http://www.epa.gov/reg5oopa/news/news03/03opa012.htm
This is in my village about 1/2 mile from us. Up until yesterday it wasn’t a concern for anyone here but now the sub-contractor for Johnson Controls has release a letter to all the residents around here that they’ve done some testing and now found our property to be contaminated also. They’ll be turning the results over to the EPA and Johnson Controls who’ll be contacting all of us in the neighborhood.
Anyone here have experience with any of this and have a guess of what we should expect? Should we group together and contact a lawyer? Or will the EPA and/or village be responsible to deal with this? Our houses were built in 2001…long after Johnson Controls moved in. I always thought the city or township was required to test the property before allowing it to be zoned residential.
Someone at work told me this happened to his dad years ago with some air pollution from a nearby factory. The factory ended up buying all the houses for 2 blocks all around that factory and he got almost 3X what he owed on the house…I could live with that!
Replies
I'd start with a call to Karen Thompson, the EPA representative. She can give you a much more detailed and balanced perspective than the newspapers can.
The levels of contaminants might be quite low and might not be moving off the property. This sort of thing is cleaned up safely and effectively all the time. If it were me, I'd collect all the information in a relaxed and reasoned manner and take your time before deciding if you need to do anything.
>>I always thought the city or township was required to test the property before allowing it to be zoned residential.
So you are an advocate of bigger government? You think government should molly-coddle you? Whatever happened to rugged individualism and self-reliance and personal responsibility?
Shoot, that would cost us taxpayers money and we know better than the government how to spend our money, right? That's why you had environmental testing done before you bought your property, right?
Frankly, I wouldn't have expected you to ask that sort of question and express that sort of socialist view based on many of your posts here.
Just goes to show it can be hard to draw conclusions about how a person reacts to any given situation based on his expressed views.
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"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image, when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." Anne Lamott
Turns out there's a "molten" and a "moltenmetal" both who are active participants on this site. Hope you're not blasting one guy with a comment intended for the other!
Funny- looks like molten is going into a business I got out of about 7 years ago. I got sick of spending people's money cleaning up cancer-suspect compounds in soils where the only risk was to people who ate the dirt, when those self-same compounds could be found at enormously higher exposure levels in cigarette smoke. I also got tired of having technical decisions regarding what treatment technology would do the best job of dealing with a particular chemical, being made on the basis of politics rather than science. Personally, I feel that spending money studying and then attempting to clean up many of these contamination problems is not money well spent- there are far more obvious things which actually kill or injure large numbers of people yearly, where the cause and the result are directly rather than indirectly linked, that would benefit us much more if we spent the same amount of money dealing with them.
I wish the original poster good luck. I'd suspect that the only risk to his property is that from TCE contaminated groundwater flowing by on its way to the river. PCBs have only an infinitessimal solubility in water, and they adsorb strongly to soils- doubt they're much of an issue off-property unless there was a truly massive spill. If you're drinking well-water, have it tested. If you have a basement, your house is very air-tight and you have forced air heating, you may have some issues with TCE evaporating from the groundwater and entering the air of your house- but I'd personally only be at all concerned about that if your house abutts the plant fence.
TCE was one of the most widely-used solvents for degreasing. It saved many lives because it is not flammable, and replaced flammable alternatives. Unfortunately it's fairly soluble in water (at least ten thousand times more soluble than PCBs), and it's more dense than water so it drops right to the bottom of the aquifer. People used to think that if they spilled some on their concrete floor, the problem was gone as soon as it evaporated away- they didn't realize it seeped through the concrete and into the soil below. And unlike BTEX, the most toxic components of gasoline, TCE degrades only very slowly in the sub-surface, and one of the by-products of the degradation is vinyl chloride- a compound which evaporates more readily than TCE and is a known human carcinogen instead of just a suspected one. So TCE's now one of the most pervasive groundwater pollutants around.
From my experience, the best course of action if the groundwater contamination is shallow and isn't in fractured bedrock, would be to plant a row of poplar trees between the plant and the river along the groundwater "gradient" (i.e. the direction it flows). The poplars pump a tremendous amount of water, and they metabolize and evaporate compounds like TCE (the process of using plants to clean up contamination is called "phytoremediation"). They grow fast, and though they don't last as long as many other trees, they're the nicest-looking groundwater treatment system going- and they're non-invasive and solar-driven to boot!
>>Turns out there's a "molten" and a "moltenmetal" both who are active participants on this site. Hope you're not blasting one guy with a comment intended for the other!
Well, possibly, as one grows older, one's command of details can fade, but it seems to me that Molten has posted some pretty conservative opinions which seem to me to be a bit inconsistent with "gee, I thought the government would take care of me when I'm making the biggest investment I'm ever likely to make."
If I've mixed him up with someone else, I apologize.
_______________________
Tool Donations Sought
I'm matching tool donors to a church mission to Haiti - we're shipping a bus converted to a medical facility in (now it looks like) April and can fill it with clothes, tools and all sorts of stuff needed in that poorest of all countries. A few hand tools or power tools can provide a livelihood for an otherwise destitute family. Please email me if you have tools to donate.
Thanks to Jeff and David and Jim and Rich and Steven and Mark and Jason and Shep and Jen and Mike and Joe for their offers!
The first donation just arrived! Thanks and God bless!
"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image, when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." Anne Lamott
Hey Bob, no problem. Doubt I'd be considered "conservative"...
Moltenmetal and Jet Boy, I can't believe that there are any people left with such good knowledge and the common sense to use it!
As a certified pesticide applicator, if not using any because we are in a drought and so have no weeds or pests, we come across scary stories that take our new ways to measure to the very least residue and make it seem that the sky is falling in.
There is much that should be handled with caution but also much that is innocuous. Mistakes were made, law breakers abused our trust and polluted but in general, the use of chemicals is fairly well understood and safe when handled properly.
Here, commercial applicators, the people that handle such all the time, are tested yearly and they don't have any more sickness or elevated blood levels of those chemicals than the run of the mill person does.
Our health department here shows that skin cancer from sun exposure, outside of self caused problems like smoking etc. is what sickens people most.
As you mention, normal exposure to anything in the environment has been going on since any living things were evolving. It is part of life and, short of testing and trying no to pollute above that, some risks will always be there.
We are still sore about 245T, "Agent Orange", that was used for tens of years safely, extensively, by many and, even when misused grossly by the military, only a few people seem to have gotten sick from it and that connection is still today questionable since those same people were exposed to much else.
Politics banned it and the reformulated stuff we have today just doesn't work but 25% of what the straight stuff did and costs 10 times more.
Good for you to speak up.
We need to keep checking and testing to safeguard all, if something found to correct it, but we don't need to scare all out of their wits with crying wolf so much.
I live by two rules. 1) Follow the money 2) Never ascribe to malice that easily explained by stupidity. Seems to cover about 99% of what I encounter out there. Oh, and when working with pesticides, keep a bottle of 2-PAM handy. ;-)
A few years ago we passed on a house. It was perfect in so many ways, but, it had oil heat and in the breezeway you could smell the heating oil. The house was a bank forclosure on an old person who had gotten scammed by a conman so the bank didn't have to sign any disclosures as they hadn't lived there. It was on a hillside and surrounded by 1/2 million dollar houses. In my state, the owner is resonsible for the oil tank and the damage it causes. I just wasn't willing to assume the liability of digging up my neighbors house when we decommisioned the tank. We couldn't get it tested without the banks permission, and those who test are required to report their results to the state. So we passed.
I told the story to a guy I know who works with the State environmental board. He said it was a wise move to walk away. I later met the guy who bought the house and he said it cost $1000 to clean and decommision the tank. Agggh!
On the otherhand, a local company was fined $180,000 by the state for incorreectly decommisioning and certifying oil tanks. Guess what, the property owners are still responsible for the damage, and that includes people who bought houses where it had been reported on the disclosure that the oil tank was certified as decommissioned. So much for the state protecting people. And yes, none of that fine went towards helping people who got screwed by the company.
Bob, I've made a conscious effort to not get involved in any more political discussions here since long before x-mas so why don't you just leave me alone and move on to some other whipping boy if you have nothing constructive to offer here?
Moltenmetal and Jet Boy's posts were very informative and on the mark.
Yes, private properties are often bought in the vicinity of a large toxic waste site. Alternately, you might be offered an alternative water supply if you have a domestic well (I've seen that done on another former Stanley Tools Works site I designed a clean-up system for). Or "holdover" rent (more common for commercial sites) can be paid for the lost use and lost marketability.
A sleazy lawyer would love to talk to you. And take 30-40% of the proceeds. A reputable lawyer, willing to work for only $400/hour could advise you of strategies and asking prices in such cases. Having retained counsel and knowing how to approach them would be well worth the $800 to $1,600 you might spend for an initial consultation and a bit of follow up. Dropping that fact on the responsible party's desk or routing your correspondence through counsel shakes them up a bit. Obviously, you want an attornery with experience in these cases.
City or State routinely checking out a home for soil and GW contamination? Nope. Just like pest inspections, building inspections, etc, that is your choice to do it or not. Your bank has a say in pest/building inspections, flood plain determinations, etc. Mostly, they only require environmental "due diligence" on commercial properties. Simply owning those properties puts you at risk of clean-up costs and, in some cases, leaves the owner trying to pursue former owners for reimbursement. Such due diligence starts with a "Phase I site assessment" which is mostly a paperwork review and a drive-by. Maybe $1,500 to $2,500. And may include a recommendation for a follow-up Phase II costing $10,000 on up to millions.
But as a homeowner, you clearly 1) are not responsible for the PCB's and chlorinated solvents under your house, and 2) have had your property values damaged as a result. Let the horse trading begin!
David Thomas Overlooking Cook Inlet in Kenai, Alaska
Even the term "Toxic Waste Site" spans a huge range. Add lawyers, the media, and jury boxes packed with idiots (or is that media packed with idiots?) and I wonder why we even bother to do science anymore. :(
One also has to consider that there may be multiple sources of the contamination since compounds like TCE were widely used by many businesses. In the case of a single plant, it is pretty easy to isolate the source, especially if the soil concentration decreases the further one moves away. But often when a place is being investigated, nothing is said until most of the testing has been done so that other plants won't start destroying the paper trail of solvents and chemicals shipped to them. That is why the newspaper article says they have 3 weeks to hand in their report. I bet the investiagtion has been going on for months or years. Only now to do they feel it is safe to let that fact out. It will be interesting to see if any other plants in the area "suddenly" go out of business and close down as a protective measure.
For the most part, things have probably gotten as bad as they are going to get here in the states. Sites are no longer being contaminated the way they were in the past. Ironically, the major new industrial problem is the gas additive that was mandated by law to cut down on air pollution. I wonder how many politicians with good intentions are going to backtrack and put distance between themselves and the votes they made 10-15 years ago. Talk about unintended consequences. Probably the biggest new concern is meth labs and the cost to clean them up. This is really hitting apartment owners, and even motels. Someone rents a place and trashes it, sometimes requiring that all the other units be vacated until the source is cleaned up.
As for "government" protecting you, keep in mind that politicians have to balance the tradeoffs. If they close the plant then what happens to all the jobs and tax revenues? Follow the money.
"For the most part, things have probably gotten as bad as they are going to get here in the states. Sites are no longer being contaminated the way they were in the past. Ironically, the major new industrial problem is the gas additive that was mandated by law to cut down on air pollution."
I agree that things are getting better. Sites are probably being cleaned up faster than new spills are happening - we've made it so expensive to spill stuff. It used to be only $2,000 of gasoline or $5,000 of solvent lost. Now it is a $40,000 investigation and $300,000 clean-up for a service station and millions on a TCE site.
Note that the mandates for MtBE came in state with oil refineries and without lots of corn. Oil refineries make MtBE. In the Midwest, ethanol is/was used to increase the oxygen content of gasoline. Either one works for reducing winter car emissions, but ethanol degrades zippy quick. And who wouldn't mind have beer on tap from your domestic well? But MtBE degrades so slowly and is so mobile in groundwater that one service station spill can take out wells all across town. Santa Barbara, CA comes to mind - oil companies are paying some big bucks to replace the lost water supply there.David Thomas Overlooking Cook Inlet in Kenai, Alaska
GREAT NEWS!!!!
I got a copy of the full report today (Michigan dept. of enviro. quality remediation and redevelopment division) and my property checks out as being below any hazardous limits so I'm off the hook but several homes closer to the plant are in the bad zone. 72 samples were taken around the area and 32 failed. 2 were on my property (checked at "normal") and 2 more very close to our property checked fine also. The letter has a scaled map showing all the good and bad sample spots and a table that correlates with the map showing the actual results. It also shows the migration going West (away) from our property which is even better.
Sites are probably being cleaned up faster than new spills are happening ,,Dave, is not the mining industry still dumping their waste all over the state of Nevada ?? I think the mining industry, is today, still dumping lots of toxic waste on our lands. Jim J
By regulatory fiat, mining wastes aren't hazardous wastes. You can be a hazardous waste by being on the list (waste solvents like TCE), or by failing toxicity, corosivity, or flamability tests (and being a waste, not a product). BUT, even if you very toxic (heavy metals in mining wastes certainly are), you aren't a regulated if you are exempted from the list.
So 100 gallons of leaked TCE from your corner dry cleaner needs to be reported and cleaned up. 20 tons of mercury and 100 tons of arsenic released in mining operations generally do not.
I don't agree with that exemption, but it exists. I still feel things are better now than before. There's 10 feet of sediment covering the old oyster beds of SF Bay from 19th century hydraulic mining of gold 150 miles upriver. Nothing on that level is occurring today in the US. Streams in Idaho, drainages in Nevade, etc still are being polluted but those discharges are semi-regulated now, unlike previously.David Thomas Overlooking Cook Inlet in Kenai, Alaska
>>I've made a conscious effort to not get involved in any more political discussions here .... why don't you just leave me alone
Be happy to.
_______________________
Tool Donations Sought
I'm matching tool donors to a church mission to Haiti - we're shipping a bus converted to a medical facility in (now it looks like) April and can fill it with clothes, tools and all sorts of stuff needed in that poorest of all countries. A few hand tools or power tools can provide a livelihood for an otherwise destitute family. Please email me if you have tools to donate.
Thanks to Jeff and David and Jim and Rich and Steven and Mark and Jason and Shep and Jen and Mike and Joe for their offers!
The first donation just arrived! Thanks and God bless!
"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image, when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." Anne Lamott
Actually, I'm career migrating over to doing this as a full time profession. Basically, a survey was done of all manufacturing sites in the US which used certain "chemicals of potential concern (COPC)." TCE is a common degreaser and PCB is a nonconducting insulating chemical common to capacitors (mostly famous for those big gray ones on power poles which cometimes corroded and leaked. It sounds like they are at the end of the risk assessment stage meaning that they have identified a potential hazard and now they are quantifying it. Based on what they find, it will move to the risk management stage where they will decide what measures need to be taken to put people into an acceptable exposure situation. This will be done for all the COPC's and whichever presents the greatest risk will determine what action needs to be taken. This can take many forms depending on the extent of the contamination. It can range from removing all the soil at the plant which is contaminated so as to remove the source to doing basically nothing if they find that most of the chemical has already leeched and the remainder in the ground will migrate out in a couple of years. From the article, it sounds like they are contemplating the construction of a physical barrier to prevent horizontal migration of the chemicals towards the river, which often involves building an impermeable slurry wall barrier around the sources of contamination. In addition, these chemicals in the ground migrate up and become an airborne risk at the aite, in which case they might have to ventilate certain parts of the plant in order to keep the concentration at an acceptable exposure level, sort of like ventilating a basement to remove radon. In the case of air pollution from the factory, chances are it was a particulate contaminant that settled on the land surrounding the factory. The concentration is usually a function of distance and average direction of prevailing winds. They conducted tests and determined who fell within the unacceptable boundary. It was probably cheaper for them to buy up all the property, clean it up, and then resell the property or rebuild new structures. I'm sure that the purchase price above market value also included a "no-sue" clause.
In the case of TCE, there was a particularly nasty case in Beaverton, OR at the mattel toy plant, where they dumped the TCE on company property, and then got drinking water for the plant from a well in that groundwater. Employees were exposed to water concentrations up to 300 times (1600 ppm) the current acceptable level. It is now in the epidemiological phase where they are following the employees to see if they have particular types of illnesses at frequencies above that of a similar population. The acceptable exposure levels in many cases are values derived from animal testing under various exposure paradigms. These are being constantly revised if new data shows the risk is actually lower or higher than was originally predicted. What is really difficult is that the average person does more damage to themselves through the voluntary ingestion of alcohol, tobacco, and food than is due to the exposure of chemicals. I always remember my first impression of North Carolina. The visitors at the UNC hospital looked worse than the patients at the Cleveland Clinic. I guess 3 packs of camels a day will do that to you.
Contaminated is a term that can mean many things. Everything is contaminated, the question is whether the contamination is at a level that is above an acceptable threshold. Also, they may have tested a few sites in the neighborhood and found a high level. This doesn't mean that every lot is similarly contaminated as ground water migration isn't uniform. One lot might be on porous soil with a high migration, another might be mostly solid rock with very little migration.
Unfortunately, these cases are more often based on politics than actual science. Look at what happened with silicon implants despite the fact that people who had them suffered no illness at a greater frequency than normal people. Don't even get me started on asbestos, lead, and OJ. ;-) But don't be surprised if some shyster gets the plant closed and all the jobs go overseas because he wanted to line his pocket with a huge settlement.
Edited 1/22/2004 5:28:38 AM ET by Jet Boy
Well written post and informative.
The PCB was used in transformers, those big gray cans you see on utility post. It has not been use for many years, and utilities still test transformers for trace levels of it. Most do immediate spill remediation and clean up of any transformer leaks immediately.
I totally agree about the fear factor associated with issues you like these.
Dave
When I first started reading this thread I didn't think I knew boo about it...
Well, turns out that 25 years ago I had a job where we used solvents to clean machine parts - guess what it was - trichlorethylene!! I can tell you that I at least had my fingers well bathed in the stuff. And I haven't had any ill effects.... yet. So, the good news is that TCE (is that what they called it?) is not necessarily a certain and speedy death... The good news is that I'd be more concerned about the possible impact on your property values than immediate effects on your health. Good luck to you and me... Maybe you could hire a private testing firm to look for traces of the stuff on your property.
While I'm not as concerned about trace exposures to stuff like TCE, I am concerned about significant industrial exposures to these compounds. Most things can be made safe to use if the proper precautions are taken- but even pure water and air can kill people if taken inappropriately.
TCE, like any decent degreasing solvent, is also a good solvent for a fat called myelin. Unfortunately, that's the stuff which provides an insulating layer on a person's nerves...Over time, de-myelination can occur to a person's fingers and hands if they do a lot of de-greasing without wearing the proper gloves. Symptoms include a loss of sensation in the fingers and hands- a numbness or "pins and needles" feeling. If you are feeling those sorts of effects, you should talk to your doctor about them and mention your TCE exposure. TCE's not good for your liver or kidneys either- severe exposures can damage these organs as they attempt to break it down or eliminate it from your body.
Please, people- read the materials safety data sheet before you handle anything new, and wear the proper protective equipment! Though your employer bears some responsibility, you bear the most responsibility (and should have the most interest) in protecting your own health. Respect, based on knowledge, rather than fear, should be your guiding principle when handling chemicals- or handling tools, or anything else for that matter. I hate to see good, useful materials and methods banned because of careless use or mis-use.
Thanks to all who calmed my nerves a bit. I'll sit tight until the actual report comes out and we see just how bad it is.
Glad to hear you're out to the hot zone. You or your friends might try the EPA site for intormation on a Community Advisory Group - CAG. Gov't provides money for the community to hire specialists to get advice and keep an eye on things. I've been working as a consultant to EPA for about 20 years and each site has had one. Remember that if the groundwater is comtaminated, that contamination will generally move in the direction of groundwater flow. This could be important to you if you were using a well for water and you were downgradient of the contamiant source. Good luck.
http://www.epa.gov/superfund/tools/cag/resource/quickeng.htm