Bad news for every nose that's ever twitched at the savage stench rising off the Choccolocco Wastewater Treatment Plant in Oxford:
This smell is going to linger, longer.
In February 2000, a contractor found PCBs in 60,000 cubic yards of excavated dirt at the treatment plant, which lies just south of Interstate 20 in Oxford. The discovery and the resulting regulatory maelstrom brought a $6.5 million upgrade - intended in part to eliminate the overpowering smell that emanates from the plant at times - to an abrupt halt.
Today, some 18 months later, the project is still on hold, the piles of PCB-laden dirt still on site, and the smell as strong as ever. And that's the way it's going to be for a while, the parties involved say.
"We're a long way from doing anything big (at the plant)," said Jim Miller, general manager of Anniston Water Works, which operates the Choccolocco plant.
Solutia, a Monsanto spin-off that manufactured PCBs from 1929 to 1971, has borne much of the responsibility for devising a sampling and cleanup plan. The company is awaiting the laboratory results of soil samples taken at the treatment plant, according to Solutia's manager of remedial projects, Craig Branchfield.
With that data in hand, Branchfield said, "The next step will be to sit down with the engineers at the treatment plant and hopefully work cooperatively with them to identify the best path forward."
While the treatment plant construction has remained on hold, PCBs have been detected, assessed and cleaned up at other local sites. PCB-contaminated dirt found on three of Oxford's Recreation Drive softball fields in July 2000, five months after the treatment plant dirt was found, was cleaned up by Solutia by April of this year.
The timing of the discovery of contaminated dirt sped the ball field remediation forward, according to Steve Cobb of the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, or ADEM. PCBs at the softball fields were discovered while it was still in the ground, he said, while the treatment plant dirt was piled high before they were detected.
"The PCB dirt at the ball field was found and was able to be addressed in the proper manner from the beginning," Cobb said. "In this other case, the dirt was disturbed and the pile was created."
The timing muddied the enforcement and regulatory waters and lengthened the process, he said.
From the time ADEM gives the go-ahead for construction to resume - and no one was willing to hazard a guess as to when that would be - relief from the smell will be at least six months off, according to Miller. He said it will take at least that long to build an enclosure for the headworks, and install a scrubber to handle the foul fumes.
"I've been in this business 26 years and I know these things take time," Miller said. "But we're approaching the time we need to get on with it, there's no question about it."
Oxford Mayor Leon Smith, who said he hears plenty of complaints about the smelly plant in his bailiwick, couldn't agree more.
"You got people walking out of these hotels and asking 'What's that smell?' " Smith said. "That's not a nice thing to have put on you all the time."
