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COPY PUBLIC MEETING
Tuesday, November 16, 1999
6:30 p.m.
Gulfport, Mississippi
10066145
^^mim^ '*«^5>^
m^onica o d i r o e a e r & Assoc ia t e s Realtime Court Reporters
(228) 762-1035 (228) 865-0640 (800) 765-8636
1 MS. STARKS:
2 The section chief of the Alabama,
3 Mississippi and Georgia section will speak to you
4 on the site— the Superfurtd remedial process. Brian
5 Farrier, who is the project manager for Chemfax,
6 will Speak with you on the site background.
7 Roberta Runge is the— oh, I'm sorry, the on-scene
8 coordinator for EPA. She will speak to you on the
9 emergency response and removal process. And
10 again, Brian Farrier will talk with you on the NPL
11 listing, the RI/FS highlights and the upcoming
12 events on the site.
13 I have some more people I would like to
14 introduce to you in the audience. We have Troy
15 Naquin, who is the EPA START contractor. We
16 have Tim Turner, who is the EPA remedial branch
17 contractor. We have Michael Slack, who is with
18 Mississippi DEQ, and also Philip Weathersby, who
19 is with Mississippi DEQ.
20 At the end of the session, when everybody
21 speaks, we will have a question and answer
22 session, so feel free to hold your questions and ask
23 them at the end and Brian and Mario will be able
24 to help you.
25 Right now, I'm going to bring up Mario
M-Oiiiica b r l i rocc le r & A^ssociates Realtime Court Reporters
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1 Villamarzo. Thanks.
2 MR. VILLAMARZO:
3 Good evening. I'm glad to be here. I'm
4 glad to see a lot of people here, a lot of turnout. I
5 be will telling you the boring stuff. Brian will be
6 talking about the site specific issues. What I will
7 tell you is the Superfund process.
8 The Superfund started way back in the
9 Jimmy Carter era, when we had Love Canal. I
10 think everybody knows about Love Canal or maybe
11 a lot of you would know about it. But anyhow,
12 back then, there wasn't any law to take care of this
13 problem that existed in Love Canal in the state of
14 New York, but Congress passed an act, the
15 Comprehensive Environmental Response
16 Comprehension and Liability Act of 1980, and that
17 gave the authority to the Executive Branch to
18 assess and to conduct cleanups at uncontrolled
19 hazardous waste sites.
20 In this program, sites are reported to EPA
21 and EPA evaluates them and makes a
22 determination as to whether or not they should be
23 included in what we call the CERCLIS database,
24 which is a database of sites that EPA looks at
25 under the Superfimd law.
LOHiJca o c l i r o e d e r •& A s s o c i a t e s Realtime Court Reporters
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1 In the process, the first step is to conduct
2 a preliminary assessment of the site. That
3 preliminary assessment entails the collection of all
4 the available documents on a particular site. If
5 EPA feels that this site warrants fiirther
6 investigation as a result of a scoring package that it
7 prepares or preliminary scoring that it prepares,
8 EPA proceeds up to the site investigation phase.
9 At the site investigation, what we do is,
10 we conduct field sampling. We go out to the site
11 and we actually collect the environmental samples
12 that we use to plug in to this model to calculate a
13 score. If the site scores high enough, which is 28
14 and a half points or more, then EPA will propose
15 it to the NPL, the National Priorities List. These
16 are the sites that are the worst sites in the
17 inventory.
18 Once a site is proposed, it's open to— it's
19 announced in the Federal Register. It's published
20 in newspapers, and the community, the public has
21 an opportunity to comment on these sites, on this
22 particular site.
23 Anyhow, after we receive comments, if we
24 can resolve the comments and we show that there
25 is still a risk on the site, our intentions are to
Lonica S c l i r o e a e r & A s s o c i a t e s Realtime Court Reporters
(228) 762-1035 (228) 865-0640 (800) 765-8636
^ 13 8 0003 3
1 finalize the site and put it on national's priority list.
2 Once it's finalized, we have the authority
3 to conduct remedial investigations, feasibility
4 studies, remedial design and remedial action.
5 This part of the program, on the remedial
6 side, we tend to the long-term effects on the public
7 and the environment.
8 After we have conducted our remedial
9 design and remedial action, implemented all of
10 that, if a site requires operation and maintenance in
11 the long-term, EPA will conduct the O&M either
12 through the responsible party or EPA will do it
13 through the fund money.
14 After all of this is done, sometime in the
15 future, it's very possible that we will— that we have
16 listed a lot of sites. Once they are proposed, we
17 took them back off, but there aren't very many of
18 those.
19 This particular site, as Brian will tell you,
20 right now, we are at the remedial investigation
21 stage and we're conducting a feasibility study, but
22 I'll let Brian tell you about that.
23 Brian has a hearing impediment, so I will
24 try to respond to some of the questions for him,
25 too.
M o n i c a Dciu'oeioler & Assoc ia tes Realtime Court Reporters
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MR. FARRIER:
I do have a hearing problem and I have a
court reporter here, and I might be running back to
the screen to answer any questions that you have.
On the background for the Chemfax site
began operations in 1955 as a manufacturer of
synthetic hydrocarbon waxes and resins.
In 1988, the SI was conducted and with
subsequent investigations after that, the site was
proposed to the NPL.
In 1995 the RI was conducted in-house by
EPA and the information is at the library
repository. It's on the front of the/rax^heet. We
have a copy of that in a three-ring binder, along
with a supplemental investigation that we did in
March of this year, and I'll be talking about the
results of that. What you see on the wall up here
are the figures that have been blown up.
In October 1995, we had an open house
and that's when, right here, we told the public that
we were not working on the site any more because
we did not have the final NPL listing. The site
had been proposed, but we didn't have it finalized.
In June of 1998, we started work on the
site and gave the contractors the feasibility study
M o n i c a S c i i r o e J e r & A s s o c i a t e s Realtime Court Reporters
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13 8 0 004
1 and that's what's being worked on right now.
2 Last December, we made a site visit and
3 that's when we saw a lot of people on the site that
4 should not have been on the site. We referred the
5 site to Superfund's removal branch for their
6 assessment. Superfund's removal and remedial
7 authority are two different things. They have a
8 different set of criteria. And as a result of their
9 removal assessment, they began a removal action in
10 July and have been going for the last five months.
11 We'll be talking about that in more detail.
12 COUNCIL WOMAN HOLMES:
13 That particularly is of great interest, but I
14 had trouble keeping up with you. Can someone
15 translate that?
16 MR. VILLAMARZO:
17 What was your question, ma'am?
18 COUNCILWOMAN HOLMES:
19 What I was trying to pick up on what he
20 was last doing. He was trying to give an analogy
21 of this versus that, but I couldn't understand what
22 he was saying.
23 MR. VILLAMARZO:
24 In December of '98, Brian came in and he
25 noticed that there were people living on the site.
g M j v . i j j i , , ; ^ ^
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M o n i c a ocliroeider •& Assoc ia tes Realtime Court Reporters
(228) 762-1035 (228) 865-0640 (800) 765-8636
1 itself
2 MR. FARRIER:
3 Okay. Let me— when we assigned the
4 contractors to do the feasibility study, we had to
5 get paperwork going. I got the paperwork, boom.
6 He's ready to do the feasibility study. Can I go on
7 the site with you? And I said, yes, I want to see
8 it, too. We went on the site to do
9 a site recon, to see, and that's when we noticed that
10 conditions had changed since 1995, and there were
11 homeless people living on the site, and then we
12 referred it to the removal branch.
13 That was the result of the site visit that we
14 made. Am I clear on that?
15 MR. VILLAMARZO:
16 And the reason it was referred to removal
17 is because we felt that there was an imminent
18 endangerment to the public health and environment,
19 and Roberta Runge and the removal branch, have
20 the authority to go out there and remove— correct
21 me if I'm— remove that threat; however, she does
22 not go in there, her program does not go in there
23 and remove the long-term threat. That's the
24 program that Brian is in. This is what we call the
25 remedial, long-term.
i^loiiica bcl i roeder '& Assoc ia tes Realtime Court Reporters
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13 8 0005
1 And once again, removal authority and
2 remedial authority are two different things, removal
3 is short-term, remedial is long-term.
4 Another good example of that is
5 groundwater contamination. That is considered a
6 long-term threat. That would be something for the
7 remedial branch.
8 COUNCILWOMAN HOLMES:
9 Groundwater is remedial?
10 MR. VILLAMARZO:
11 Yes.
12 MR. FARRIER:
13 Okay. In March of this year, we had to
14 do some additional groundwater work that was not
15 able to be done back in 1995. That groundwater
16 work was done in March. That was like on the
17 wall, I have a copy of it up here, at the Orange
18 Grove Library.
19 At that point, the NPL final listing status
20 is still uncertain. And the final point I'd like to
21 make about the site background is that the site sits
22 on what's called 16 Section land. 16 Section land
23 is land that is held in trust by the State of
24 Mississippi for the county for use for educational
25 purposes. And with that, I thought we'd have it
M o n i c a Scnroe'tier '.& Associ.ates Realtime Court Reporters
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clear about the background.
Before I go into the NPL background and
the rest of my presentation, we'd like to go ahead
and talk about the removal.
MS. RUNGE:
While Sherryl is getting me set up, my
name is Roberta. I'm an on-scene coordinator. I
work in the emergency removal branch.
My authority comes from the National
Response Plan. We have the ability to go onto a
site, assess the immediate danger or immediate
threat to the citizens, and to the environment and
take action.
This particular site was referred to us from
the remedial branch in January of 1999. Our first
assessment of the site occurred in February of
1999. We then prioritized the site based on what
we already had in our work schedule and we
an-ived on site to begin work on July the 12th,
1999.
We went ahead and divided the site
workup into four different phases. Phase 1 was
building demolition and asbestos removal. This
was not so much done because the material is
necessarily hazardous. It was done because we
^
M o n i c a ocliroe'iier & Assoc ia tes Realtime Court Reporters
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13 8 0006 ,
1 were going to have workers on the site and we
2 needed to protect their safety.
3 With the asbestos, we removed about 80
4 cubic yards of asbestos. That doesn't seem like a
5 lot of material, when you say 80 cubic yards, but it
6 was all over the processing lines, the boilers, the
7 buildings. In other words, it was ubiquitous
8 throughout the site and we didn't want our workers
9 exposed.
10 So the asbestos removal took about a
11 week and a half to take care of After that, we
12 went on to building demolition. You are probably
13 saying to yourself, why would they remove
14 building debris? That's not hazardous material
15 either.
16 Well, there were quite a few problems.
17 The buildings were not very stable. There were a
18 lot of process lines that came in to the buildings.
19 There were a lot of above the building power lines
20 that could get in the way of our heavy equipment.
21 There were vagrants living in the buildings. We
22 couldn't access some of the property because of the
23 location of the buildings. So anything that wasn't
24 structurally sound and could possibly interfere with
25 our removal action was demolished.
jyionica bicnroeaer & Assoc ia tes Realtime Court Reporters
(228) 762-1035 (228) 865-0640 (800) 765-8636
12.
1 We did leave two buildings on the
2 property. One is in the background of this
3 photograph, this one. It's a pole bam type
4 structure made of cinder block, no damage to it.
5 It's got a concrete base, very stable structure. The
6 other one is over on the right-hand side and that
7 was in the same condition, fairly stable, didn't need
8 to remove it.
9 But this is a photograph of what the site
10 looked like when we arrived. It was sort of a
11 daunting task to see all this and realize that we had
12 several different waste streams that we needed to
13 consider in addition to worker safety, in addition to
14 assuring the vagrants remained off the property and
15 figuring out what we needed to do first.
16 The tanks that you see over here were
17 kind of an interesting problem. The material in the
18 tanks was a styrene based resin. It had solidified
19 over time. It was very difficult to get it out of
20 there. Unfortunately, it was also releasing organic
21 compounds so we couldn't cut these tanks using a
22 torch or anything of that nature. All this had to be
23 cut open, which meant we had to bring in very
24 large shears in order to do that.
25 There were some additional tanks that
^
M o n i c a Dcnroe-cleif & Assoc ia tes Realtime Court Reporters
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13 8 0007 ,3
1 were laying on their sides. I never did figure out
2 what the corrugated tank was, but it was empty, so
3 I didn't have to worry about it too much.
4 As you can see, there was a lot of material
5 and debris on the property. We had to be careftjl
6 about that, overhead power lines. We had a large
7 system over here we needed to take down. All in
8 all, the site was a mess.
9 Having completed phase 1, that took about
10 a month, just to get ourselves set up to the point
11 where we had office trailers, phone service,
12 electrical wiring, the asbestos removed, the other
13 buildings that didn't need to be standing tom down
14 and removed. We started phase 2, which was the
15 drum and small container removal.
16 By the way, on July 12th, do you guys
17 know what the temperature was with the heat
18 index? 112. Thank you. It was warm down here.
19 Anyway, onto phase 2, we had over 1000
20 drums and small containers that were stored on the
21 site. They had a hodgepodge of materials in them.
22 Some of them were off spec resin. Some of them
23 were waste oil. Some of them were contaminated
24 soil. We just had to go ahead and sample each
25 one of the containers or tlnd that we had
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
M . o n i c a bicnroeioler & A s s o c i a t e s Realtime Court Reporters
(228) 762-1035 (228) 865-0640 (800) 765-8636
\4_
1 containers of similar type of material, put them all
2 together, classify them, send out for analytical for
3 disposal purposes and determine what our disposal
4 method would be.
5 So we had our hands full on that. That
6 took a couple of months to take care of Most of
7 this material was disposed of at either a lined
8 facility, you've got a nice one over here at Pass
9 Christian, or at an energy recovery facility.
10 One ofthe more difficult tasks was
11 sending Troy Naquin and his team in to go ahead
12 and get the containers numbered and labeled and in
13 to a drum tracking system so we could make sure
14 everything we had on site actually went offsite for
15 disposal.
16 These are totes. They're DOT
17 transportable. Unfortunately, these were so old that
18 they were cracking at the bottom. They contained
19 material that was used as an additive in thermal
20 plastic paints. That's the stuff that DOT uses to
21 paint the middle of roadways, those lovely yellow
22 and white stripes. This was disposed of as haz
23 waste.
24 In addition to that, some sort of tank
25 cleaning operation occun-ed before we got the site
M o n i c a o c n r o e o e r OC A s s o c i a t e s Realtime Court Reporters
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1 and remedial. And they managed to chip out an
2 awfiil lot of waste material that was high in styrene
3 concentration, which is a carcinogen, and it was in
4 these bags, and we were able to send these off for
5 fiiel blending and energy recovery.
6 That phase, again, took a great deal of our
7 time, but then we were able to get to phase 3,
8 which was really the reason we were on site. We
9 had 39 above ground storage tanks full of
10 flammable liquids or semi-solid material that was
11 high in VOTs and semi-organic compounds. These
12 did pose a threat if there was a lightning strike or
13 if there was a fire, we would have a fairly serious
14 problem if one ofthe tanks managed to ignite.
15 Grand total, we removed 52,258 gallons of
16 hazardous waste. Most of it went to fuel blending
17 or energy recovery. We did cut the tanks into
18 smaller pieces for easier disposal and the metal was
19 taken to a recycling facility.
20 Actually, we were fortunate. Because of
21 the publicity, the metal recyclers came to us and
22 they were able to take the material out for us.
23 EPA will get the money back because they do buy
24 scrap metal.
25 These were our problem children, 39
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Lonica o>cnroeider >& A s s o c i a t e s Realtime Court Reporters
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1 above ground storage tanks. You can see that we
2 had to put our folks in supplied air and get them in
3 Tyvec suits and make sure that they were safe.
4 This is Troy Naquin's crew. And what they're
5 doing is sampling the tank from the top to see
6 what type of material is in it so we can go ahead
7 and do the analytical work on it and determine
8 how to get rid of it.
9 Do I have time to tell a story? One of the
10 first things that happened on this site, in addition
11 to the temperature being almost unbearable, was
12 that you guys have these lovely afternoon
13 thunderstorms. You have no idea how fast we can
14 run when lightning strikes. And one ofthe
15 telephone poles just sort of got shredded, so
16 everybody was running like mad. Then it occurred
17 to us, is anything on this site grounded? No. So
18 we had to stop everything for a day, ground all the
19 tanks, got copper wiring, make sure everything was
20 grounded solidly so we could go ahead and
21 continue our work. But—
22 UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER:
23 What happened to the guy on the tank
24 when the lightning hit?
25 MS. RUNGE:
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13 8 0009 17
1 Oh, we weren't at this point yet. No.
2 That was before this.
3 Some of the tanks were just sitting on the
4 ground, horizontal tanks. It depended on what type
5 of particular process they were being used for.
6 This one, fortunately, was easy to access;
7 unfortunately, it was coated in asbestos. So this
8 was one that we had to deal with real quickly
9 when we got on site.
10 This is just another shot of some brave
11 person up there sampling this particular tank. All
12 of these tanks, by the way, are off site now. They
13 were drained. The material was classified or
14 characterized for disposal by analytical work. The
15 tanks were then cut, cleaned, taken to a recycling
16 facility or, in our case, they came and got them.
17 These are our two tanks with the solid
18 material in it. We just started referring to
19 everything as smuck. This was the consistency of
20 the material in these tanks. It's a glue-like
21 consistency. It would be like something on the
22 bottom of your shoes, if you have those
23 mbber-soled shoes on, if those get real hot, this is
24 about what they'd look like.
25 Phase 4 and the phase that we just
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i^'loiiica o c i i r o e d e r & A s s o c i a t e s Realtime Court Reporters
(228) 762-1035 (228) 865-0640 (800) 765-8636
1 completed, by the way, it was the removal of 3500
2 cubic yards of contaminated soil. The
3 contaminated soil was in the areas undemeath the
4 tank farms. That soil was so contaminated that we
5 could not leave it on site.
6 A couple of problems that we ran into,
7 within the secondary containment areas, we dug
8 down, we thought we would find a concrete base,
9 we didn't. Instead, we found a couple little
10 landfills and some buried drums.
11 This didn't come out too well but this is
12 one ofthe dmms that we found buried.
13 Fortunately, most ofthe material appeared to be
14 non-haz. It was oil and off spec resins.
15 Just another photograph of some stuff that
16 we dug up. We also found some areas where the
17 soil was discolored. You can see sort of a puiple
18 coloration in this particular area. This material is
19 not hazardous. It does not meet the removal
20 criteria for my particular branch of EPA.
21 What we did was go ahead and put the
22 material bank in the trench and cover it. AH the
23 material that anyone could come in contact with if
24 they were walking across the site has been
25 removed. There are no more storage tanks on the
i ^ lon ica bcni-oe'clei" & A s s o c i a t e s Realtime Court Reporters
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property, no more dmms on the property. So we
have alleviated the immediate threat to any
residents in the area.
This particular material will be dealt with
by the remedial branch as they come in and
determine what type of action they want to take to
deal with it.
That's all I have for you. I will tum it
back to remedial. But before I do so, I would like
to say that we've had excellent support from the
folks in the area, everything from getting the
utilities hooked up, fire and police support to
where the best restaurants were. If I seem like I'm
in a real good mood, it's because my part of this
job is done and over with. I'm going home. I'll
tum it back over to remedial. Thank you.
MR. FARRIER:
Okay. Back to remedial. After we've
done the remedial investigation, the next step in the
cleanup process is called the feasibility study. I'm
Sony. I'm getting ahead of myself NPL listing.
The site was proposed to the NPL in 1993. The
NPL is the Superfund's remedial vehicle. The
response to listing comments in 1993, as Mario
pointed out, when you propose a site to the NPL,
i^ionica ocliroeJer '& Associates Realtime Court Reporters
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20_
1 you receive comments on their proposal. EPA has
2 to respond to those comments. Response to any
3 listing comments was delayed due to resource
4 constraints at EPA headquarters. In the meantime,
5 Congress comes in and passes a law in 1995, a law
6 that required EPA to get the state position prior to
7 finalizing or proposing the sites to the NPL. The
8 site had been proposed, but it hadn't been finalized.
9 So it got hung up on that law. Now, that is no
10 longer the law, but it remains EPA policy.
11 In December 1995, the state response to
12 EPA did not recommend NPL listing, but the state
13 recognized that the site needed ftjrther work. The
14 state has always recognized that the site was a
15 potential risk to human health.
16 At that point in time, right now, final
17 listing under NPL has not been achieved. And I'd
18 like to point out that remedial action through the
19 NPL cannot happen unless the NPL gets the final
20 listing from the state.
21 I'd like to go over some ofthe highlights
22 on the remedial investigation that was done in
23 1995. The field work was done in January 1995
24 and finalized in January of '96 after the decision
25 had been made not to do any feasibility study. We
wm^m: = ^ = . ^ ^ ^ 3 8 ^ ^ ^ . '
i ^ lon ica ocnroe 'cler •& A s s o c i a t e s Realtime Court Reporters
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13 8 0011 21
1 collected about 200 samples, documented
2 contamination in groundwater, sediments, and soils.
3 We used improved technology that wasn't available ^ .qcjCf
4 in 1995. That's all I'll say about that. y
5 But the 1999 data shows the groundwater
6 to be much more contaminated than what we had
7 found back in '95. If you look at this map right
8 here, you can see the groundwater plume that's
9 showing the contamination.
10 This is Creosote Road right here, and this
11 is the process area right here that they've been
12 excavating as part of the removal action. We
13 couldn't sample there in 1995. It was 600 parts
14 per billion benzene maximum. We're now looking
15 at 7100 parts per billion. We found an order of
16 magnitude higher contamination than what we
17 found in 1995.
18 At that point in time, it was not heavily
19 impacted, but we still have to do an ecological
20 assessment, baseline risk assessment. CDM is
21 doing that as part of their effort.
22 The purpose of the FS is to detemiine
23 what options are available to clean up the site, how
24 much it's going to cost. The risk assessment for
25 both ecological and human receptors will be
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conducted. Tim tells me he can have all three
documents to me sometime iif^eptember^ We;
have to send out the documents to what we call the
technical review. EPA people look at it, the state
people look at it, the fish and wildlife, what we
call the tmstees, we'll give everybody a chance to
look at it before we finalize the document. We
probably will have the FS and both risk
assessment, the FS and the human health risk
assessment and the first part of the ecological
assessment probably finalized next spring
sometime.
After we finalize the FS, with the cleanup
options that we have, it's my job to pick one out
and present it to the public as the preferred
remedy. At that point in time, we are going to try
to keep it all together, groundwater, soils. If we
have to, we'll break it up. But right now, we're
not at that point. I don't have the FS yet.
But the preferred remedy, as part of the
proposed plan, we'll have a public meeting to
present the proposed remedies. We hope to have
that next summer. Only after we get comments
from the state and the public can we finalize the
remedy. That remedy will be written up into the
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1 record of decision and it will include a response to
2 the comments that we received during the public
3 comment period. After that, we will do the
4 remedial design, do the remedial action.
5 As I said before, we cannot do the
6 remedial action without a final listing on the NPL.
7 An EPA cleanup cannot begin unless we get final
8 action on the NPL. As far as the NPL listing
9 status, NPL and the state will work together to
10 supplement the letter that we got in December '95
11 and EPA headquarters will be involved as
12 necessary.
13 I think it's real important to note that we
14 feel very confident that after the feasibility study
15 identifies what options we have and how much
16 they cost, that we can reach an acceptable
17 resolution with the state to resolve the listing
18 status.
19 And if I'm not mistaken, that's my last
20 slide. That's all I have. I'll go ahead and open up
21 the questions and answers. I'm going to be
22 looking at the computer terminal. I'm not being
23 mde or anything. That's all I have to say.
24 Q. How deep were those samples, the
25 water samples taken where the benzene was found?
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1 How far below the surface?
2 A. The surficial aquifer, you are looking at
3 10, 15 feet. The deeper aquifer below that was
4 not impacted. You are looking at the surficial
5 aquifer. We have a map over here that is based on
6 the water levels that we found, but I think your
7 question is more which aquifer was impacted. If
8 you look at the map of the groundwater
9 contamination, it's almost coincidence that the
10 groundwater flows— the groundwater contamination
11 almost coincides with the property boundaries.
12 What happens is you've got Bemard Bayou up here
13 and that's going to make the groundwater flow— it
14 just follows right along the property line.
15 Any other questions?
16 COUNCILWOMAN HOLMES:
17 Brian, I have a question. First of all,
18 throughout this process, I've had a very hard time
19 trying to understand the presentation with the
20 disability that you have. It's been very tough
21 trying to keep up with what's going on.
22 When groundwater contaminants, there
23 were two numbers that you gave. One said 6 and
24 one said 7.7— these are in the hundreds.
25 MR. FARRIER:
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1 Okay. The 6— the 600 parts per billion
2 that we found in 1995, with the first remedial
3 investigation— I could find it in here if you are
4 interested, but that was 600 parts per billion, which
5 was the maximum benzene contamination that we
6 found, and in this year, in March, we come back
7 and we're able to sample in places that we had not
8 sampled before, and we found up to 7100. That's
9 a lot higher contamination.
10 COUNCILWOMAN HOLMES:
11 What are the units; parts per billion?
12 MR. FARRIER:
13 Yes.
14 COUNCILWOMAN HOLMES:
15 What first led you all to this site? What
16 happened? What led you to the site to clean it up?
17 MR. FARRIER:
18 It was discovered in 1980 onto the
19 CERCLIS database that Mario mentioned. Nothing
20 really happened. We just knew it because it was
21 1955. 1 think it's part of the reporting requirements
22 that Mario was talking about.
23 MR. VILLAMARZO:
24 When the law was passed— I don't know
25 exactly on this one, but I can check when we get
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back to the office. When the law was passed, the
law required that anyone whoiknew of uncontrolled
hazardous waste releases on their property had to
report to EPA, had to report themselves and they
had six months to do that in.
COUNCILWOMAN HOLMES:
And that was in what year?
MR. VILLAMARZO:
1980. The law went into effect in 1980.
This is from January 1st until June 30th that they
had that period to report themselves. But I'll verify
that and make sure because I believe that this
might have been what we call a 103C notifier, and
103C is from the law.
COUNCILWOMAN HOLMES:
So someone from that site called in or let
you know by mail?
MR. VILLAMARZO:
They should have filled out a fonn. It's
very possible. I will look for the form and see if
the fomi is there and make copies of it.
Q. How were they notified to send that
information in?
A. How were they notified?
Q. Uh-huh.
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A. When the law came out, nobody knew.
Let me tell you what happened, there was a lot of
protective filers. People didn't know if they should
file or not but the penalties were so high, people
said, I'm just going to file, just in case. And then
some of those became protective filers, and they
got on/circleSj^nd in some cases, they didn't need [^^CUS
to be there, but this site needed to 5e/fhi^.
MR. FARRIER: \iUL?(L-
But in this case, the site had been in
operation for 25 years. So it was not like it was a
smoking gun or anything like that in 1980. Some
sites we find out because citizens sent in what we
call a PA petition. There's a number of ways that
we can find out about a site other than what we
just said, but in 1980, that's what happened.
Q. There are two residential sites that are
right off of County Bam Road, programs with the
mental health center. How are those sites going to
be affected, if at all, by this contamination?
A. Why don't you point out what you are
talking about.
Q. County Bam Road, right above your
hand, where your ring is, back a little ways. Is
there any threat from the facility on these
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1 properties here?
2 A. No.
3 Q. The threat is to the—
4 A. You are talking about the south end of
5 Bemard Bayou?
6 Q. Yes. It's right up there. Keep going up
7 just a little bit, right up in that area?
8 A. At this time, we don't see a threat to
9 that facility.
10 Q. Has there been samplings from that
11 area? What's the extent of your sampling?
12 A. We haven't done any sampling over
13 there, but based on what we have on this side of
14 the railroad tracks, we don't have any reason to
15 believe that there were releases from Chemfax onto
16 that property. It's not like, hey, we went over
17 there and took samples and we know there's not a
18 threat. But at this time, we don't have reason to
19 suspect it.
20 Q. In 1995, the gentleman asked— he asked
21 a question about the residential and if you had
22 done some sampling. In 1995, you did samplings
23 in one area, and then in 1999, you did samplings
24 in another area, but where he was asking to do
25 samples, you say that you had no reason to sample
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1 in that area, but yet, within the same area, from '95
2 to '99-
3 A. '95 was soil sampling, and 1999, when
4 we did the new, that was groundwater only.
5 Q. Ground water only?
6 A. Right.
7 Q. So when we go from 600 to 7100, what
8 do we have to explain that difference?
9 A. Let me try to go through that one more
10 fime. This is the 1995 RI, and it used what's
11 called direct push technology. We also went out
12 with a drilling rig and we put in monitoring wells.
13 We put holes in permanent monitoring wells with a
14 drilling rig. Direct push technology, on the other
15 hand, you put in the back of the/farp)and you use v^^
16 the hydraulic(yarljp)drive a screen down. At that Coj^
17 point in time— I didn't want to go into all this
18 technology, but at that point in time, you had a
19 cone, a well cone that was part ofthe drive
20 assembly. You just drove it in.
21 But Mississippi being Mississippi, the
22 screen was exposed to the formation, so that when
23 you backed off the intemal tubing and you tried to
24 draw groundwater in, the well cone would be
25 plugged and you couldn't get water.
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1 So you can see that in 1995, the
2 monitoring wells has got a huge gap in here
3 because we couldn't get a big drilling rig in there.
4 And when we did use the van, they couldn't get a
5 water sample.
6 So we come back in 1999, and all of a
7 sudden, we have a new— the technology has
8 changed so that the well screen is inside the last
9 piece of tubing and they drive it all the way down
10 and then they're able to back it off, expose the well
11 screen that has never touched the formation, boom,
12 we get groundwater.
13 So all of a sudden, this entire area here—
14 but you have all ofthe pictures ofthe— you have
15 all the drums and the above storage, above ground
16 storage tanks and all that stuff in the way, they
17 couldn't sample groundwater. The places that we
18 could get to, the well screen would plug up and we
19 couldn't get a drilling rig right there. This year,
20 we come in with the new technology and you can
21 see the difference.
22 1995, no data. 1999, this is data.
23 Maximum benzene here 600. Maximum benzene
24 to be found this year vvas 7100. So I didn't want
25 to go into all that detail, but you asked.
^
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1 Q. I would like to ask this question. There
2 is some of those chemicals that did leak out and
3 get into Bayou Bemard. They had one of the
4 largest fish kills here about 15 years ago, back in
5 the '70s, and that chemical was in there. And if
6 you catch those fish out of there and you would go
7 to eat that fish, you would taste that chemical in
8 that fish, and they were there.
9 And so I taste some of— that's the reason
10 why I know. And somehow or another, that was
11 before that EPA was involved in that that
12 something got loose over and ran in to the creek in
13 there over near the train trestle. And so that's
14 causing a lot of those fish to be killed in there.
15 So I— it came from one or two places.
16 You see, some ofthe other places, the chemical
17 places that you have around here, somebody or
18 something allowed that to get out and get into
19 Bayou Bemard. Now, you can check your record
20 on that and you will find that— or maybe about
21 back in the late '70s, you had one ofthe biggest
22 fish kills down in Bayou Bemard that they had
23 ever had.
24 A. Yes, sir. There was a fire at the facility
25 back in the early '80s or late '70s, I'm not sure
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1 which, and two of their large storage sheds bumed
2 down. The material that got out was a blend of
3 styrene and naphthalene-based resins and polymers,
4 and I believe that did get into Bemard Bayou and
5 cause a fish kill.
6 EPA did respond to that, along with the
7 state, and the material— what they could contain
8 after the fire was contained on site, and it was
9 capped in a clay cap, so we were aware that there
10 was a problem at that time and it was caused by
11 the fire.
12 Q. Well, let me ask you this here. Would
13 the water deteriorate that chemical—
14 A. Dissipate?
15 Q. Yes.
16 A. Yes, sir. Over time, the chemical
17 would dissipate or dilute down, so the initial fish
18 kill should not have had any long-term impact on
19 the bayou.
20 A. I wasn't aware of that particular
21 incident, but we will be looking at the surface
22 water characterization, we will be looking at
23 Bemard Bayou. Part of the baseline assessment
24 will address those types of issues.
25 Right now, we don't suspect the fish will
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1 be a problem right now. Anything that happened
2 15 years ago is a catastrophe but does not
3 represent a long-term threat. If they were dumping
4 into the Bemard Bayou every day for 30 years
5 while they operated, that would be a problem, but
6 hopefully, we would be able to see that with the
7 sampling that we've done.
8 In any case, with the sampling that we
9 have done, we will be able to quantify the risk
10 both to the environment and to human health.
11 And, of course, human health will be looking at
12 direct contact. They'll be looking at fish and so on
13 and so forth.
14 Q. Did you take any sediment samples out
15 of Bayou Bemard?
16 A. Yes. We would have sampled that as
17 part ofthe remedial investigation, which would be
18 part of this document. I'll say that knowing that
19 they did that, but I can't be— it's in this document.
20 But as part ofthe 1995 work, they should have
21 taken surface water.
22 In '99, when we came back, we had
23 different samples to take on the property. Prior to
24 1995, we had the technology to sample on the
25 bayou.
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1 That was just for groundwater. Everything
2 I was talking about over there was groundwater
3 only. You are talking about Bemard Bayou. We
4 have data for that in—
5 Q. Would it have been a good idea to
6 re-sample the sediment to make sure that it wasn't
7 there?
8 A. We actually took sediment samples of
9 the storm drain line and the creek that led to
10 Bemard Bayou and found that we did have
11 considerable sediment contaminafion, and as part of
12 the emergency removal action because that would
13 come into contact with water flowing into Bemard
14 Bayou, we did excavate most ofthe drainage
15 ditches on the facility.
16 So there was a series of three dikes that
17 connected a large drainage ditch going from the
18 facility to the bayou. That entire area has been
19 excavated to a depth of about 2 to 3 feet to get the
20 majority of the contamination out of there.
21 Q. That's in the ditches?
22 A. Yes, sir.
23 Q. I was talking about in Bayou Bemard.
24 Did you take any samples, sediment samples out of
25 Bayou Bernard? Because all of this still could be
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1 sitting on the bottom of the lake.
2 A. Not as part of the emergency action, no,
3 sir.
4 Q. Another question, according to the site,
5 itself, how long will it be before you will be able
6 to do any construction on that building, on that
7 site?
8 A. Build something on the site?
9 Q. Yes.
10 A. That depends on the type of structure.
11 There are structures—
12 A. Well, no, we have to clean it up first
13 before they will go out there and build on it. I
14 don't think anyone wants to build. As long as the
15 site is proposed and it's not cleaned up, I don't
16 think anybody will go out there and start building.
17 Q. You will have something out there
18 when you come back if you don't put a sign on
19 there that says no building.
20 A. We will take into consideration, you
21 know, taking samples in the bayou, if necessary.
22 Q. And also, around the perimeter of
23 Chemfax, I think it would be a good idea to go out
24 100 yards or so to take samples and make sure
25 there is nothing leaching towards the community.
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1 itself
2 A. We go out there to sample and
3 determine the extent of the site. A site— you
4 know, you could have— this could be the
5 boundaries of Chemfax, and for our purposes,
6 under Superfiind, the site actually could just be
7 within the boundaries of that property. Because
8 what we do is, we go out there and take the
9 samples, and where we find contamination, we say,
10 okay, this is part ofthe site, this is part ofthe site,
11 until we can't find any more contamination, and
12 then we stop.
13 Q. You did that?
14 A. That's what we do in the remedial
15 investigation.
16 A. Oh, yes. We would not stop because
17 there's a property line right here. We wouldn't do
18 that. We find the boundary to that contamination.
19 Q. As long as you found something, you
20 would continue to go out and sample until you
21 didn't find anything?
22 A. Yes. And the boundaries ofthe site do
23 not coincide with the boundaries of the property.
24 Q. I'm not talking about the site of the
25 property. I'm talking about finding contamination.
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1 A. This is what I'm talking about. We
2 don't limit ourselves by the property boundaries.
3 We continue looking for the contamination.
4 Q. You go until you don't find anymore?
5 A. That's right.
6 Q. So the wells on the perimeter of the site
7 are the end of the whatever it was, the
8 contamination?
9 A. Yes. If you look at this map, right
10 here, that area is the pond and the groundwater.
11 There is a small data gap as you get up into here
12 because we found 26 parts per billion right there,
13 which is very low, and we think that's going to go
14 from 26 parts per billion to Bemard Bayou, which
15 would be essentially clean, and anything below 26
16 parts per billion should not represent a threat
17 through groundwater. 26 parts per billion is very,
18 very low.
19 The groundwater standard for benzene is
20 five parts per billion. So if you've got 26 parts per
21 billion here, I don't know what the level is, but it's
22 not going to be a problem when it gets to Bemard
23 Bayou. Because the fact that this area right here is
24 not perfectly delineated, it's not going to be a
25 problem. But that is the extent of the benzene
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1 contamination in the groundwater.
2 Q. That was another question I wanted to
3 ask you. Are you aware that there is another
4 chemical plant in the area?
5 A. Yes, sir. We are. We are working on
6 that.
7 Q - I wanted to tell you back in the early
8 '80s, it blew up over there.
9 A. Yes, sir, it did.
10 Q. And a lot of things happened. I think it
11 bumed for about a day or two, you see.
12 A. Sir, we're working with the cunent
13 owner.
14 Q. There are some things over there. If
15 I'm not mistaken, I think one person got killed.
16 A. Yes, sir. There was also another
17 Plastifax, where I think they had an explosion.
18 You had two Chemfaxes and you had, like, a
19 Plastifax. That may be the same one you are
20 thinking of We're aware, as Roberta says, and
21 they're working on it.
22 Q. I just wanted to know, this is all— if it
23 gets on the national priorities list, presumably it's
24 then going to be cleaned up. What happens if it
25 doesn't get on the national priorities list?
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1 A. Well, if— we can only go as far as the
2 remedial design. If it doesn't get on there, then it's
3 going to stay dirty unless somebody else comes in
4 and wants to clean it up on their own.
5 Q. EPA, at this point, has done all it can
6 do without— it can present to the national priorities
7 list, but it's physically done as much as it can do
8 when it's through with this?
9 A. Well, you said physically. That's
10 conect.
11 Q. How would you—
12 A. Let me make one point with that. Our
13 plans, as I pointed out up here, are to go ahead
14 and go through the decision process without final
15 listing and work with the state to try to resolve that
16 situation. So what you are going to see is CDM
17 giving us the draft feasibility studies, baseline
18 ecological assessment, baseline human health
19 assessment. You are going to finalize all three of
20 those documents.
21 I am going to write a proposed plan with
22 the prefened remedy, present it to the public, we
23 are going to have another public meeting in this
24 room, if it holds everybody, and then we will write
25 the record of decision, even if we don't get the site
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1 listed.
2 But as far as getting it cleaned up, we
3 can't do that unless we receive a final listing.
4 Q. What department at the state level is
5 responsible for that, working with you on the
6 filing?
7 A. They have the Mississippi Department
8 of Environmental Quality, Office of Pollufion
9 Control. There are two people over there. The
10 DEQ is the department that we work with,
11 Department of Environmental Quality.
12 You want to add anything to that, Philip?
13 A. No. I just— future working with them
14 to try to get it listed is all I can tell you. It's
15 obviously a stone above my level, where the
16 negotiations will take place.
17 Q. What would be the next level above
18 yours?
19 A. Me? The head of the hazardous waste
20 division.
21 Q. If they had— when they have the
22 cleanup, will EPA supervise the cleanup?
23 A. If it's on the NPL and if EPA is
24 responsible for the work, yes, sir.
5 Q. What if a private company came in
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1 there to clean it up themselves, wouldn't EPA still
2 supervise that?
3 A. We could enter into an agreement with
4 them.
5 Q. You should do that. You should
6 supervise it.
7 A. No. When I say enter into an
8 agreement, it would be an enforceable agreement
9 and then, you know, we would— it would be done
10 under our supervision, oversight. We are doing
11 this in other places in the United States, in the
12 southeast, where some sites haven't gone to the
13 national priority list but the responsible parties
14 have wanted to cooperate with us. They said, we'll
15 be glad to work with you before you put us on the
16 NPL because people don't want to be put on the
17 NPL, national priority list.
18 Q. What would it take to get the benzene
19 out of the groundwater? What would you have to
20 do?
21 A. I don't want to comment on that until I
22 get— it could be something like— there's lots of
23 different remedies from a technical standpoint, and
24 I'm not prepared to tell you what we might do. I
25 could talk to you for 30 minutes about the different
"^mmi^
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1 options we have, charcoal filtration. That's his job,
2 is to present things—
3 Q. Would it be very costly? Are all of
4 these very expensive?
5 A. Groundwater remediation is not cheap,
6 and it can take a long time. It can take years and
7 years. Generally speaking, at an NPL site, with
8 long-term remediation, groundwater cleanup is
9 going to be the most expensive, as with soil
10 contamination you can take it up and haul it away,
11 groundwater contamination takes years.
12 Q - I want to ask how long do you all
13 monitor the areas that has been polluted like that
14 with chemicals? And the reason why I ask it, we
15 have a place over there right by me that they build
16 a mound hio;h as this ceiling all over there and fill
17 it up with dirt.
18 A. You tell me where it is, and if you
19 have a name—
20 Q. The old creosote company.
21 A. What's the name of the creosote
22 company?
23 Q. Where Cavenham is located.
24 A. I can speak to you about the O&M,
25 operation and maintenance of an NPL site. We
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1 will monitor that.
2 A. He's reporting another site. It could be
3 a RCRA site that's already being regulated. I don't
4 know. What we've got to do is get the name of it,
5 get the location, and when we get back to EPA
6 find out if we are looking at it under another
7 program or if it's already under our program.
8 A. He's talking about Cavenham Forest
9 Industries. It's the old creosote plant which is right
10 out-
11 Q. It's operating right now?
12 A. Cavenham. I think it's under RCRA.
13 We can verify, resource conservation recovery act,
14 that's another law, another program, and they
15 regulate operating facilities that are dealing with
16 RCRA hazardous waste. But we'll look into it.
17 Q. The reason why I'm concemed about it
18 is that was an area over there that held a creosote
19 pit for years and years and years, and they came in
20 there and they dug out, but I don't think they went
21 down deep enough because a lot of it was in— in
22 Bemard Bayou.
23 A. If you give me your name and address,
24 and we'll be glad to find out for you. Just write it
25 there. And we'll give you a— either write to you
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1 or call you. You can give me your telephone
2 number. And we'll let you know if we know
3 anything about it. If not, we'll be glad to discover
4 it. That's my business.
5 Q. Could you tell us, with a pit, a creosote
6 pit, would it contaminate the groundwater, the
7 aquifer?
8 A. Very possible, but— are we going to
9 talk about other sites or are we going to talk about
10 this one? But creosote is a potential threat to the
11 groundwater. And what we'll do is, I'll call you
12 up, sir. Do you have a phone number?
13 MR. FARRIER:
14 Let me say one more thing about
15 Cavenham, you get his name and phone number. I
16 know who the responsible EPA person is for
17 Cavenham. I will have her call you and talk to
18 you about that site. Lael Butler. I think it used to
19 be. She may not still be the contact person for
20 that, but that's regulated under a different set of
21 regulations as opposed to Chemfax, which is
22 abandoned. But we will have someone call you
23 about the Cavenham site.
24 Q. I need to know because it had been
25 there— that is my home. I knew all about it. It
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1 was the Gulfport creosote company first and then
2 they sold it to Crown Zellerbach— and then Crown
3 Zellerbach let somebody else have it. It changed
4 hands.
5 A. I understand.
6 Q. That was before the EPA come in there.
7 When they did come in there, they went in there
8 and they had to spend umpteens of dollars to get
9 that place in— they hauled enough dirt to cover this
10 whole area up in here. I mean, eight feet high.
11 We live there. You will see it. It's real high out
12 there, maybe right about 12 feet high, runs so far
13 back in there. And we've got tanks in there
14 probably been in the ground or something.
15 A. I understand. We will definitely have
16 somebody get in touch with you about that. My
17 job is to do the Chemfax site. We understand your
18 concem. I'll have somebody contact you. Roberta
19 is going tp send somebody out there to take some
20 pictures and they'll send them to us in Atlanta.
21 MS. RUNGE:
22 If you tell me how I can get in touch with
23 you— we'll go tomonow.
24 MR. VILLAMARZO:
25 Brian, I'm trying to get back to The Sun
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1 Heralds question of groundwater remediation,
2 and he said that he had some general comments
3 on that, and I wanted to hear those
4 comments.
5 Q. Yes. Do you mind if I— you were
6 going over in very general terms about
7 groundwater cleanup and ways that we could
8 possibly clean up.
9 MR. TIM TURNER:
10 There's several technologies out there.
11 They range from basically do nothing and let
12 natural attenuation occur, which is like naturally
13 allowing the contamination to dilute or naturally
14 occuning organisms in the soil to consume the
15 contaminants, all the way to some active treatment,
16 such as pumping the groundwater out ofthe
17 aquifer, sending it to a— to the sewer system is one
18 possibility. There's also filtering that through
19 carbon filters.
20 Now, these may or may not be suitable for
21 this particular site. That's the study that we're
22 cunentiy involved in now. There's also biological
23 treatment where you stimulate the naturally
24 occuning organisms in the ground by maybe
25 pumping oxygen down into the aquifer.
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1 These things are the sort of technologies
2 that we're looking at right now, .and alf of these
3 have associated costs with them. They also have
4 varying degrees of success, and we balance these
5 out in our report. And that's where Brian finally
6 makes the final decision on the best technology
7 that would be effective at this site and
8 cost-effective at this site.
9 MR. FARRIER:
10 That's what I have to look at when he
11 sends me the report. He can talk more about
12 biological treatment. There's a lot of options out
13 there, and you'll be hearing more about that. But
14 we'll present the proposed plan in this room next
15 spring?
16 Q - I have two questions. One is, what is
17 the levels for human risk factors for benzene?
18 What are the cunent levels?
19 A. At this point, when you talk about
20 groundwater, you don't talk about risk level.
21 Superfund has a risk level for carcinogens. You
22 would be talking ten to the minus four to ten to
23 the minus six. I don't want to get into that right
24 now. But for groundwater, you don't use that.
25 You use the drinking water standard that the
siagaa^^
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drinking company has— the drinking water plant
has to use to treat your water at your tap for
benzene that's five parts per billion. That would be
the cleanup standard for groundwater, for benzene.
Q. And my second question was, there was
a— it came out in the newspaper. I don't know if
you all saw that, about possible commercial
building being put on the Chemfax site. Can you
respond to that? Can that happen?
A. I think I addressed that when the
gentleman in the back, you know, mentioned about
building on the property. You know, it's— if it's
not clean, nobody's going to go on there and
assume this liability, because we've got steel teeth
in this law, and nobody's going to mess around
with that site until we clean it up.
If somebody was to go out there on their
own, they're going to have to pay for EPA past
costs for one thing, and these guys have already
racked up, what, how much money have you
spent?
MS. RUNGE:
It will be about $1.5 million.
A. If somebody wants to go out there and
build, they are going to have to pay that bill right
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1 there. I don't think anybody wants to go out
2 there— well, I don't want to comment on that. If
3 somebody wants to pay it, fine.
4 Q - I hear you saying at the point that it's
5 cleaned up, but when it's cleaned up, what does
6 that mean?
7 A. We have to get the documents that we
8 talked about, the CDM to give me the FS, the
9 baseline risk assessment for ecological and human
10 receptors, and those are the tools that I have to do
11 two things, what remedy am I going to choose,
12 how much is it going to cost and how clean will—
13 how clean will we clean up the groundwater and
14 the soil.
15 By that, I mean we have to select a risk
16 level. For groundwater contamination, we don't
17 select a risk level, like I said. You are going to
18 clean up the benzene to five parts per billion
19 because that's the drinking water standard. The
20 soil, you might choose a risk level for a
21 carcinogen, based on— you have to choose a land
22 use. You might have an industrial land use. You
23 might clean it up for an anticipated future
24 residential use. Those are the things that I have to
25 choose as part of the prefened remedy, and that's
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where we get your comment on what decisions I
make. And you will have a chance to comment on
the prefened remedy next year.
Q. It will take a year, though? It will be
in a year?
A. Once you get the document from them
in December, finalize them by March and have the
proposed plan next summer, have another public
meeting for the proposed plan next summer. Any
other questions?
Q. If I'm understanding this right, there's •
nothing been done about any kind of studies of the
medical impact on people in the area, cancer
incidents or anything like this?
A. That's not something that we would do.
That's something that is—
Q. Well, it would— I would think that
would help get this NPL list thing going if they
knew what this kind of thing is doing to people. I
mean, he's eating the fish, we're breathing the air,
and I've worked in this area and lived in this area
for ten years and I don't know what it might have
done to me.
A. There was one done. We'll be glad to
give you a copy of that. The ATSDR is the
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1 agency for toxic substances and it comes under the
2 health and human services, the CDC, and we'll get
3 you a copy of the report.
4 A. Actually, I have that in my site files.
5 A. ATSDR and EPA will work together.
6 We're two different agencies. As a matter of fact,
7 ATSDR was created by the Superfimd law.
8 A. The document is called a health
9 consultation. I'm not familiar with the process they
10 used, but that would answer those types of
11 questions. We also have a contact named Bob
12 Safay you can tell—
13 A. They already did it and Sherryl's going
14 to give her a copy of it.
15 Q. Since you don't know and you are
16 waiting on reports and we're going to have to have
17 those in a year, what are the hazards for people
18 who are just passing along that particular area?
19 A. Actually, that was my job. Our task
20 was to move— to remove any threat that a
21 passerbyer might have if they passed along the
22 property or transited over the property. The only
23 way that you could have a health risk on this piece
24 of property, at this point, is if you begin an
25 excavation. There are no drums, no tanks, no soil
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1 on the surface that would pose a health risk to you.
2 Q. What about prior to this point, people
3 that have been passing by, what has been done
4 about that?
5 A. Well, the ATSDR study took a look at
6 the workers on the site and we'll provide that study
7 to you. They found that benzene concentrations
8 were somewhat elevated and that the workers could
9 be exposed to benzene. The only other people on
10 the site after the facility closed were vagrants and
11 it's kind of difficult to get any kind of—
12 Q. What about in air? Is there anything
13 the air can transmit?
14 A. Not at this point, no.
15 Q. What about before this point?
16 A. Before this point, when there were
17 tanks and dmms on the property, yes, there was—
18 Q. And that's what I'm getting at, the
19 people that were exposed who might possibly have
20 passed that area, what has been done with that?
21 A. That's under that report that we are
22 going to get for the lady. We'd be happy to give
23 you a copy of the report, too.
24 Q. Did the waste that got in the river raise
25 or lower the pH level to make it dangerous or—
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1 A. The pH level?
2 Q. Yes. Did the waste that got in it, did it
3 lower it or change it at all?
4 A. I can almost assure you that the pH
5 level— if the pH level had been affected, it would
6 have been short-term and not long-term.
7 Q. A copy of that report is at the Orange
8 Grove Library, that ATSDR report.
9 A. Ifs in the repository? Do you know
10 where the repository is?
11 You are welcome to look at the charts. If
12 you have any questions, we'll be glad to answer
13 them. We've got the report that I've been talking
14 about, the aerial photographs and all these pictures.
15 Feel free to take a look.
16 (Meeting concluded.)
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CERTIFICATE OF COURT REPORTER
2 1, MONICA SCHROKUKR, Court Reporter and
3 Notary Public, in and for the County of Jackson, State
4 of Mississippi, hereby certify that the foregoing
5 pages, and including this page, contain a tme and
6 correct transcript ofthe testimony ofthe witness, as
7 taken by me at the time and place heretofore stated,
8 and later reduced to typewritten form by
9 computer-aided transcription under my supervision,
10 to the best of my skill and ability.
11 I further certify that I placed the witness under
12 oath to tmthfully answer all questions in this matter
13 under the authority vested in me by the State of
14 Mississippi.
15 I further certify that I am not in the employ of, or
16 related to, any counsel or party in this matter, and
17 have no interest, monetary or otherwise, in the fmal
18 outcome ofthe proceedings.
19 Witness my signature and seal, this the 28thday of
20 21 December 1 9 9 9 .
22
23
25
ica Schro 24 Monica Schroeden RPR, CRR, CSR #1285 My Commission Expires July 12, 2003
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