Members of Alabama’s congressional delegation said Thursday that they will investigate complaints about the federal cleanup of PCB contamination in Anniston.Thursday morning, Anniston and Washington, D.C. environmental groups requested Congressional hearings addressing the Environmental Protection Agency’s cleanup activities in Anniston.
Activists allege that the extent of PCB contamination in Anniston is at least 10 times greater than it is in the Hudson River, where the EPA has mandated a $450 million PCB dredging program. David Baker, the Anniston activist who signed the request, said he feels local residents are “being treated like second class citizens” compared with their counterparts in the Hudson River Valley.
Although they had not seen the request Thursday afternoon, the two Alabama senators said they will ask for an investigation. “In addition, I will ask U.S. Sen. (Barbara) Mikulski, Chair of the Veterans Affairs/Housing and Urban Development subcommittee which has EPA oversight, to hold hearings into this important matter,” said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, in a statement faxed to The Anniston Star.
The investigation comes at a crucial moment in Anniston. A trial is under way in Gadsden in which Monsanto and its spin-off company, Solutia Inc., are accused of polluting people’s bodies and properties with PCBs. The 3,500 plaintiffs also asked the judge to order removal of Solutia’s PCB-containing landfills and dredging of the contaminated waterways.
Also, as early as Feb. 18, EPA is expected to conclude negotiations with Solutia Inc., Monsanto’s spin-off company, regarding a long-term cleanup. EPA has investigated PCB pollution from the former Monsanto plant in western Anniston since 1999, although the agency first learned of PCBs leaking from the plant in the 1970s. The order will delineate long-term cleanup plans for PCB contamination in the Anniston area and will be open to public comment for 30 days. Negotiations between EPA and Solutia regarding the cleanup began at least a year ago.
Baker and Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, requested hearings to determine why EPA “failed to act for decades;” review government documents used to draft the current cleanup plan; and hear independent analysis of what is needed to protect public health and clean up the environment.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Birmingham, has tasked his staff to contact the EPA. “We are making contacts with them now. We hope to hear soon where we need to go and what can be done to correct this,” said Mike Brumas, Sessions’ press secretary.
According to the request from the environmental groups, which was sent to Shelby, Sessions and U.S. Rep. Bob Riley, and simultaneously released to the media, “Monsanto’s ‘voluntary’ agreement with EPA has resulted in only a $40 million remediation program that does not adequately address the cleanup and public health concerns in the Anniston community.”
The letter was signed by Baker, president of Anniston’s Community Against Pollution, and Ken Cook, president of Washing-ton, D.C.’s Environmental Working Group.
One fact that makes the contamination potentially more disturbing in Anniston than it is in the Hudson River is that PCBs have concentrated in a number of residential areas and in people’s blood, according to recent studies.
But regarding Anniston waterways, EPA officials said Thursday that the contamination levels in the Hudson are likely more severe. They also noted that EPA began investigating the Hudson River PCB problem decades before the agency began investigating Anniston’s problem.
Don Rigger, a top official with EPA’s Emergency Response and Removal Branch in Atlanta, defended his agency’s activities, saying that comparing the Hudson and Anniston is a little like “comparing apples and oranges” because the EPA’s involvement in the Hudson has focused on PCBs in fish and sediment and the Anniston work has focused primarily on “direct (PCB) contact threats to people. The cleanups we are focusing on follow that sort of exposure route.”
Yet, Rigger said that the regional EPA will “educate ourselves about the Hudson River.”
“We are going to try to give a better answer,” he said.
Cleanups of the former Monsanto plant and of the contamination in Choccolocco Creek and the Coosa River are not being handled by EPA. Those cleanups are being handled by Solutia under the authority of the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, which had earlier fought against a federal cleanup program.
Also, Solutia is required to spend at least $21 million to clean up the waterways, due to its court settlement with creek and Lake Logan Martin property owners last year.
Shelby said in his statement that he is “deeply concerned about the pollution situation in Anniston. The health and safety of the residents of Anniston and the surrounding area are my first priority. The Environmental Protection Agency has a legal responsibility to ensure that the law has been followed in an appropriate manner and that the citizens of the area are protected from any future contamination. I also believe that companies who create pollution and contamination should be held responsible for any cleanup efforts deemed safe and appropriate, not the American taxpayer.”
If a Congressional hearing is scheduled, it will not be the first one. It will be the second.
In 1971, a Congressional hearing on PCBs included local testimony about extremely high levels of PCBs in Choccolocco Creek fish.
According to a 1971 Anniston Star article, a local wildlife biologist complained in the hearing that the PCB data had been suppressed by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, which tested the fish in 1970.
