DANGEROUS CHEMICALS ENTERING DRINKING WATER AT LCP CHEMICAL SUPERFUND SITE

 The Harbor Sound,  Volume 22, Number 39               April 5, 2005

by Miriam Perrone

     Jim McNamara, principal environmental engineer of hazardous waste management for the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (GA-EPD) is concerned.  Attempts to get U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to take action to stop leakage of chemicals into the drinking water of Glynn County have not been successful.  The problem was identified in 2000 when mercury was detected in a sampling well.  Since then, the list of chemicals in the drinking water aquifer has expanded to include arsenic and chromium.

     Daniel Parshley, project manager for the Glynn Environmental Coalition, a citizen’s lobbying group, carefully explains the past history that accounts for the contamination of Glynn County’s drinking water.  The history is disturbing.

     During the operation of the LCP Chemicals plant, large amounts of caustic brine with a pH above 13 leaked into the ground, which literally dissolved the soil under the production buildings.  It is thought that the caustic brine is responsible for dissolving the sandstone layer about 50 feet below ground, allowing chemicals to leak into the drinking water aquifer. The GA-EPD noted, “Several aquifers, known to be sources of drinking water, are located below this sandstone.”

     “The problem of chemicals leaking into drinking water supplies appears to have been going on for many years now with no action from the EPA,” says Parshley.  “Based on the four sampling events for the vertical groundwater monitoring wells and three sampling events for the horizontal wells, we know that the caustic brine pool completed its passage through the cemented sandstone between 1996 and 2000,” concluded the GA-EPD.  Leakage through the sandstone appears to be ongoing.”

     Even though the GA-EPD requested quick action in July of 2004, the EPA has taken no action.  As noted by the GA-EPD, “The longer leakage across the sandstone is allowed to occur, the more difficult cleanup of this site will become.  Interim measures to prevent continued leakage are time-critical so that additional aquifers are not impacted.”

     The suggested course of action by the GA-EPD is to install recovery wells in the caustic brine pool to reverse the hydraulic gradient so chemicals cannot continue to move down into drinking aquifers.

     The EPA’s history of timely action to address ground water threats at Superfund Sites is not the most commendable.  In the case of Woolfolk, Superfund Site in Fort Valley, Georgia, the EPA procrastinated until drinking water wells were contaminated and the chemicals have spread over a large area.

     “The future economic development of Glynn County will be dependent on clean water,” says Glynn Environmental Coalition President Frank Lea.  “The inaction of the EPA is a threat we cannot ignore.  Both our health and economic future depend on stop- ping contamination of our drinking water aquifers by the LCP Chemicals Superfund Site.”

Citizens may learn more by contacting the Glynn Environmental Coalition at 466-0934.