by William Rabb

The Escambia Wood Treating Co. site near North Palafox Street is more polluted than authorities had ever imagined and will require more technology and $14 million to clean the groundwater beneath it, federal officials said this week.

The good news is that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is recommending a steam-injection method that would speed removal of more than 200,000 gallons of the oozing, black creosote and other contaminants found more than 100 feet below the surface.

“We think this method is our best bet for getting the contaminants out of the aquifer quickly,” said Erik Spalvins, the EPA project manager for the cleanup work.

The work will add to the $124 million the federal government has already spent on the site since it was declared a toxic-waste Superfund site in 1994.

Cleaning the groundwater won't start until 2016 and will take at least two years and probably longer, Spalvins said. It all depends on whether Congress will continue to fund the cleanup, which has been delayed repeatedly by budget cuts and government shutdowns, Spalvins said.

Spalvins made his comments at the EPA's public forum about the cleanup process Tuesday night at New Hope Missionary Baptist Church, just a few blocks south of the fenced-off wood-treating site.

More than 30 people, including local, state and federal officials, turned out for the meeting. Some people expressed concern about the proposed process and asked how the contaminants and vapors would be contained during the extraction.

Spalvins explained that a network of wells, above-ground pipes and vacuum-sealed containment buildings would be built over the small part of the 26-acre site where the latest pollutants were found.

“We've been asking for this to be cleaned up for more than 20 years. I'm excited it's getting done,” said Francine Ishmael, director of Citizens Against Toxic Exposure, the neighborhood group that has clamored for action and buyouts of surrounding residential areas.

Contaminants originally found by happenstance

The deep-seated creosote and other dangerous wood preservative chemicals, were found at the site in 2008, almost by accident, Spalvins and EPA reports show.

Crews had been excavating contaminated dirt from the property for years, and were nearing completion of that phase of the work. At the bottom of an excavated pit, below what was once a containment pond at the northeastern edge of the property, crews began to notice a layer of sand as black as tar.

Until then, the EPA had been unable to sink test wells in that particular area. When wells and laser-guided testing gauges finally were drilled into the ground, a number of layers of oily liquids were found, thickest at levels between 90 and more than 100 feet, reports show.

That forced EPA engineers to rethink the entire cleanup plan in that section. Until then, the area below the pond was not considered contaminated and no remediation was planned.

The agency had believed a similar-sized area nearby was the most heavily polluted.

“Now we know this source area is the worst,” Spalvins said.

Creosote, still used by some companies as a wood preservative, is a mix of many chemicals made from coal tar, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The EPA considers creosote a probable human carcinogen, and it has also been linked to liver and kidney damage, skin problems and possible birth defects in test animals, according to the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

Escambia Treating Co. also mixed other chemicals with diesel fuel as a preservative, reports show.

How the cleanup may work

The EPA has explored three options to clean the groundwater. They will accept public comments on the ideas until Sept. 15. The options are:

• ν Building an in-ground concrete wall around the most-contaminated area, to the depth of the impermeable Pensacola clay layer at 180 feet down. Cost estimate: $12 million. This method was originally preferred, Spalvins said, because tests suggested the wall need only be sunk to about 150 feet deep. But later testing showed the greater depth was needed, which may be beyond the technology's capability. “Plus, the contaminants would still be in the ground,” he said.
• ν Mixing all of the soil deep underground with concrete, as well as injection of solvents and detergents to loosen the pollutants in surrounding soil, allowing it to be pumped out through wells. The method would also inject oxygen and bacteria to break down contaminants into harmless compounds. Cost estimate: $25 million.
• ν Injecting steam to force the creosote into extraction wells, which would pump it to the surface, where it would be sealed and hauled away. Cost estimate: $14 million. This is the method preferred by the EPA. It would be augmented with injection of solvents, oxygen and microorganisms. The steam injection method was used with good success at a similar Superfund site in Visalia, Calif., where more than 1 million pounds of creosote was recovered, according to published scientific studies.

Tests have shown that a plume of the toxic chemicals from the Escambia Treating site is moving deep underground toward Bayou Texar and Pensacola Bay. But authorities have had few concerns for drinking water because all municipal water supply wells are located outside the plume area.

Tests of Bayou Texar water and sediment also show that none of the wood-treating chemicals have reached that far, EPA reports show. But some residents in the plume area may employ irrigation wells, and stormwater runoff into the bayou could eventually lead to some contamination.

So, to be safe, the EPA's remediation plan is designed to prevent further contamination of groundwater, eliminate the risk to the bayou, and eventually restore the groundwater in the area to drinkability standards, according to the plan released last week.

Agrico site 

The aggressive remediation proposed by the EPA stands in sharp contrast to the lack of action taken on another plume of toxic chemicals from an area just a stone's throw from the Escambia Treating site.

The Agrico Chemical Co. fertilizer plant also contaminated the groundwater until the 1970s, and was added to the Superfund cleanup list in 1989. Property owners sued, and Agrico and its parent company ended up paying more than $80 million in settlement. But EPA officials at the time said that pumping out the aquifer could do more harm than good.

“We wondered about that, too,” said Samuel Bearman, one of the lead plaintiffs' attorneys in the lawsuit. Remediation would have been very expensive, “and some of us were suspicious that the responsible parties had persuaded the EPA to take that position.”

Now, some of that Agrico plume will be removed and remediated by the actions taken for the Escambia Treating site – all at taxpayer expense, EPA officials said.

One reason for the different tact is that the Escambia Treating site was surrounded by residential neighborhoods and Citizens Against Toxic Exposure, which pushed hard for corrective action, said Keith Wilkins, Escambia County's environmental and community director.

The city of Pensacola also plans to develop the Escambia Treating site into a commercial or industrial park, and officials wanted a clean bill. The Agrico site, somewhat isolated from residential and other commercial areas, is now capped and will never be used again.

Another reason may be the fact that the Agrico contaminants are mostly metals that may not respond as well to bioremediation and extraction methods, Wilkins and Spalvins said.

Escambia Treating’s long history

The cleanup of the groundwater under the wood-treating site could be one of the final chapters in a decades-long saga.

Escambia Treating Co. began treating lumber and utility poles at the site at 3910 N Palafox St. in 1942. The company ceased operations in 1982, cleaned only part of the site, and declared bankruptcy in the 1990s, after the EPA identified more than 30 spots on the land that were heavily contaminated.

Since then, the agency has relocated more than 400 nearby households and has removed more than 225,000 cubic yards of polluted soil. Most of the dirt has been sealed underground to allow for new industrial development on the site, reports show.

Congress passed the Superfund cleanup act in the 1970s with a dedicated tax to fund it. But lawmakers let the tax expire in the 1990s. Since then, funding has been somewhat hit-and-miss, which has delayed funding for test wells, engineering studies and remediation work, Spalvins said.

The latest contamination is limited to about four acres in the corner of the property.

With all of the contaminated dirt now removed and capped from the rest of the site, officials should move ahead with developing the area for business, said Mark Taylor, a city council candidate whose District 6 includes the site.

“Why haven't we taken advantage of this yet,” Taylor asked.

A detailed plan on the proposed groundwater remediation can be found at the West Florida Region Library's Genealogy Branch, 5740 N. Ninth Ave., Pensacola.

Public comments can be made by mail to:

Erik Spalvins, Remedial Project Manager

U.S. EPA, Region 4

Superfund Remedial Branch

61 Forsyth St. SW

Atlanta, GA  30303

[progresspromise]