agency opted to wait for years of additional study before making new rules.
State environmental regulators are facing military resistance, too. In Colorado, California, Ohio and Minnesota, the services are fighting state efforts to restrict the future use of contaminated military property. In California, Florida, Hawaii and Alaska, the military has challenged the authority of state officials to fine the armed forces for pollution problems.
•The EPA is cutting efforts to make the military comply with environmental laws.
•The Pentagon is spending less on cleanups.
If you check out the full article, you can read more about places like Lowry Air Force Base where AF appears to be deciding for itself whether toxic clean-up is really necessary. Or you can check out USA Today’s nifty Flash presentation in which you can view the clean-up status of 130 military-owned Superfund sites in 39 states, state by state (OK, we cheated, you can launch it from here. <— warning, must have flash installed to view).
note: If any readers have a ton of time on their hands, here’s a project idea. We’d like to post a list of these 130 military EPA Superfund sites, by state. We’ll make it a point to extract all the names and descriptions from the USA Today preso and will post it here when it’s complete. It may be some time before we get to this. If anyone wants to get a jump on it in the meantime, we promise we will not complain. We might even be willing to publicly thank you for your effort. If you’ve got any interest in this project, please let us know.
From Toxnews.org, which is providing daily updates of the contamination situation that has residents alarmed. Still no word on the prospect of vapor risk.
[Download PDF map]
According to the San Jose Mercury News, three formerly toxic sites at the NASA/Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California have been certified as clean by the state Department of Toxic Substances Control. If you read the fine print, you’ll see that EPA is still monitoring at least one of the sites due to ongoing/current TCE contamination.
Yep. You read that right. Current TCE contamination=certified as clean + cleanup complete. This certainly is a mixed-up world we live in, isn’t it?
A recent LA Times story about heavy TCE contamination in Southern California mentioned groundwater contamination in Irvine related to the former El Toro Marine base. We’ve also mentioned the Irvine TCE contamination in the past.
What we didn’t realize was that this plume stretches under a reasonably populated area of Irvine. The map we’ve seen shows an elementary school, apartments, recreation facilities, and more sitting over the plume. So we wonder: Is the TCE plume a current danger to the population? Has vapor intrusion into buildings been explored and ruled out?
TCE readings (groundwater) from the plume have been as high as 140 ppb to 160 ppb*. The plume stretches approximately three miles and covers a total area of 2900 acres. ATSDR conducted a public health assessment in 1993, eventually declaring “At this time, exposure to carbon tetrachloride, chloroform, TCE, PCE, and nitrates-N detected in regional groundwater through incidental ingestion, dermal absorption, and/or inhalation of volatilized contaminants at current levels detected does not represent a public health hazard.”
Fast forward about 13 years, and it appears not everyone is so comfortable with the ATSDR’s convenient conclusions. Toxnews.org, a recently launched website focused on the Woodbridge/Irvine contamination, pulls no punches: “You and your family may be in danger because of a cancer causing plume of TCE from the El Toro Base that’s under your homes, apartments, schools, etc. now!” Check their site for more information, including maps of the contamination area and what appears to be near daily breaking news. For some additional graphics of the TCE plume, have a look at Dissent the Blog.
As always, we’ll try to keep you posted.
* EPA’s 2002 Vapor Intrusion Guidance recommends taking action to rule out vapor intrusion when TCE levels in groundwater exceed 5 ppb.
The San Diego Union Tribune (CA) reports:
Last year, routine semi-annual tests found low levels of trichloroethylene, or TCE, and tetrachloroethylene, or PCE, in groundwater near the landfill.
In an effort to identify the source of the solvents, which are common industrial compounds, further tests were conducted, leading to the discovery of benzene on and off the landfill.
[...].
“Our concern was the solvents might be migrating up to the residences through soil vapors,” [hydrogeologist for the county*, Barry Pulver] said. As a result, 20 soil-vapor samples, at a depth of one to five feet, were taken on Dehia in the Garden Road neighborhood.
TCE and PCE levels were low to nonexistent, but benzene was present in all tests, with peak concentrations of 49 parts per billion on the west side of Dehia and steadily decreasing on the east side.
As the article continues, we are told that regular updates on the investigation will be posted to the County of San Diego’s Department of Environmental Health website.
A quick review of their website leads to the first installment, where you can read a thoughtfully named fact sheet called Monitoring at Poway Landfill.
* hey, isn’t that an old Kenny Rogers song?
So says the LA Times, continuing their excellent coverage (though we must admit, this article ends somewhat strangely. Or is it just us?):
San Gabriel Valley a Hotbed of TCE Contamination
Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties are the most tainted from the toxic industrial solvent.
By Ralph Vartabedian
Times Staff Writer
March 30, 2006
Trichloroethylene contamination has hit almost every state, but none more widely than California. TCE has contaminated water supplies, indoor air near cleanup projects and the air in cities all around the state.
The Environmental Protection Agency has 67 Superfund sites in California with TCE contamination, and state agencies have dozens more, stretching from the shores of the Pacific Ocean to the scrub of the Mojave Desert.
Almost every major military base has a Superfund site with TCE contamination, including Camp Pendleton and Edwards Air Force Base. The Superfund program involves some of the most contaminated sites, usually at dumps, former military bases or closed industrial facilities. TCE was used by the military to degrease metal.
The federal government permits no more than 5 parts per billion of TCE in water. In California, 243 wells have reported violations of the 5-ppb standard from 1997 to 2004, according to California Department of Health Services. Many of those wells have been shut down. In some cases, water agencies use cleaner supplies to dilute the TCEcontaminated water.
The biggest areas of pollution are Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties.
More than 30 square miles of the San Gabriel Valley, about 18% of it, lie in one of four Superfund sites in which the main contaminants are TCE and its close chemical cousin perchloroethylene, or PCE, a dry-cleaning agent. Much of the contamination has been traced to defense contractors. Among the cities affected by the contamination are Azusa, West Covina, City of Industry, El Monte and Alhambra.
The contaminated aquifer in the San Gabriel Valley supplies water for more than 1 million residents, though that water tapped by local agencies must meet the federal and state safety limit of 5 parts per billion, according to the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board.
A cleanup effort over the last 20 years has cost $120 million and will continue for decades, according to Kathleen Salyer, a Superfund manager at the EPA. The operation pumps and filters 37 million gallons of polluted water at Whittier Narrows every day, ensuring it meets the 5-parts-per-billion TCE standard.
The San Fernando Valley is also over a large TCE plume that is grouped into three separate Superfund sites that have cost $150 million to clean up so far. The plume extends for four miles and contaminates water supplies for 800,000 residents.
Much of the pollution was traced to the former Lockheed Corp. aircraft facilities in Burbank. Major litigation during the 1980s and 1990s, in which residents claimed they were poisoned, was settled out of court or dismissed. The pollution has forced water agencies to abandon half of their wells in the area. Although TCE still affects city development projects, Burbank Vice Mayor Todd Campbell said the pollution no longer stirred up significant community activism.
The California Department of Toxic Substances Control runs 40 military base cleanup projects in Southern California, about half of which involve TCE contamination, said John Scandura, who works in the agency’s office of military facilities.
The former El Toro Marine Base in Tustin, which is being redeveloped into a regional park and luxury housing, is among those cleanup projects. About 900 acres of heavily contaminated land will remain under Navy control for future cleanup.
The effort at Tustin mirrors plans around the country to build homes and office complexes close to contamination sites. One hitch with such redevelopment is the potential for high concentrations of TCE vapors that can permeate indoor air. A 2001 EPA draft risk assessment would have established tight limits on cleanups if such vapors were found inside homes.
The assessment suggested that individuals faced an elevated risk of cancer at TCE vapor levels from 0.017 to 1.7 micrograms per cubic meter, a level that is often exceeded in homes near TCE contamination sites, said Lenny Seigel, director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight in Mountain View. TCE can vaporize from the ground and seep into homes through foundations.
To reduce such indoor air pollution, the EPA has already tightened cleanup requirements at some Superfund sites and forced polluters to pay for ventilation systems to purify indoor air.
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