Pollution woes worsen at site near Del. City
New contamination found in groundwater near Metachem site
12:08 AM, Dec. 15, 2011
Federal scientists have discovered a new pollution plume from the massively contaminated former Metachem Products plant near Delaware City, increasing the urgency of an attempt to map groundwater flows around the area.
Well tests on a separate property west of the former chlorinated benzene plant found contamination hundreds of times higher than federal drinking-water limits about 150 feet below ground in an area that officials once insisted was safe and beyond the range of plant spills.
Pollutants found under the neighboring, shut-down Air Products Inc. site include cancer-causing benzene and paradichlorobenzene and two other types of chlorinated benzenes, long-lived toxic chemicals used in production of herbicides and pesticides that can cause liver and kidney damage, among other effects.
The contamination was found as federal scientists continue to pore over results of a groundwater “stress test” around the plant, the latest phase of a $100 million-and-rising taxpayer cleanup. The cleanup effort has focused on protecting the Potomac Aquifer, which provides drinking water to millions of people in the coastal mid-Atlantic.
Regulators have banned the use of groundwater anywhere in the vicinity. Residents in the area have their drinking water piped in from distant public supplies.
The U.S. Geological Survey-led effort aimed to duplicate an “inconclusive,” partially completed 1990 test of deep aquifer vulnerability to surface spills financed by Standard Chlorine of Delaware, the toxic chemical plant’s original owner.
A USGS researcher recommended the new tests based on concern about unknown groundwater connections and pollution threats to “existing and future public water supplies” that tap more distant portions of the deep Potomac Aquifer.
“It’s a way to understand the flow of groundwater in the Potomac Aquifer beneath the site,” said Hilary Thornton, an Environmental Protection Agency project manager. “It doesn’t provide contamination data; it’s more about where the groundwater is flowing, that would possibly indicate where you might look for contamination.”
Investigators pumped a Delaware City Refinery-owned well around the clock for four days for the test, while continuously tracking water levels in dozens of monitoring wells under and around the federal Superfund cleanup site and nearby Red Lion Creek.
Sarah B. Bucic, a founder of the Delaware City Environmental Coalition, said she had not heard about the USGS groundwater report, although EPA officials briefed the community group on several environmental issues, many focused on water concerns, in September.
“There’s a lot going on there,” Bucic said Wednesday. “We’re told that our aquifer is safe here, so that’s what I’m going on for now. We’re hoping that they can get to things earlier, rather than doing cleanups.”
Standard Chlorine – once the world’s largest producer of some types of herbicide and pesticide ingredients – sold the 65-acre factory site to Metachem Products in 1998. Metachem declared bankruptcy in 2002 after its own series of pollution offenses, walking away from more than $60 million in business debts and saddling taxpayers with a huge cleanup obligation.
Company officials used results from the 1990 study and other findings to shrug off threats to deep groundwater and justify years of inaction and cleanup failures at the site.
Plant operators never acknowledged the hazard to deep groundwater, and regulators later admitted that company reports and claims of safety were unfounded and, in some cases, based on inadequate or misleading data.
After the factory’s shutdown, the EPA removed bulk liquid chemicals and 800 cubic-yard-sized tanks filled with toxic liquids that federal contractors distilled from wastes left by the bankrupt company.
Plans are in the works to permanently seal dozens of acres of the main plant area with a dense, waterproof cap, a choice made after officials determined the site was likely to remain too contaminated for public exposure even after much of the toxic soil below was removed. After completion of the $10 million cap, monitoring could be required for a century or more.
Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control officials said Wednesday that the federally directed cleanup is showing “positive results,” and that no public drinking-water systems now operate near the site.
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