EPA Recognizes U.S. Coast Guard for Efficient, Green Cleanup of Curtis Bay Yard Superfund Site

EPA Press Release:

EPA Recognizes U.S. Coast Guard for Efficient, Green Cleanup

of Curtis Bay Yard Superfund Site

BALTIMORE (May 30, 2013)  - The U.S. Coast Guard has completed cleanup construction activity at the Curtis Bay Yard Superfund site in Anne Arundel County, Md., the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today.

EPA provided oversight of the massive 11-year cleanup project and the U.S. Coast Guard led the cleanup effort, which included excavating thousands of tons of contaminated soil and sediment while making use of innovative green practices.

“This cleanup will ensure a healthy environment for the Curtis Bay Yard and the surrounding community, and help with Chesapeake Bay restoration efforts,” said EPA Mid-Atlantic Regional Administrator Shawn M. Garvin.  “Not only did the Coast Guard work quickly and efficiently at this site, but its use of green practices proudly reflects the Coast Guard’s commitment to environmental stewardship.”

The contaminants of concern at the site included semi-volatile organic compounds, metals, polychlorinated biphenyls and dioxin. 

The Coast Guard’s green remediation included recycling materials, creating green space and minimizing hazardous waste.  Overall during the cleanup, 2,616 tons of concrete were recycled and about 25,000 tons of contaminated soil were treated onsite so it could be shipped to a non-hazardous waste landfill.  This saved more than 500,000 truck miles and approximately

$6 million compared to sending the soil to a hazardous waste landfill.  In addition, approximately 20 tons of steel were recycled.

"Eleven years ago, the Coast Guard Yard was placed on the National Priorities List to address contamination from past practices going all the way back to the Yard's start in 1899,” said Captain Richard K. Murphy, Commanding Officer, U.S. Coast Guard Yard. “This began a very productive partnership with EPA and the Maryland Department of the Environment culminating in the remediation of all identified sites. Today, the Yard is a leader in the field of environmental management, and we continue to partner with the EPA and MDE to ensure a healthy environment for the Yard, our neighbors, as well as protecting the vital ecosystem of the Chesapeake Bay."

The Chesapeake Bay benefits from this cleanup in several ways. Low impact storm water designs were used to help absorb water into the ground during heavy rains instead of uncontrolled run-off with potential pollutants. These designs replace solid concrete with porous pavers and add more green space with grass, trees and shrubs.

In addition to using innovative remediation, the Coast Guard also chose to clean up the Yard to the more stringent residential cleanup standards rather than using the industrial standards.  This creates more options for future use of the property.

The Coast Guard Yard, located six miles southeast of downtown Baltimore, is a 113-acre ship repair facility used to design, build and repair state-of-the-art ships and boats.  The facility incorporates many sustainable manufacturing practices including creating its own electricity from landfill gas at an on-site co-generation plant.   The crane electrification project further reduces the Yard’s carbon footprint. 

Superfund Efforts to Clean Waterways Come With a Risk

The following is an excerpt from an article in 

The New York Times
Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Superfund Efforts to Clean Waterways Come With a Risk

By ANTHONY DePALMA

LYNDHURST, N.J. — This is not what a Superfund site is supposed to look like. There are no rusting barrels, no antifreeze-green slime oozing up from the ground. There’s just a deep bend in the serpentine Passaic River, a gaggle of pushy Canada geese and a lone rower in a single scull making good time on the calm, dark waters.

Yet Mile Marker 10.9 on the Passaic is most definitely a toxic hot spot. Testing late last year showed that five acres of shallow mud flats in the river here were highly contaminated with mercury, toxic chemical compounds called PCBs and dioxin, which is known to cause cancer. The discovery has sent environmental officials and a small army of corporations scrambling to remove thousands of cubic yards of sediment with plans to seal the rest beneath a permanent cap, all within the coming year.

That the hidden dioxin deposit was detected at all and the remediation put on such a fast track are results of an ambitious effort by the Environmental Protection Agency, which runs the federal Superfund program, to zero in on toxic targets that had been passed over for decades because they were too big, too costly and just too difficult to tackle.

More than three decades after the program was established by Congress to clean up the most heavily polluted sites in the country, either by forcing those responsible to pay or by covering the cost with money from a special fund, the agency is now taking on the most expensive and most technically complex cleanups ever attempted — large stretches of urban waterways where the pollution is out of sight.

But there are lingering doubts about the best ways to handle such immense cleanups. “The public wants this stuff picked up and hauled away,” said Michael A. Barbara, the technical consultant for the businesses that are being held responsible for cleaning up the Passaic. “But the reality is that sometimes the process of stirring up this stuff does more harm than leaving it in place.”

Even the most notorious hazardous-waste dumps on land pale beside the prospect of cleaning up miles of riverbed — in which the slightest movement can stir up long-buried wastes that tides, floods, even motorboat traffic can spread upstream and down. Trying to predict how everything will work is so complicated that preliminary planning alone can cost more than an entire land-based cleanup.

But after years of study and some smaller pilot projects that met with varying degrees of success — and failure — the E.P.A. is finally tackling some of the most heavily polluted waterways. Many are in the New York-New Jersey area, which, since the beginning of Superfund, has had the greatest number of polluted sites.

For more, visit www.nytimes.com.

News Release from EPA Region 2

EPA Adds Eighteen Mile Creek in Niagara County, N.Y.

to the Superfund List

Contacts: Mike Basile, (716) 551-4410, basile.michael@epa.gov or Elias Rodriguez, 212-637-3664, rodriguez.elias@epa.gov

(New York, N.Y. – March 13, 2012) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today announced it has added the Eighteen Mile Creek site in Niagara County, New York to the Superfund National Priorities List of the country’s most hazardous waste sites. Sediment in some areas of the creek is contaminated with harmful chemicals, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), heavy metals and dioxin, which can have serious effects on people’s health, wildlife and the environment.

“Contamination in the Eighteen Mile Creek is dangerous to the health of people who eat fish from the creek and to the environment,” said Judith A. Enck, EPA Regional Administrator. “Adding the Eighteen Mile Creek site to the Superfund list will allow the EPA to do the extensive sampling needed to find the best ways to address the contamination and protect people’s health.”

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, in consultation with EPA, previously investigated four former industrial areas in Lockport, New York, known collectively as the Eighteen Mile Creek Corridor site. The site covers the Flintkote Plant site, United Paperboard Company, Upson Park and the White Transportation property. NYSDEC identified six additional areas within the Eighteen Mile Creek watershed where cleanup activities are also needed. The earlier investigations and sampling of sediment in and around Eighteen Mile Creek confirmed the presence of PCBs, mercury, lead, copper, pesticides and dioxin throughout most of the creek. Specific sources of the contamination have not been definitively identified. EPA’s further investigation into the nature and extent of the contamination in and around Eighteen Mile Creek is expected to begin this summer.

Eighteen Mile Creek flows north for approximately 15 miles and discharges into Lake Ontario at Olcott, New York. The creek has a history of industrial use dating back to the 19^th Century when it was used as a source of hydroelectric power. Possible sources of contamination include stormwater discharges and sewage from municipal pipes, pollution from hazardous waste sites or contaminated properties and industrial and municipal waste discharges.

The land within the Eighteen Mile Creek watershed consists primarily of agricultural lands, with residential, commercial and industrial areas located around Lockport, Newfane and Olcott Harbor. There are several wetlands along the contaminated portion of the creek, and people fish in the Eighteen Mile Creek Corridor and other portions of the creek. Fisherman’s Park, a public fishing area located within Eighteen Mile Creek just downstream of Burt Dam, is a major fishing destination.

Nationwide, EPA is proposing to add 10 other sites to the Superfund list today and is designating nine others as final on the list. The EPA periodically proposes sites to the Superfund list and, after responding to public comments, designates them as final Superfund sites. The Superfund final designation makes them eligible for funds to conduct long-term cleanups. The Eighteen Mile Creek site is now designated as final on the Superfund list.

The EPA does an extensive search to identify and locate the parties potentially responsible for the contamination at all sites on the Superfund list. The agency requires responsible parties to pay for or perform the cleanup work with EPA oversight. The majority of Superfund cleanups are performed by or paid for by polluters. Taxpayer dollars are used to cover EPA cleanup costs when no responsible party can be identified.

For more information, visit: http://www.epa.gov/region2/superfund/npl/18milecreek.

Follow EPA Region 2 on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/eparegion2 and visit our Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/eparegion2.

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Air Toxic Emissions Standards for PVC Finalized

News release from EPA:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 14, 2012

  

EPA Finalizes Air Toxic Emissions Standards for Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) Production Facilities

  

Standards will cut harmful emissions that impact local communities

   

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today issued strong final standards requiring facilities that produce polyvinyl chloride and copolymers (PVC) to reduce harmful air emissions, which will improve air quality and protect people’s health in communities where facilities are located. Exposure to toxic air pollutants, like those emitted from PVC facilities, can cause respiratory problems and other serious health issues, and can increase the risk of developing cancer. In particular, children are known to be more sensitive to the cancer risks posed by inhaling vinyl chloride, one of the known carcinogens emitted from PVC facilities.

The final standards are based on currently available technologies and will reduce emissions of air toxics, such as dioxin and vinyl chloride. Facilities will have the flexibility to choose the most practical and cost-effective control technology or technique to reduce the emissions. Facilities will be required to monitor emissions at certain points in the PVC production process to ensure that the standards are met.

Currently, there are 17 PVC production facilities throughout the United States, with a majority of these facilities located in Louisiana and Texas. All existing and any new PVC production facilities are covered by the final rule.

PVC production facilities manufacture PVC resins that are used to make a large number of commercial and industrial products at other manufacturing facilities. These products include latex paints, coatings, adhesives, clear plastics, rigid plastics, and flooring.

EPA had a 74-day public comment period and held two public hearings on the proposal before issuing the final rule.

More information on the final rule: http://www.epa.gov/ttn/oarpg/t3fs.html

Dredging of Contaminated Sediment to Begin

Excerpt from an article in the February 2012 Civil Engineering magazine:

Dredging of Contaminated Sediment in New Jersey's Passaic River to Begin

As attested to by the large amounts of contaminated sediment present in its channel, New Jersey’s Passaic River has long been home to significant industrial activity.  This contamination is particularly acute in the final 17 miles of the river, from Dundee Dam, in Garfield, to the river’s confluence with Newark Bay.  In an effort to address one of the waterway’s most contaminated locations, dredging is scheduled to begin this spring in a section of the river in Newark that adjoins the site of a former pesticide manufacturing facility known to have released large amounts of the toxic compound dioxin into the river.

The section of the river that is to be dredged is included within the Diamond Alkali Superfund Site, a federally designated area that encompasses the Neward plant site, the final 17 miles of the Passaic and its tributaries, and portions of Newark Bay.  The Superfund site is named after the Diamond Alkali Company, which owned and operated the Newark plant from 1951 to 1969.  (Diamond Alkali was later known as the Diamond Shamrock Chemicals Company.)

Dioxin, a by-product of pesticide manufacture, has been found at high levels at the site of the former manufacturing facility, which is approximately 3 miles upstream of the mouth of the Passaic.  Over time significant quantities of dioxin entered the river, which, because of the tidal influence, carried the contamination upstream as well as downstream.  Under the terms of the federal Superfund law (formally, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act), the Occidental Chemical Corporation – a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum Corporation, of Dallas – has taken on the liabilities from the operations of the Diamond Shamrock Chemicals facility as a result of its purchase of the liabilities from the Diamond Shamrock Corporation, now known as the Maxus Energy Corporation, of The Woodlands, Texas.  Therefore, Occidental Chemical is legally responsible for remediating the contamination caused by the former manufacturing plant.  However, Maxus Energy has contractual responsibilities through an indemnification agreement with Occidental Chemical to perform remedial activities on the latter’s  behalf.  Meanwhile, a subsidiary of Maxus Energy – Tierra Solutions, Inc., of East Brunswick, New Jersey – is overseeing the financing, design, and construction activities related to the continuing effort to remove contaminated material from the Passaic.  ARCADIS/Malcolm Pirnie, of Highlands Ranch, Colorado, is the principal design firm and general contractor for Tierra Solutions.