Anniston Star
October 7, 2003

Solutia, EPA detail PCB cleanup plan

By Sara Clemence
Star Staff Writer
10-07-2003

Solutia and the Environmental Protection Agency released a proposal Monday for the second phase of residential PCBs cleanup in the Anniston area.

The plan involves digging up the PCB-tainted dirt from homes, replacing it with clean soil and putting the contaminated dirt under a liner-and-soil covering at Solutia-owned property on 10th Street and Clydesdale Ave.

The proposal covers properties contaminated with more than 1 part per million PCBs, the equivalent of about a drop in a 20-gallon fish tank. This is the level of contamination at which people can live on their properties freely and safely, the EPA has decided.

The plan is open for public comment until Nov. 4, and is available at the Anniston public library. The EPA will hold public forums on Oct. 27 at the Anniston City Meeting Center and Oct. 28 at C. E. Hanna Elementary School in Hobson City.

So far, Solutia and the EPA have found more than 150 properties that qualify for cleanup, though about 20 of these have already been dealt with.

More testing will be done, and other properties with high PCB levels also will fall under the plan.

Monsanto made polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, from the 1930s to 1971 at its western Anniston plant. The chemicals were banned in the 1970s because of health concerns. But PCBs, which are slow to decay, escaped the company property and today contaminate local waterways and properties. They have been found in the bodies of some residents.

The plant is now owned by Solutia, a spin-off of Monsanto, and the PCB cleanup is being governed by a federal agreement that went into effect this summer.

The proposed cleanup could begin by early 2004, EPA officials said last week. First, the agency must consider the community’s feedback and approve a work plan.

The plan details five options for cleaning up the contaminated properties:

- Cover the contaminated soil with a protective liner and a foot of clean soil. Estimated cost: $2.2 million

- Remove the contaminated soil to a certain depth (depending on the level of contamination), replace it with clean soil and dispose the tainted dirt on a parcel north of West 10th Street, east of Clydesdale and south of the railroad tracks. Highly contaminated dirt would be trucked to landfills instead. Estimated cost: $3.3 million.

- Take all the polluted soil to landfills and replace it with clean dirt. Estimated cost: $4.7 million

- Clean the tainted soil at high temperatures to destroy the PCBs and place it back in the yards. Estimated cost: $15 million.

- Heat-treat the contaminated soil before trucking to landfills and use clean soil to backfill the properties. Estimated cost: $17.4 million.

Of these, the company recommended the second option, based on its effectiveness, feasibility and cost.

Craig Branchfield, remedial projects manager for Solutia, said that under the plan, the Clydesdale-10th Street site where the dirty soil would be buried would not be anything like a landfill.

"We’re trying to create a situation similar to what we did at Oxford Lake Park," Branchfield said. At that site, tennis courts were built on top of PCB-tainted soil.

"The value we’re hoping to bring to the community … is to help make this property available for some type of future development," Branchfield said.

Community input would be used to decide what to do with the land, he said:

"I know there’s going to be a lot of questions about what we’re going to do. …We certainly invite any comments from anyone."