Buried debris a concern at spill site
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -West Virginia regulators are concerned construction debris found buried at the site of a 2014 chemical spill could make it easier for contaminated water to flow deeper into the soil.
Cora Environmental Services, a contractor working on a cleanup of the Freedom Industries site in Charleston, found the debris in a fill area that was thought to contain rock, said Dave Long, project manager for the Department of Environmental Protection.
The fill area was being investigated because of concerns that unconsolidated rocks would make it easy for contaminated water to flow underground.
The construction debris, consisting mostly of old bricks, could be an even more likely “path of resistance” for contamination, Long said.
“When they were digging into it with a backhoe, it was collapsing as fast as they could dig it out,” Long said.
Some debris was found under tanks at the site, but not under the storage tank that leaked in January 2014, he said.
“It’s really kind of scary they would have constructed large chemical tanks on top of something like that,” he said.
The chemical spill into the Elk River tainted tap water for 300,000 people.
Officials are confident the debris fill was at the site before Freedom acquired the property in 2001, he said. The site formerly was a bulk petroleum facility owned by Pennzoil and Quaker State.
The impact of the construction debris’ discovery on the cleanup’s timelines and expense isn’t known.
Kelley Gillenwater, a DEP spokeswoman, said the agency and Freedom are negotiating changes to the cleanup agreement that likely could delay some timelines by several months. The agency hopes to avoid any significant delays.
In July, a bankruptcy judge approved a $2.5 million deal involving the cleanup. Freedom will contribute $1.4 million and its parent, Chemstream Holdings, will add $1.1 million.
Previously, Freedom had proposed $150,000 for additional cleanup, which U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Ronald Pearson rejected.
Freedom filed for bankruptcy eight days after the spill.