Wednesday night's Trinity Park Neighborhood Association meeting provided one of the first public forums for discussing the contamination of a one-time dry cleaner located in the old BB&T bank building at W. Club and Watts.
The heavily-attended meeting largely provided a platform for North Carolina's Division of Environmental and Natural Resources (DENR) to try to assuage public fears evinced on listserv debates and a recent Herald-Sun article about the contamination, which has been under review on the site since 2006.
During the meeting, DENR staff and their contractor noted that harmful traces of a dry cleaning chemical had been found around the rear of the building and was migrating less than ten feet a year northward towards Northgate Mall's parking lot, but sought to reassure the public that there were no signs that contamination had spread towards neighboring homes on Dollar and Watts.
While the meeting was largely framed around the science of the contamination of perc (a common dry cleaning chemical), DENR representatives did come under fire from some in attendance over the time elapsed between the start of the state's investigation and the building's closure to a storefront church that had rented it -- and from a representative of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, which criticized the underpinnings of the state's approach on perc cleanup.
For its part, representatives of DENR's Drycleaning Solvent Cleanup Act (DSCA) gave a thorough report on the perc contamination at 1103 W. Club via their contracted geologist; the state agency had a half-dozen staff members on site, including project manager Billy Meyer.
The former dry-cleaning site on the corner of Watts and Club made use of Perc, a common drycleaning solvent. Perc, also known as PCE or tetracholoroethylene, is a commonly used drycleaning solvent. Though some areas have banned the substance due to health and envrionmental concerns, it is currently legal in North Carolina and was extensively used in the 1970s, when this spill is believed to have occurred.
Though no information was presented on the causes of the spill, the meeting revealed the contamination was discovered in the late 1990s, when then owner BB&T acted to remove an underground storage tank.
According to the information presented at the meeting, little was done to address the perc contamination until DENR began surveying the site -- drilling wells test wells to determine contamination levels -- in 2006.
Indeed, neither neighbors nor building occupants were aware of the issues on the site until early 2009, when details of the contamination were discovered.
Pressed to explain why little public information had been released to date on the sites -- the dry cleaner site came to light after neighbors approached by the state with requests to install in-ground monitoring wells to track the progress of the contamination -- DENR noted that a public meeting typically occurs only after analysis and a remediation plan is complete, at which point the agency publishes a Notice of Intent stating their plans for remediation.
In the case of the W. Club site, those remediation steps could include on-site remediation (through thermal "baking" of impacted soils), or the removal of the soils to a haz-mat site, likely in Michigan.
As it stands now, DENR has determined that a portion of site soil and groundwater is contaminated well in excess of established "action levels," and the building contains concentrations of vapors that pose an "imminent threat" to occupants.
However, DENR believes that they have fully delineated the extent of the underground Perc plume, and that the hydrological and geological features (essentially an underground version of downhill flow) will drive the plume North toward Northgate Mall at about 10 feet per year.
Not all neighbors were convinced, however.
One TPNA board member noted that large perc spills with high concentrations can form so-called DNAPLs, or dense non-aqueous phase liquids. (According to Prof. David Lerner at the University of Sheffield, DNAPLs can be difficult to detect, may move in ways and directions that groundwater does not, and can complicate cleanup.)
When pressed on the existence of DNAPLs, DENR quickly commented that they had no evidence of their formation.
In addition to the cleanup issues related to this site, the meeting also uncovered greater problems with DSCA and DENR. Several neighbors were concerned that nearby residents had not been notified sooner, and that the occupants of the building were not warned when contamination on the site was discovered in 2006.
In fact, Sue Dayton from the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League asserted that indoor air quality only became an issue after the non-profit became aware of the issue from neighbors and called the state's project manager to ask whether indoor air quality had been tested at the building, which BB&T sold to a new Maryland-based owner several years back.
After performing indoor air quality tests this spring, the levels of perc noted in the air within the building were deemed to exceed the levels established by state toxicologists as unsafe. The state notified Durham authorities, who condemned the building pending remediation or demolition.
DENR had no specific response to these concerns.
In addition, the BREDL's Sue Dayton warned the audience that a bill (SB-700) currently being debated would, in her organization's opinion, reduce rather than increase citizen notice and understanding over perc issues. Dayton criticized the state's dry cleaning contamination committee as a body that is overrepresented with dry cleaner interests, and encouraged the neighborhood to become active in increasing citizen representation on the board.
Dayton also took exception to the risk-based mitigation strategy used by DENR, which attempts to reduce the levels of perc and other chemicals as appropriate on a given site, based on factors such as concentration of chemicals, whether groundwater is used for drinking wells versus properties served by municipal water supplies, level of soil disturbance, geological conditions and so forth.
The BREDL representative warned the audience that under a risk-based strategy, some amount of the chemical would remain on site if the risk level were deemed low. DENR officials countered that this strategy is focused on reducing the risk chemicals present to the public while preserving financial resources to allow a broad-based cleanup.
Several neighbors also inquired as to whether the new owners of the building were cooperating with the voluntary DSCA program, which BB&T had enrolled in. DENR project manager Billy Meyer noted that they had been in contact with the Garcia family, and that a meeting that had been scheduled for Wednesday was postponed to next week while the Garcias consult their attorneys.
Meyer and DENR representatives did note that voluntary cooperation with DSCA was in property owners' self-interest as it afforded them limited liability and financial support from the state; sites that do not volunteer get referred to other state or Federal programs which can mandate fully-owner-funded remediation, though the timeline to cleanup can be much longer.
Colin Crossman provided primary reporting on this story as BCR's publisher, Kevin Davis, serves on the Trinity Park Neighborhood Association board. Davis has contributed editing to the story.
Comments