EPA to hold public meeting on Raleigh PCB cleanup plan

An electrical transformer reconditioning facility located on Raleigh's Mount Herman Road near the RDU International Airport and Brier Creek Commons Shopping Center, Ward Transformer contaminated its environment with a host of highly toxic chemicals since opening in 1964, among them PCBs, dioxin, furans, arsenic and lead. Over the years, the pollution flowed off the property and into Little Brier Creek, Brier Creek, Brier Creek Reservoir, Lake Crabtree, and Crabtree Creek, where fish consumption advisories are now posted. Under the federal Superfund program for the worst toxic hotspots in the country, the Environmental Protection Agency recently announced it was planning to deal with 100,000 tons of Ward's contaminated soil by trucking about a third to a private Roxboro landfill and essentially incinerating the rest on site -- a technique EPA prefers to call "direct-fired thermal desorption." But some scientists and environmentalists say this disposal method creates the risk of airborne contamination from dioxins, a concern for downwind ecosystems. For more details, click here and here for reports by the Independent Weekly's Lisa Sorg.

Public Meeting to be Held on EPA Proposed Cleanup Plan for
Areas Affected by the Ward Transformer Facility in Raleigh, North
Carolina

For Immediate Release: August 10, 2007
Contact: Laura Niles, (404) 562-8353, niles.laura@epa.gov

(ATLANTA – August 10, 2007) EPA will hold a public meeting to present the proposed plan for cleanup of Operable Unit 1 at the Ward Transformer Superfund Site (the Site) in Raleigh, N.C. on Tuesday, August 14, 2007 at 7:00 p.m. at the Hilton North Raleigh at 3415 Wake Forest Road. Operable Unit 1 addresses areas downstream from the Ward Transformer facility including tributaries to Little Brier Creek, Brier Creek Reservoir, Brier Creek, Lake Crabtree, and Crabtree Creek. A separate removal action is addressing the main source of contamination at the Ward Transformer facility.

As part of the EPA Remedial Investigation, soil, sediment, surface water, groundwater and fish samples were collected. Analytical results indicate the presence of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in fish and/or sediment samples within the Operable Unit 1 areas. The Proposed Plan for Operable Unit 1 includes:

* Continue existing North Carolina fish consumption advisories and signs;

* Conduct educational and community outreach programs;

* Conduct pre-excavation sampling and endangered mussel study;

* Excavate sediments with concentrations exceeding 1 mg/kg PCBs from the tributaries to Little Brier Creek and Lower Brier Creek and transport off-site for appropriate disposal;

* Site and stream restoration; and

* Monitored Natural Recovery, which is periodic monitoring of sediments and aquatic biota at the Brier Creek Reservoir, Lake Crabtree, and Crabtree Creek.

EPA is conducting a comment period from August 6, 2007 to October 4, 2007, to seek public input on this Proposed Plan.

The Ward Transformer Superfund Site was added to EPA’s Superfund National Priorities List in April 2003. The Ward Transformer facility is located near the Raleigh Durham International airport in a predominantly industrial area of Raleigh. The major contaminants of concern are polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Copies of all removal documents are available at the information repository for the Site located in the North Regional library, 7009 Harps Mill Road, Raleigh, N.C. 27605.