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File this under questionable legal tactics: According to The Sun News (Myrtle Beach, SC), AVX filed recent court documents seeking to stick residents and other property owners, some of whom have sued AVX, with part of the tab from AVX’s TCE investigation and clean-up:
The electronics manufacturer filed a proposed amended complaint last week in federal court that would make those property owners subject to federal laws that require shared liability for environmental contamination.
That means property owners living near AVX could be forced to pay the manufacturer a prorated share of whatever amount AVX spends for “investigations, containment, removal or mitigation of the contamination at the properties,” according to the proposed complaint.
That amount could be measured in the millions of dollars.
AVX also wants property owners to pay “interest at the maximum rate allowable by law” for any amount they might owe to the manufacturer.
A judge has not made a ruling on the proposed complaint.
Gene Connell, a lawyer representing property owners near AVX’s headquarters at 801 17th Ave. S., said the proposal is an unconscionable scare tactic.
“It’s audacious that AVX would try to blame its pollution on the poor people who’ve worked all their lives for their homes,” Connell said. “These are innocent landowners.”
[...]
AVX, in its proposed complaint, wants a federal judge to rule that contamination has not damaged any property near the manufacturer’s headquarters because the TCE eventually can be removed from the groundwater.
[...]
AVX also wants a judge to rule that property owners are entitled to no compensation for any possible damage to their land or property values resulting from the contamination.
Though we’re reluctant to play armchair legal quarterback without seeing the court-filed documents (yeah, we’ll do it anyway), we’d say the first part of the complaint, the move to pin costs on property-owners, may be designed to discourage public participation in litigation against AVX (almost as if to say, “Hold us accountable and you’ll literally pay for it.”)
The latter two issues, that no property was damaged and that owners aren’t entitled to compensation for certain damages, sound to us like they depend on questions of fact that a trial must ultimately decide. But we are not attorneys nor familiar with all the applicable facts or laws in this case, so really, what do we know?
Read the full story at MyrtleBeachOnline.com.
Investigative journalist Michael Collins alerted us to this news about newly disclosed TCE detects in Runkle Canyon near where KB Homes has plans to build:
KB Homes had hoped to build 461 residences in the 1,595-acre canyon, but those plans have been delayed since the summer of 2006 when Southwick and a cadre of residents who call themselves the “Radiation Rangers” (See: “Dirty Business,” Nov. 1, 2007) questioned the safety of the project.
[…]
The Reporter has obtained a December 2007 study of offsite pollution around SSFL prepared by an Arcadia-based environmental engineering firm MWH for Boeing, NASA and the Department of Energy which shows that TCE has been detected in approximately 10 percent of several dozen groundwater samples collected on Runkle Canyon property.
[…]
Around 1.73 million gallons of TCE were used at [Santa Susana Field Laboratory] as a solvent to hose down rocket engines, as the Reporter first revealed during its investigation of the Runkle Canyon-adjacent Ahmanson Ranch development. That project tanked over toxic troubles in 2003 before becoming state park land (See: “Air Apparent,” Feb.13, 2003). Approximately 530,000 gallons of the carcinogen, which is a volatile organic compound, have seeped into the area’s groundwater. With the current rate of remediating TCE being less than 10 gallons a year at SSFL, it will take more than 50,000 years to clean up.
Read more in Down the Test Tubes at the Ventura County Reporter (CA). For additional documents that Michael uncovered and ongoing developments in the Runkle Canyon story, see his investigative environmental news website at EnviroReporter.com.
KVAL Channel 13, a CBS station in Eugene, OR, has the following story posted on their website:
From 2004 to 2006, air samples were taken from homes in the Trainsong area. The results showed crawl-spaces filled with high amounts of cancer-causing agents from tainted groundwater.
Precautionary measures were taken for those homeowners. Now comes the task of determining if those measures worked.
“I didn’t know there was a problem until last year,” said Trainsong resident, Glenda Carroll.
Carroll lived in the Trainsong neighborhood with her husband for almost twenty years. She says he died last last January from kidney failure.
“They say kidney failure is one of the things that this causes. I can not tell you how many cats I’ve had that have died of kidney failure in this house,” said Carroll.
Carroll lives in one of ten homes being tested for the presence of the chemicals TCE and PCE.
Officials reportedly believe the contamination came from Union Pacific Railway maintenance that was conducted across the street from the affected area. For the rest of the story, see here.
From today’s Press & Sun-Bulletin (Binghamton, NY):
State environmental officials are seeking permission from property owners to begin testing in and under about 80 homes south of June Street in February and March, as the next phase of a TCE probe begins in an area encompassing about 400 properties.
Lori O’Connell, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Conservation, outlined more details this week about the scope of the investigation, which will include an industrial site on the north end of Badger Avenue and its affect on the surrounding neighborhood.
The area extends from West Endicott into the Town of Union.
[...]
Officials have scheduled a public meeting at 7 p.m. Jan. 23 at Union-Endicott High School to outline plans and answer questions about the investigation around Badger Avenue.
Read the full story here.
According to this report from Midland Reporter-Telegram (TX), the Midessa Ground Water Plume may soon be added to the Superfund list:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is looking for a responsible party or parties in west Midland County groundwater contamination and will make them pay for the cleanup if they are found, an EPA official says.
Remedial Project Manager Vince Malott of Dallas said the public comment period ended in November and his agency may put the project on its national “Superfund” list in late March or April.
“We have an enforcement officer working with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality on potential leads to where the (contamination) source originated,” Malott said on Monday. “We’re still searching for the likely source and don’t have a lead we can announce.
“Once we get to that point, we will send the responsible party a notice and give them an opportunity to reply. We’re avoiding using taxpayers’ dollars if we can find viable financially responsible partners.”
[...]
When the situation was first announced in September, [well] water was reported to contain MCLs of dichloroethene, trichloroethene, dichlorothane and tetrachloroethene — all solvents that possibly had been used for degreasing or breakdown products disposed of unsafely.
TCEQ said the water supplies of 168 people were contaminated, including residents of Midessa Oilpatch RV Park and private wells just east of the Midland-Ector County line.
Read the full story here.
Note: Though EPA’s website is light on details, it tell us that PCE was detected in wells at concentrations as high as 1200ppb. Like TCE, the federal action level for PCE in water wells is 5ppb. As though this wasn’t bad enough, there were 3 other toxins found in these wells, including TCE (at what levels, the EPA does not say). Perhaps more revealing, however, is EPA’s note that:
There is no muncipal city water supply available to this rural sector of Midland county currently, or for the foreseable future. TCEQ has not yet defined the outer boundary of the plume.
Makes us wonder what the affected residents are drinking, bathing, and cooking with. Then there’s the question of how safe their air is. With significantly elevated levels of toxins running underground and seeping into wells, surely vapor intrusion must be a concern. What are the chances residents have been warned?
Can trees help us remediate TCE? This story comes from today’s Journal and Courier (Lafayette, IN):
Purdue helping to remove pollutants using poplars
January 14, 2008
The news
Purdue University researchers and Chrysler LLC are collaborating on a project using modified poplar trees to eliminate pollutants from a former oil-storage facility near Kokomo.
In laboratory experiments, the trees have been shown to be capable of absorbing trichloroethylene, or TCE, and other pollutants. The pollutants are then turned into harmless byproducts.
The study
Richard Meilan, a Purdue associate professor of forestry and natural resources with Purdue’s Hardwood Tree Improvement and Regeneration Center and the Center for Tree Genetics, co-authored a study published last fall that showed poplar cuttings could remove 90 percent of TCE from a solution in one week.
The trees are called transgenic poplars because they have an inserted gene that aids the breakdown of TCE and other environmental pollutants.
TCE is the most common groundwater pollutant on Superfund sites and causes various human health problems when in the water or air.
The study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The process
Meilan believes the poplars will be able to absorb the TCE from the site with their roots. Peter’s Pond was contaminated by oil stored there in the 1960s. The oil is now within 10 feet of the surface, easily reachable by poplar roots.
There is concern by some that the inserted genes could escape the trees and invade other natural tree populations, but Meilan said he’s trying to make sure that isn’t the case by removing the trees before they reach sexual maturity.
“It is legitimate to be concerned about transgenic plants, but we are taking comprehensive steps to ensure that our transgenes don’t escape into the environment,” Meilan said.
Yesterday brought us the introduction of the Toxic Chemical Exposure Reduction Act by Senators Clinton, Dole, Boxer, Lautenberg, and Kerry. Here are the main provisions of the 15-page bill:
The Act establishes that the EPA must:
- Publish a health advisory for trichloroethylene that fully protects, with an adequate margin for safety, the health of susceptible populations;
- Propose and impose a national primary drinking water standard that protects sensitive populations and is set as close to the maximum contaminant level goal for trichloroethylene as is feasible;
- Enforce the requirement that all qualified drinking water monitoring systems accommodate the new drinking water standards proposed and imposed above;
- Require monitoring of water supplies currently in the path or proximity of migrating TCE;
- Require that Consumer Confidence Reports include the known health risks of TCE exposure and detail any TCE discovered in the monitored water supplies.
With respect to Vapor Intrusion, the EPA must:
–
We have some thoughts to share on several of these provisions, and will be back shortly to do so.
Meantime, we have emailed representatives for Senator Dodd and Senator Lieberman, both from Connecticut, and have asked if the Senators will be able to support the TCE Reduction Act. So far…no reply. But it’s only been a day.
We’ll keep you posted.
Big day in the TCE world today, marked by 1 word: LEGISLATION.
Okay, maybe two words: PROPOSED LEGISLATION
Today, Senators Clinton, Dole, Boxer, Lautenberg, and Kerry introduced a bill that proposes to:
Amend the Safe Water Drinking Act to protect the health of susceptible populations, including pregnant women, infants, and children, by requiring a health advisory, drinking water standard, and reference concentration for trichloroethylene vapor intrusion, and for other purposes.
Cited formally as the “Toxic Chemical Exposure Reduction Act of 2007″ (get it? “TCE Reduction Act”?) the Senators have proposed that EPA revise the national standard for allowable TCE levels in public drinking water, create a national standard for allowable TCE in indoor air, and enforce nationwide monitoring and cleanups based on these new standards. All of this is proposed to occur within the 3-18 months of the bill’s enactment.
Since the details of the bill are interesting and worth comment, we’ll post them here shortly. For now, we’ll say this: We think this bill, if passed and enforced, could go a long way towards better protecting the public from TCE.
Of course, if the EPA chooses to or is forced to play politics, we also envision ways that they could still stagnate change even if the bill is passed…
As we said, more to come from us on this. Meantime, you can download the full bill here.
Lastly, we are in the process of contacting Senators from our home state, Connecticut, to ask for their support for this legislation. We strongly urge readers to contact their state Senators as well.
(If any readers do contact their Senators for support, please consider letting us know the kind of feedback you receive. If we’re able to keep track of whom has pledged their support, we’ll keep readers posted by running updates on this blog. What could possibly be more exciting?)
UPDATE: For the official press release from Senator Clinton announcing the proposed legislation, see here.
From two Friday’s ago, the Lodi News-Sentinel (CA) ran this story:
As litigation from Lodi’s groundwater contamination case comes to a close, cleanup has already begun.
News-Sentinel reporter Matt Brown recently discussed the status of the remaining litigation and the cleanup with City Attorney Stephen Schwabauer.
In 1989, officials discovered that the groundwater in some areas of Downtown was contaminated with the chemicals PCE and TCE, which are used as industrial solvents and in dry cleaning. The chemicals spread out to five different plumes in the city’s groundwater.
In the mid-1990s, the city’s outside attorney, Michael Donovan, crafted a plan to sue insurance companies of local businesses, including the News-Sentinel, for their role in the contamination. After a number of negative court rulings, the City Council in 2004 fired Donovan and City Attorney Randy Hays.
The city has since sued Donovan for fraud and malpractice, and Donovan has countersued, claiming the city owes him millions in legal fees.
The city has sought to settle out of court with the parties responsible for the contamination.
Read the interview here.
Upon further review of this announcement in the PA Bulletin from several months ago, 2 things struck us. First, more from the bulletin (emphasis is ours):
Bottled Water: This alternative provides for the Department to furnish commercial bottled water to the impacted residences. Bottled water would be delivered regularly to each residence that has a water supply contaminated in excess of the Maximim Contaminant Level (MCL) of 5 ppb for TCE. This would effectively remove the risk posed by ingestion, but would not remove the risk posed by inhalation and dermal contact.
Point-Of-Entry Water Treatment Units: This alternative provides for the Department to install carbon treatment systems on the supply line of private wells that are contaminated. The carbon treatment systems would effectively remove the risk posed by ingestion, inhalation and dermal contact. [TCE Blog note: Not entirely true, see below]
Here’s what struck us:
First, PA DEP acknowledges that the policy of providing bottled water to TCE-exposed residences is not designed to protect people from the risks of direct skin contact with the TCE-contaminated water nor from inhaling toxic TCE vapors. Even if families are being told that non-drinking use of the poisonous water is “harmless” (as told to us by a resident), it appears PA DEP knows better. Why they wouldn’t expressly discourage such use and warn residents of the practical dangers remains a mystery to us.
Second, DEP claims that carbon filters placed on private water supply lines will protect residents from inhaling toxic TCE vapors (”…would effectively remove the risk posed by ingestion, inhalation and dermal contact”.) This is an unfortunate overstatement that ignores the well-established risks of vapor intrusion.
While it may be true that carbon filters will reduce the level of TCE coming into each filtered home from the water supply itself, this does nothing to stop toxic vapors from entering homes as they evaporate directly from the giant TCE plume below. No matter how many carbon filters DEP installs or bottles of water it provides, every family residing above or near the plume remains at risk of breathing toxic TCE vapors today. This risk has quietly persisted for as long as the TCE plume has plagued this community.
We hope the residents have been getting the full story from DEP. Right now, that is far from clear.
The Wilmington News Journal (DE) reports:
Solvent-tainted wells in Millsboro could drain as much as $10 million
from a Delaware pollution cleanup fund — more than 10 percent of
expected spending for efforts statewide through 2012, state documents show.
Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control officials hope
to quickly shift the costs to those responsible for the contamination of
trichlorethylene, or TCE. But agency planners said the fast-moving plume
requires immediate action because it threatens shallow aquifers, public
and private wells and nearby waterways.
Officials also are monitoring risks in buildings above the contamination
as small amounts of toxic vapors trickle upward through the soil.
The story has us wondering: How often do initial clean-up proposals accurately predict the eventual total cost of clean-up? If you know, please comment or contact us.
You can read the rest of the Millsboro story here.
The Houston Chronicle (TX) reports:
A jury will resume deliberations Monday in a criminal air pollution case that accuses Citgo Petroleum Corp. of knowingly breaking federal air quality laws at its Corpus Christi refinery.
Lawyers presented final arguments on Friday after a grueling and technical trial that began May 18. Jurors deliberated Friday afternoon, then went home for the weekend.
The case specifically involves allegations that open-air storage tanks at Citgo’s East Plant refinery emitted illegal amounts of benzene, which research has linked to cancer. More broadly, however, the case tests criminal enforcement of the Clean Air Act.
Although other criminal indictments under the act have resulted in guilty pleas, the Citgo case is the first to go to trial alleging emissions violations, prosecutors said.
“The question is whether companies like Citgo, who blatantly violate the law over a period of time, will be held accountable,” said Justice Department lawyer Howard Stewart, lead prosecutor in the case.
The Bradford Era (PA) reports:
The Department of Environmental Protection has named a third responsible party in the contamination of the ground near drinking water sources in Lewis Run.
The Control Chief Corp. signed the agreement that it will pay a total of $110,000 to the state’s Hazardous Sites Cleanup Act Fund that settles their liability in the contamination.
[...]
This is the third company the DEP has reached settlements with – the others are McCourt Label and Tronox, formerly known as Kerr-McGee.
[...]
From 1978 to 1998, Control Chief, which has its headquarters in Bradford, owned property in Lewis Run and operated an electronic equipment manufacturing facility.
When another company bought the property and an environmental assessment was conducted, chlorinated solvents typically used as degreasing agents were found in the soil and groundwater. The chemicals included tetrachloroethylene (PCE), trichloroethylene (TCE) and cis-1,2-dichloroethylene. The situation has resulted in the borough having to hook up to Bradford City water to supply its residents with safe drinking water.
Tarbell said the DEP is not actively pursuing additional responsible parties at this time.
Read the full story here.
According to this report in The Ithaca Journal (NY):
Emerson Power Transmission met the first deadline outlined for the company in a recent letter from the Department of Environmental Conservation. The company, which is in the process of evaluating remediation for 25 possibly contaminated Areas of Concern on its South Aurora Street property, was asked to schedule a site visit by June 8.
Diane Carlton, a DEC spokesperson, said a conversation was held on June 6 that met the requirement.
“We have a meeting set up with them to discuss the pertinent issues in the letter,” she said.
Emerson has been actively working to remediate its South Hill site since trichloroethylene, or TCE, contamination was found still to be leaking from a fire-water reservoir about three years ago. The leak was first identified about 20 years ago.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation’s local efforts regarding TCE and Emerson Power Transmission look to be entering into a long overdue era. Twenty years after a TCE leak was discovered and three years after the severity of the spill was upgraded, the DEC is setting immediate goals for Emerson to rectify the problem.
[...]
We are cautiously optimistic that the DEC is entering into a new era with faster, tougher and more stringent cleanup standards. That will benefit this area in the Emerson cleanup and beyond.
Read it here.
The Sacramento Bee (CA) reports:
State health officials are considering a proposal that would have Rancho Cordova residents relying for the first time on treatment technologies to remove rocket fuel chemicals from their drinking water.
The proposed change in contaminant cleanup strategy comes as concentrations of chemicals are creeping up in several Rancho Cordova drinking-water wells.
The fixes, however, are expected to be completed before the contamination reaches unsafe levels, utility and state officials said.
[...]
The contaminants are perchlorate, an oxidizing component of solid rocket propellant known to cause thyroid disorders and NDMA — n-nitro-sodimethylamine — a “probable” cancer-causing combustion product of liquid rocket fuel, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The chemicals are linked to historic disposal practices at Aerojet. In the 1950s through 1970s, the defense contractor disposed of residual rocket fuel and metal-cleaning solvents in unlined open pits, allowing the wastes to seep through the soil and into the groundwater tapped for Rancho Cordova homes.
The most pervasive Aerojet pollutant is trichloroethylene (TCE), an industrial solvent that has been linked to brain damage, liver cancer, skin diseases and immune disorders.
Read the full story.
The Daily Press (Hamptons Road, VA) reports:
A cancer-causing industrial solvent has been found coursing in huge levels through the water table under Naval Weapons Station Yorktown.
One test showed the trichloroethylene, or TCE, at 18,000 parts per billion, or ppb. A follow-up test put it at 3,900 ppb.
By a quirk of geology, the water table drains into Indian Field Creek, which flows directly into the York River.
Years after those tests, the TCE level is now 800 ppb. But the landfill thought to be creating the pollution has yet to be entirely cleaned up, despite the off-the-charts sample data.
TCE is just one of many serious pollution problems at the secretive Navy base. More than 30 polluted sites have been identified, and about half have been cleaned up.
Read more here.
Or check out EPA’s NPL site narrative, ATSDR’s Public Health Assessment (can you guess the conclusion?), or Virginia DEQ’s site fact sheet [PDF, HTML].
This was published over a year ago. We thought it relevant again given recent news and activity:
We just received the following reader question by email:
I have read several recent newspaper articles that state DOD has identified 1,400 DOD sites that are contaminated with TCE. Do you happen to have a copy of or know where I can obtain the underlying documentation for that statement?
Yes. The documentation is available here (as we first reported in March 2005). If you follow the link, download the powerpoint presentation, and find slide # 10, here’s what you’ll see (click slide to enlarge):
Update: You may also recall, this is the same presentation in which the Air Force calculates DOD’s current cost of TCE clean-up at $5 billion. They speculate that this cost could increase by over $5 billion more if TCE is officially declared more dangerous than previously thought or regulated any further because of it. Air Force would bear $1.25 billion of this cost increase. Here’s what those slides looks like:
The Sarasota Herald Tribune (FL) posted this excellent graphic of the Tallevast clean-up (includes map, geohydrological layers, explanation of pump and treat, and more). Unfortunately, the accompanying news is less excellent:
Cleaning up the majority of the polluted ground water in Tallevast could take 30 years, and getting it all could take a century, Lockheed Martin officials say. But some experts fear that the Tallevast pollution will never be cleaned up completely.
Read more.
A friend of the blog gave us a state-by-state list of U.S. EPA Superfund sites where trichloroethylene (TCE) is a contaminant of concern. We have made the list available for public download.
Note: We attempted to post a summary table as we did with the RCRA sites, but it was not formatting correctly, so we temporarily removed it. Meantime, here’s a high level summary of the data (when we can fix the table glitch, we’ll re-post it):
- 76% of the Superfund sites have TCE contamination (432 of 566)
- 17% of Superfund sites with TCE contamination are DoD facilities (75 of 432), 20% are some sort of federal facility (89 of 432)
- 83% of federal facility superfund sites are contaminated with TCE (89 of 106), 84% of these are DOD sites (75 of 106)
- Source: CERCLIS3/Superfund Reporting Center 06/13/2006
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