One Superfund cleanup due this year, but others linger

A multimillion-dollar Superfund site cleanup plan in Macon could be approved in the next month. Meanwhile, delays in identifying who could have to pay for a separate polluted site continue.

Brian Farrier, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s remedial project manager, said he expects the EPA to approve a cleanup plan in the next month for an old Armstrong World Industries wastewater treatment plant landfill. State regulators are still reviewing the proposal.

Work there was estimated to cost about $2 million. The proposed plan includes building a multilayered cap over about 3.5 acres of the landfill as well as a barrier wall. The work is intended to prevent rain from carrying away polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, Farrier said in a statement to The Telegraph. The site contains about 62,000 tons of material where the PCBs exceed 10 parts per million.

Work there could be completed by the end of the year, Farrier said.

But that landfill cleanup is just one of several Superfund projects in the area, some of which have had little movement.

Farrier said the EPA hopes to soon notify companies that could be responsible for a cleanup under the Allied Industrial Park, where a plume of trichloroethylene has been detected. Much of that pollution may come from when the site was the Macon Naval Ordnance Plant.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would be responsible for coordinating the military’s response.

“We’ve heard nothing back from the EPA from last year,” Army U.S. Corps of Engineers spokesman Billy Birdwell said. “That one I can’t give you any update on, because I don’t have one.”

Farrier said the EPA is drafting letters to the companies that could be responsible for the Allied Industrial Park cleanup. Dawn Harris-Young, an EPA spokeswoman, told The Telegraph that notifying the companies is a priority, and the agency hopes to have the notifications done by September. The agency refused to say how many companies could be notified.

Farrier said the work at Allied Industrial Park likely would focus on the plume of polluted groundwater under the site, with the soils themselves likely to be suitable for commercial land use without further cleanup. But Farrier said “the groundwater cleanup cost can be expected to exceed $1 million, and will likely be significantly more.”

The EPA has scheduled sampling for the week of Feb. 23 to see if harmful vapors are making their way into the Texbond Freudenberg facility in the Allied Industrial Park. Results from the tests should be back about a month later, Farrier said.

Questions about pollution don’t seem to have hurt the Allied Industrial Park, said Stephen Adams, operations director for the Macon-Bibb County Industrial Authority.

“The contamination does not help with the selling points, but there are a lot of factors that go into decisions,” he said.

Adams said he and representatives from Macon Area Habitat for Humanity recently met with the EPA to talk about redevelopment and other issues. Habitat has been focusing on the Lynmore Estates neighborhood that’s close to Allied Industrial Park. Adams said he, Habitat and others are talking about the creation of a master plan to cover the general area and determine how to move it forward.

Meanwhile, the EPA also is looking at a related but different contaminated site. South of the Allied Industrial Park and Armstrong World Industries is a landfill site, consisting of landfill waste from Armstrong and the Macon Naval Ordnance Plant. That site occupies about 20 acres near Rocky Creek.

Farrier said he expects the landfill site itself will need cleanup but “the biggest unknown at this time are the PCB levels in Rocky Creek fish, other biota, and sediments, which have not been sampled since the late 1990s.”

There is no cost estimate for work in those landfills. Farrier said the EPA will soon talk to Armstrong about beginning an investigation at the site to see what cleanup should be done.

Signs near Rocky Creek warn fishermen about the PCB contamination. The EPA urges people not to eat any fish from Rocky Creek below Houston Avenue because of PCB pollution. Georgia urges people fishing the Ocmulgee River below Macon to limit their intake of largemouth bass to one per week because of mercury pollution, but does not recommend any restrictions because of PCBs.

To contact writer Mike Stucka, call 744-4251.

This story was originally published February 6, 2015 at 6:43 PM with the headline "One Superfund cleanup due this year, but others linger."