Anniston Army Depot officials faced a record-setting crowd of residents who questioned them about chemical threats to local drinking water at a Monday night meeting.
The recent discovery of a high amount of trichloroethylene (TCE), in an Army-dug monitoring well located halfway between the depot and Anniston’s drinking water supply, caused the quarterly meeting of the Restoration Advisory Board — the volunteer group that monitors the Anniston Army Depot’s Superfund groundwater cleanup — to become a room-overflowing event.
At least 105 people — including residents, citizen board members, state and federal officials and Army contractors — packed the 6 p.m. meeting at the Calhoun County Administrative Building.
During the meeting, officials from the Army and Anniston Water Works & Sewer Board pledged that TCE contamination, spreading from the depot’s southeastern industrial area into the groundwater in the Coldwater/Bynum area, would be stopped from causing a problem with local drinking water supplies, and in particular, Coldwater Spring.
“I am the guy who is legally responsible,” said Jim Miller, president and chief officer of the Anniston water works, which also supplies auxiliary water to Oxford, Hobson City, Weaver and unincorporated areas of Calhoun County.
He told the crowd that, if the TCE levels at Coldwater Spring exceeded the federal drinking water standard of 5 parts per million, “You will be notified within 24 hours.”
But grassroots activists as well as several members of the Anniston Army Depot’s citizen board, called the Restoration Advisory Board, raised questions about the Army’s handling of the TCE contamination and asked whether the Army will consider increasing its monitoring efforts in the impacted area of Coldwater/Bynum.
Army officials said the best way to gather accurate data on the spread of contamination is to collect groundwater samples once in the spring, and once in the fall.
A handful of residents, several of whom are members of western Anniston’s Community Against Pollution (CAP) activist group, complained that the Army has not adequately explained to them potential impact of the TCE contamination, particularly in light of the health concerns about PCB exposures in the Anniston area.
“There are a lot of people who are contaminated,” said Kathy Jackson, a Hobson City mayoral candidate and environmental activist. She said she thinks the Army should hold additional public meetings about the TCE contamination.
CAP president David Baker said the news about TCE has frightened people. “My phone was flooded … people are more concerned about health effects,” he said.
He noted that TCE exposure has been linked to liver and kidney problems and that the Environmental Protection Agency has considered lowering the allowable drinking water standard for TCE below the current level of 5 parts per billion. (The highest ever detection of TCE in the Anniston water supply has been 4.1 PPB, and the average detection is 3 PPB).
In response, Ted Simon, an Environmental Protection Agency toxicologist, said that “5 PPB remains a protective level.”
Simon explained that TCE recently underwent the most extensive toxicity evaluation ever completed by EPA. The agency’s water division is studying the TCE drinking water standard, but there are “no plans at present” to lower the current standard, he said.
Also during the meeting, an Army contractor showed pictures of TCE treatment — air stripping towers — in use in Huntsville.
The contractor, Tom Walters, of CH2M Hill Corporation, in Montgomery, said the air stripping towers are a “proven technology” to reduce TCE levels far below the drinking water standard.
An Army project manager also explained the ongoing revisions to the emergency plan for unsafe TCE in the water supply.
She said the Army is discussing the possibility of paying to install air stripping towers at the Coldwater Spring water treatment plant if the average levels of TCE in the spring begin to trend above 4 PPB.
Susan Abston, the Army’s project manager for the Anniston Army Depot’s Superfund site, said all of the Army’s monitoring wells in the Coldwater/Bynum area will be resampled in September.
The Army is now collecting results of sampling on 72 private wells in the area (which have all tested clean in the past) and additional testing will be done by the Environmental Protection Agency to confirm the recent data collected from the spring sampling event, which included the high test result.
The Anniston Army Depot’s contaminated Southeast Industrial Area was listed on the National Priorities List in 1989, after decades of dumping TCE and other similar contaminants in lagoons and ditches.
