Action needed to protect N.C. groundwater from dry-cleaning pollution
I received this e-mail today and wanted to pass it along to readers. It's from Hope Taylor-Guevara with Clean Water for North Carolina:
The NC Environmental Management Commission (EMC) is getting ready to consider granting a new program of escape from clean-up liabilities for dry cleaning solvent contamination. Under the new rules, the clean-up standards would be "risk-based," without regard to future groundwater uses. Dry cleaners that have caused soil and groundwater contamination would be allowed to avoid cleaning up potentially dangerous levels of toxic solvents, in order to keep their costs down, and to get a "sign off" from state officials that the site needs no further action.
There are approximately 700 operating retail dry-cleaning establishments in North Carolina today, and possibly as many as 1,500 already contaminated dry-cleaning sites in the state. If dry cleaners know they'll be able to escape accountability for their contamination, it will be difficult to prevent future spills or protect our groundwater from other special interests who think they should have the same rights.
Take Action! The EMC is scheduled to consider this new rule this Thursday, July 12. Your organization can help by signing on to a letter drafted by the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League and Clean Water for North Carolina! Just email hope [at] cwfnc.org or bredl [at] skybest.com to have your name and organization included by Tuesday, July 10. The letter will be hand delivered to the EMC at 9:00 AM Thursday, July 12, 2007.
Labels: groundwater pollution
posted by Sue Sturgis @ 8:06 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Check out the "EHC" technology from Adventus Group. (www.adventusgroup.com). EPA approved and successfully used on hundreds of sites in the south already.
Having worked on dry cleaning sites in NC and the South I understand the appeal of bioremediation technologies. However, most of these technologies that work well in the sandy soils of the coastal plain don't do anything in the tight clayey soils and saprolite of the NC piedmont and mountains. The remediation medium (molasses, ZVI, etc.) may be injected, but if the soil is "tight" then it isn't going anywhere anytime soon and therefore can't really react with the contaminant; unless you are willing to wait a few decades. I've worked on these systems before and the site geology must be taken into account. A client site can spend millions of $ of these technologies with no real improvement to the groundwater quality or impact on the plume, then argue that they spent millions of $, so isn't that enough? From a regulatory standpoint, no, it isn't. Rather than push a technology that isn't suited to the site conditions, it may be better to spend that $ on alternative, although less sexy, tasks such as dig & haul, or hooking up local residents to municipal water supplies.
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