EPA recently added twelve new contamination sites to its Superfund list. TCE is a known contaminant of concern at at least five of the twelve sites. These five TCE sites include:

• Hidden Lane Landfill in Sterling, VA; [see previous TCE Blog coverage]
• Lusher Street Ground Water Contamination in Elkhart, IN;
• Chem-Fab in Doylestown, PA;
• San German Ground Water Contamination in San German, PR;
• Midessa Ground Water Plume in Odessa, TX. [see previous TCE Blog coverage]

Read more here. For new readers arriving here in search of information about TCE contamination at these sites, welcome.

Late in February, the Palladium-Item (IN) reported:

Springwood Lake [in Richmond, Indiana] will remain closed to area fishermen for at least a year and could be closed well beyond that, Richmond park board members were told Thursday.

The reason is contamination, including cancer-causing heavy metals, found in sediment on the lake's floor during testing over the past few years. State officials also believe that contaminants continue to seep into the lake from industrial sites past and present above the lake on the city's northwest side.

Some believe that area may include old industrial dump sites.

State officials told Richmond Mayor Sally Hutton and city park department board members that tests found contaminants including lead, PCBs, cadmium, chromium, cyanide, arsenic and trichloroethylene (a solvent) in the sediment.

[...]

"We do know there is historical contamination (in the lake) and we know there is a need for more investigation," said IDEM spokeswoman Amy Hartsock. "There has not been a fish consumption advisory issued for the lake at this time, but we do support the city's decision to close the lake to fishing."

This is a first for us. We've never heard of Trichloroethylene being discovered in sediments below a lake. We're not saying it doesn't happen, just that it's the first we've heard this kind of story. It raises a number of questions for us:

1. What levels of TCE were discovered in the sediment?
2. If the sediment contains TCE, does that mean the lake water contains TCE?
3. If the lake water contains TCE, is the lake itself a source of toxic TCE vapors (that is, is TCE evaporating from the lake and contaminating the air?)
4. And of course, from where did this TCE come?

Note: We recognize there are other toxins involved here and don't mean to suggest they are unimportant. But as readers know, we have a very narrow focus.

We'll keep you posted as we learn more. Meantime, you can read the full story here.

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.

The Tribune-Star (Terre Haute, IN) reports:

The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed that an area of groundwater in Terre Haute be added to a federal priority list to clean it up before contaminants enter the city’s drinking-water supply.

The EPA proposed the contamination site be added to its Superfund National Priorities List, which would assist in funding and cleanup.

The site contains contaminates tetrachloroethylene and trichloroethylene.

The chemicals are being detected at a low level in the city’s drinking water, said EPA remedial project manager Jena Sleboda.

The water supply isn’t in immediate danger and the cleanup is being initiated as a preventive measure, she said.

The contaminated groundwater site is about 600 feet long by 160 feet wide, under I. Gurman Container & Supply Corp. at 800 N. Third St.; and Bi-State Products, a now-vacant property that operated at 118 Elm St. from the 1930s to 1980 first as a petroleum storage facility and then as a used oil storage business.

[...]

Mick Hans of the EPA said a 60-day public-comment period is part of the proposal process and he strongly encourages participation. The government considers the feedback from the community before it decides the proposal’s fate.

The government updates the EPA’s Superfund National Priority List twice a year, and it may take six months to two years to get the proposal approved.

[...]

Debbie Gurman, owner of Gurman Container, inherited the business more than two years ago after her husband died, she said.

Gurman said the business does not contaminate groundwater, because its operational procedures have changed.

Gurman said her husband’s grandfather started the business, and it operates in accordance with federal and state regulations. “We have absolutely nothing to do with this,” she said. The business began in 1922. “That’s the thing. The people who were here during the years aren’t here anymore. They didn’t know about this, because there wasn’t regulations back then. … I know everything is fine. We are not contributing to contamination … .”

Gurman’s attorney, Mike Schopmeyer, said, “The company has extended a great deal of money to conduct other tests, which have revealed the source of the plume is likely from another property, not Gurman.”

The EPA stated that from 1940 to 1970, Gurman Container’s standard operational procedure was to open a drum and dump its contents onto the ground and rinse remaining contents into the sewer.

It stored petroleum products and solvents for cleaning parts before distribution, and waste oils were stored in large above-ground tanks, according to the EPA. As for Bi-State Products, “Site contaminants have been detected in the surface and subsurface soils and in the shallow groundwater monitoring wells beneath Bi-State Products,” the EPA stated.

Roger Swafford of Indiana American Water said the company has been working with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management on this cleanup for 23 years.

[...]

--Comments may be e-mailed to: superfund.docket@epa.gov

--Comments may be sent by U.S. mail to: U.S. EPA Region 5, 77 W. Jackson Blvd., Chicago, IL 60604

Read the full story.

The Kokomo Tribune (IN) reports:

For the first time since December 2000, there are signs of human activity at the former Continental Steel main plant site. Workers in white protective suits, wearing protective rubber gloves and boots, are busy analyzing core samples from the contaminated ground.

[...]

June 8, the EPA announced it would spend $3 million on Continental Steel this year to build infrastructure for the eventual dredging of the site's highly contaminated creekbeds. Designated as a "new start," by the EPA, the Continental Steel site was officially placed into the ranks of priority cleanups.

To complete the main plant project, work is expected to proceed in three phases:

• The scientists currently on-site will use core-sample analysis to map out a grid on the site, showing the areas with the highest contamination of carcinogenic volatile organic chemicals in the soil. In particular, they'll be looking for concentrations of trichloroethylene, which was once heavily used as an industrial degreaser.


• The scientists will use the grid information to determine how and where to set up a heat vapor extraction system. The system will pump heat into the ground, which will force the volatile organic chemicals into a series of vacuum wells. The toxic fumes will be drawn out and disposed of.


• Once the volatile organic chemicals have been cleaned up, engineers will cover the entire site with a thick layer of topsoil and clean fill. The "cap" will protect the public from the contaminants still remaining in the ground, such as lead and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Unlike the volatile organic chemicals, those contaminants are considered unlikely to migrate into the groundwater or upward through the soil.

Read more.

...to keep people safer from TCE, please encourage them to contact:



Jody Milanese (millaneese) in Congresswoman Sue Kelly's office at 202-225-5441

The Palladium-Item (Richmond, IN) reports:

Some thought the story of Camp Wapi-Kamigi ended in 1997 when Girl Scouts of Treaty Line Council sold the property because the camp's drinking water was contaminated.

But for Dr. Jeff Quillen and his family, the story is beginning. Quillen has re-opened the camp south of Hagerstown to the public, hoping more memories are made there. He not only believes it's safe for people to be on the property, he and his family and two resident caretakers live there.

"My family cooks with, drinks and bathes with the same water people will be using," Quillen said. "It's monitored quarterly and should there be any mess up we would know it immediately."

[...]

In 1994, contamination by chromium, a suspected carcinogen, and trichloroethylene was discovered in the aquifer providing the camp's drinking water. The contaminants were suspected to have come from the nearby former Dana Corp. plant.

[...]

Providing safe water has been one of the camp's main issues. Contaminated wells have been abandoned and filled in.

Quillen said the contamination is 20 to 30 feet below the surface and unless someone digs that deep, it doesn't affect what happens on the surface.

Read the full story.

From yesterday's Louisville Courier-Journal (KY):

A Corydon (IN) industrial plant may have illegally released into the air tens of thousands of pounds of a toxic chemical associated with nervous-system damage and cancer each year between 1998 and 2003, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency charged yesterday.

Daramic Inc., which makes thin plastic membranes that allow car batteries to work and recharge, employs about 110 people in Harrison County.

The air pollution permit for the plant calls for allowing only 5 percent of its trichloroethylene to escape, but the EPA said 40 percent to 91 percent got away during those years. The allegations are contained in a finding-of-violation document from the agency's Chicago office.

As recently as 2002, the company led the nation in industrial emissions of the chemical with nearly 1.1 million pounds, the vast majority of it from leaks, according to the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory. That is five times more than the second-ranked company.

The company has 30 days to respond to the allegations, which EPA officials described as preliminary. The agency could fine the company as much as $27,500 to $32,500 a day during the six-year period, said William Omohundro, an EPA spokesman.

Read more.

More from the GAO Report, as promised. Please bear in mind:

· 85% of the sites below were discovered 15 yrs ago or more
· over 60% of the potentially eligible sites and over 35% of all sites below report no clean-up activities

---
Table IV.1: Sites Classified as Awaiting an NPL Decision in Each State, by Eligibility for Listing and Status of Cleanup Progress
+
Table VI.1: State Officials’ Assessments of States’ Financial Capabilities to Clean Up Potentially Eligible Sites

State	Number of sites classified as awaiting an NPL decision	Number of sites unlikely to become eligible for the NPL	Number of potentially eligible sites with some cleanup activities	Number of potentially eligible sites with no reported cleanup activities	Number of sites for which no surveys were received	State officials’ assessment of state’s financial capability to clean up potentially eligible sites
Alabama	25	10	7	8	0	Very poor
Alaska	28	14	8	6	0	Excellent
Arizona	34	16	10	8	0	Excellent
Arkansas	4	3	0	1	0	Good
California	a 189	64	51	74	0	Fair
Colorado	30	12	10	6	2	Very poor
Connecticut	290	74	98	118	0	Poor
Delaware	1	1	0	0	0	Excellent
District of Columbia	a 1	0	0	1	0
Florida	269	74	85	110	0	Fair
Georgia	74	39	8	27	0	Poor
Guam	2	2	0	0	0
Hawaii	17	12	4	1	0	Fair
Idaho	16	5	5	6	0	*
Illinois	207	95	43	69	0	Fair
Indiana	54	21	15	18	0	Very poor
Iowa	33	29	4	0	0	Very poor
Kansas	37	28	4	5	0	Very poor
Kentucky	20	15	2	3	0	Good
Louisiana	10	6	4	0	0	Poor
Maine	56	28	17	11	0	Poor
Maryland	20	8	4	8	0	Other b
Massachusetts	a 201	11	19	171	0	Fair
Michigan	50	22	18	10	0	Excellent
Midway Island	1	1	0	0	0
Minnesota	17	6	6	5	0	Good
Mississippi	9	4	1	2	2	Very poor
Missouri	91	73	7	11	0	*
Montana	11	2	7	2	0	Very poor
Navajo Nation	14	0	0	14	0
Nebraska	a 36	16	4	15	1	Very poor
Nevada	12	8	3	1	0	Poor
New Hampshire	42	24	9	9	0	Poor
New Jersey	172	60	49	63	0	Good
New Mexico	15	7	6	2	0	Very poor
New York	a 192	135	15	41	1	*
North Carolina	57	18	21	18	0	Poor
North Dakota	4	2	1	1	0	Poor
Northern Mariana Islands	1	0	1	0	0
Ohio	79	25	23	31	0	Very poor
Oklahoma	7	4	1	2	0	Very poor
Oregon	29	7	6	16	0	Fair
Pennsylvania	73	35	18	20	0	Excellent
Puerto Rico	16	3	4	9	0
Rhode Island	121	14	23	84	0	Poor
South Carolina	45	32	8	5	0	Good
South Dakota	8	6	2	0	0	Other b
Tennessee	102	51	19	32	0	Poor
Texas	21	18	1	2	0	Poor
Utah	48	17	8	16	7	*
Vermont	30	16	5	9	0	Poor
Virginia	22	8	2	12	0	*
Washington	28	11	8	9	0	Fair
West Virginia	11	7	4	0	0	Other b
Wisconsin	53	34	8	11	0	Excellent
Wyoming	1	1	0	0	0
Total	3,036	1,234	686	1,103	13

a California, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, and Nebraska did not respond to surveys. For these states, the data in table IV.1 are based on EPA’s survey responses alone and, for that reason, may be less reliable than for states having responses from both EPA and states. New York provided responses to only a few questions in our survey.

b “Other” indicates that the respondent was uncertain about the state’s financial capability.

* State officials in Idaho, New York, Missouri, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming declined to participate in [the] telephone survey.

The South Bend Tribune reports that the city of South Bend, IN is attempting to purchase an old auto salvage yard to prevent (further ?) contamination of groundwater and nearby wellfields. According to the paper (emphasis, mine):

Although economic development and aesthetics are factors, city officials say environmental concerns are their primary incentive for buying the property. The South Well Field already is threatened by trichloroethylene, or TCE, believed to have leaked from nearby underground storage tanks used by AM General, Toro Corp. and Chippewa Corp., formerly located west and northwest of the field, according to Indiana Department of Environmental Management records.

In response to the Tribune's request to learn more about the city's own "environmental audit" conducted at the site:

...assistant city attorney Tom Bodnar denied the newspaper's request. Bodnar cited state laws that exempt from public view records the city deems as "attorney work product," those that are protected by "attorney-client privilege," and those that are "advisory or deliberative material, are expressions of opinion and are communicated for the purpose of decision-making."

Sounds like a wonderful way to boost public confidence. Full story here.