Despite Solutia management's assertions early this week that properties the company has targeted for reuse in western Anniston are "clean," Solutia's cleanup official says the company will have to further evaluate those areas for PCBs.
State regulators have said Solutia must do more testing of the properties, which are near the chemical plant. The properties include a former laundromat, a razed neighborhood, a pawnshop, a former car company and a former auto garage.
Solutia has proposed a revitalization project for the properties that would include an economic development center, a farmers' market and walking trails. The properties were bought out by the company in the mid-1990s due to PCB pollution.
Solutia's remediation manager, Craig Branchfield, said Friday that there are still "spot areas" at the former auto garage that have PCB levels of 1 to 5 parts per million.
Even if the state approves the Solutia revitalization projects, the properties also could be re-evaluated later under Superfund.
A proposed EPA consent decree, now being reviewed by the agency following a 60-day public comment period, calls for Solutia to conduct a Superfund-style remedial investigation and risk assessment of the entire PCB site.
PCB trial plaintiff attorney Donald Stewart said he believes several of the properties included in the revitalization proposal still are contaminated. He said that tests performed by his consultants show that at least one of the properties - the former Swift Motor Company Building, on Clydesdale, now proposed by Solutia as a future farmer's market - has PCB contamination exceeding 10 parts per million.
Ten parts per million is the emergency cleanup standard for residential areas. No standard has been set for industrial or commercial areas.
Stewart also said the auto garage - the former Miller property on 10th Street and Clydesdale - is adjacent to the spot where an EPA air monitor recorded the highest air levels of PCB in western Anniston in 2000.
Branchfield said he could not immediately provide Solutia's PCB test results for the Miller property, but he said that Solutia has cleaned up soil and a PCB-contaminated drainage ditch running through the property.
Solutia's proposed revitalization plan - called the Nehemiah Project after the Old Testament prophet who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem in 52 days - has been criticized by western Anniston activists and some residents.
Community Against Pollution president David Baker said he will fight the project, which he said he fears Solutia will push through before EPA approves a full risk evaluation for contaminated areas of western Anniston. "The people are outraged," he said.
It is not clear whether EPA or ADEM will take lead authority for the cleanup at the Solutia facility. EPA has the lead role for the residential cleanup.
Following upon a recent rift over EPA's proposed decree, which stripped the state of its lead role in the facility and waterway cleanup, state and federal regulators are now renegotiating the agencies' overlapping roles, officials said.
The rules
Potentially, any final cleanup measures proposed for the properties included in Solutia's Nehemiah Project will be submitted for public comment by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management.
The company hasn't submitted to ADEM or EPA a final cleanup or interim measures plan for any of the properties.
Branchfield said the company's "first step" was to present the plan to the community.
"The (cleanup) work will get done," he said.
Once Solutia submits a final cleanup plan for the properties, the company will have to seek a modification of its PCB hazardous waste cleanup permit, said Chip Crockett, chief of ADEM's industrial facilities section.
One of the requirements for granting a permit modification is a public comment period, he said.
ADEM officials said they support "beneficial reuse" of the properties in western Anniston.
They noted, however, that cleanup standards for commercial and industrial properties are usually less restrictive than residential cleanup standards.
For example, ADEM uses the EPA Region 9 Preliminary Remediation Goals (PRGs) as a guide to set soil action levels. Although a screening level is not a "de facto" cleanup standard, the Region 9 PRGs for surface soil PCB contamination at industrial sites are 9.4 PPM for PCB exposure through inhalation, 1.5 PPM for dermal exposure, 2.9 PPM for ingestion, and 1 PPM for all routes of exposure combined.
The Region 9 screening levels are very strict, and "often can be used as a very conservative cleanup, if someone chooses to go that route," said Steve Cobb, chief of ADEM's hazardous waste division.
"These decisions are usually on a piece-by-piece basis," Cobb said. "Our experience at other sites tells us that you don't always have a single remedy for an entire area. If you have conflicting remedies, you have to go back and address it."
He said that using the Region 9 PRGs as final cleanup standards would cause the cleanup to pass "any risk assessment." but if they were used unilaterally at a large site like Anniston's PCB site, they would "likely become cost-prohibitive."
"The complexity of doing all of this is why you haven't seen a final cleanup level for all properties, residential or commercial," he said.
Additional testing
For the first time since Solutia re-engineered the cap on its controversial South Landfill in the mid-1990s, the company soon will test the soil cap for potential PCB contamination.
Also, for the first time since Solutia constructed a storm water retention pond and drainage ditch to collect sediment and storm water from the landfill, the company soon will test those areas for PCBs.
The testing could happen by late summer, Branchfield said.
State regulators asked to do the tests after an EPA team published an evaluation of the PCB landfills and contamination at the Solutia plant in May 2001.
The EPA team raised concerns about the potential for PCB air releases, groundwater migration and residual surface-soil contamination at the landfills.
The southern landfill sits on the northern slope of Coldwater Mountain and contains millions of pounds of PCB-contaminated waste, according to state, federal and company records. The landfill worries some western Anniston residents, who fear that it may be releasing PCBs to the air or contaminating the groundwater.
Activists have criticized the Nehemiah Project due to those fears. One of the main components of the project is planned recreational use of the Sweet Valley/Cobbtown neighborhood, which lies below the landfill across Alabama 202.
Solutia has proposed that the storm water retention pond, which collects surface water drainage from the landfill area, be part of a recreational area. The drawings submitted by Solutia include the pond, encircled by a walking path and bridged by a small dock.
Solutia says it has not detected PCBs in storm water runoff since the company reengineered the landfill cap.
But the EPA team raised concerns that the pond never had been tested.
ADEM asked Solutia this week to conduct subsurface testing on one or more properties included in the proposed Nehemiah Project. Solutia's Branchfield said the company is willing to do those tests.
The tests will include subsurface testing on the properties that are covered with asphalt. "The asphalt may or may not reduce exposure to (PCB-contaminated) soils," said ADEM's Crockett.
"You've got to worry about groundwater and migration," Crockett said.
