The Anniston Army Depot's citizen board will hear updates on the depot's groundwater pollution investigation and emergency planning for local drinking water during a meeting Monday.
The meeting, which is open to the public, will begin at 6 p.m. at the Calhoun County Administrative Building, 1702 Noble St.
The Army has detected an unexpectedly high concentration of trichlorethylene, or TCE, in a groundwater monitoring well halfway between the depot boundary and Coldwater Spring.
TCE, a suspected carcinogen linked to liver and kidney damage, was dumped in ditches and lagoons at the depot for decades. As a result, , the southeastern portion of the depot was added to Superfund's National Priorities List in 1989. The Army continues to pump and treat TCE-contaminated groundwater at the depot and investigate the pathways of TCE contamination in the off-site groundwater.
The depot's Restoration Advisory Board, or RAB, is a volunteer citizen group that monitors the progress of the groundwater TCE investigation at the depot's Superfund site.
Monday night, Army engineers will brief the RAB on three topics: current costs of the Superfund project; an update on the TCE investigation; and the Army's emergency-response plan for drinking water contamination.
The latter includes potential emergency measures at the Anniston Water Works and Sewer Board's water treatment plant at Coldwater Spring. The spring provides most of Anniston's drinking and industrial water and also provides supplementary water to Hobson City, Oxford, Weaver and unincorporated areas of Calhoun County.
So far, Coldwater Spring and the nearby residential wells in Coldwater and Bynum have tested safe for TCE.
Anniston water board assistant manager Rodney Owens said the latest TCE test, pulled almost two weeks ago at the Coldwater pumping station, showed levels no higher than 2 parts per billion. The national drinking water standard for TCE is 5 PPB.
However, the Army's detection of 150 PPB in the groundwater approximately a mile from the depot boundary has prompted accelerated sampling of nearby wells and revisions to the Army's emergency-response plan.
The Army's emergency plan was designed in 1996 and is outdated, depot officials said.
The 1996 plan calls for two-month mandatory cutbacks of up to 20 percent in water usage for residents and industries (including the depot) while TCE air-stripping towers are installed at the Krebs plant.
The plan also recommends potential distribution of bottled water and asks residents "located in the areas of risk" to consume bottled water or boil water before drinking it. If contamination were to be discovered in residential wells, the plan suggests connecting the well users to the Anniston water supply.
The plan also suggests similar emergency steps if unsafe TCE contamination is detected in other drinking water supplies, including Oxford, Lincoln and Talladega.
Those towns were included in the emergency plan after a 1992 dye tracer study indicated a possible groundwater flow from the depot's Superfund site to those areas.
For more information about the Restoration Advisory Board meeting, contact Diane Wilkerson at 831-6648.
