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August 27, 2008

Pfizer to submit plan to EPA on how it plans to remove contamination after dam breach

June 7 flood caused chemical solids to flow down Jordan Creek

By Howard Greninger

TERRE HAUTE — Pfizer officials next week will submit a plan to the U.S. EPA and state agencies on how the company could remove polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, from adjacent private property after a June flood breached a dam at a retention pond filled with the chemical.

David Rader, director of environmental health and safety for Pfizer’s Vigo County plant, located about five miles south of Terre Haute, said a retention pond, containing areas with as much as 330 parts per million of PCBs, had nearly been closed under a federal and state approved remediation plan.

However, a June 7 flood breached a dam, causing chemical solids to flow down nearby Jordan Creek.

“It was the worst flooding in 95 years in Vigo County,” Rader said Wednesday as he walked near the retention pond.

Rader said about 1.75 billion gallons of water flowed through 4,060 acres that make up the Jordan Creek watershed. That includes 900 acres that discharged into the nearly 3-acre retention pond that had been part of Pfizer’s wastewater treatment facility, closed in 2007 after the company hooked up to the Terre Haute Sanitary District.

The retention pond normally held about 1 million gallons of water, at about a foot deep, Rader said, but about 300 million gallons of water poured from the nearby watershed, breaching an earthen dam and sending a steel monitoring station about 100 feet downstream.

“About 70 percent of the [PCB] sediments remained in the retention pond,” Rader said.

However, tests done by Pfizer downstream from its property show PCB contamination, some with levels up to 43 parts per billion. Pfizer collected more than 100 sediment samples on eight properties, Rader said.

Pfizer, along with officials from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, were to meet with neighbors Wednesday evening to discuss what had happened and any concerns of a cleanup plan.

“We also surveyed and mapped the extent of the sediment spread in that watershed area that had been flooded,” Rader said. “We are working with EPA and the state now has to come up with an additional plan to do further sampling and how do we get out there and do the right thing for our neighbors. We know they are concerned and we want to address their concerns.

“The biggest concern [of neighbors] is how this will impact their property. I know we will address their concern with a plan of action that is to be approved by the agencies in compliance with all the regulations, and at the same time is meeting what our neighbors concerns will be,” Rader said.

“I know we will have to remove sediments and removal of the sediments will cause some property disturbance and we will have to have our neighbors’ help and cooperation in order to get in there and remove those sediments,” he said.

“With that, we’ll certainly restore it back to its current condition and minimize the amount of evasiveness with this process. We are planning on removing sediments deposited downstream and expect that to be rather shallow. That will be the crutch of our discussions going forward with EPA and the state. The first detailed plan will be available to EPA and IDEM for their review sometime next week,” Rader said.

“We are looking at what is the most reasonable thing that we can do to meet cleanup requirements that are established by regulation. We are using a standard of one part per million for the stream and are also are looking at what a risk-based number might be for adjoining property,” he said.

“This is not something within our control. We have to work with the agencies and meet the standards that the agencies would like for us to meet. We will do the right thing. We will meet whatever those standards are, but do it in such as way that it minimizes the impact on our neighbors,” Rader said.

“We certainly are not going to go in there and do anything in contradiction to what our neighbors feel is important that we try to achieve. I want to treat the neighbors just like I would want to be treated myself,” Rader said.

PCBs, manmade chemicals, were domestically manufactured from 1929 until their production was banned in 1979. PCBs have a range of toxicity and vary in consistency from thin, light-colored liquids to yellow or black waxy solids, according to the U.S. EPA.

PCBs, which are non-flammable, were used in hundreds of industrial and commercial applications including electrical, heat transfer and hydraulic equipment; as plasticizers in paints, plastics, and rubber products; in pigments, dyes, and carbonless copy paper; and many other industrial applications.

Howard Greninger can be contacted at (812) 231-4204 or howard.greninger@tribstar.com.

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