Contaminated Site Campbell Rd York SC Meeting (Lake Wylie: home, neighborhoods)

[CarolinaWoman]

This will be the last chance to encourage DHEC to have the highly contaminated hexavalent chromium site cleaned up properly. The facility is located at 6247 Campbell Road, York SC. Comments to DHEC ends April 7th and they will make their final clean-up decision.

Both deep and shallow groundwater have been contaminated, as well as soil under the building. DHEC proposed that the soil under the building be left with a deed restriction saying it can never be redeveloped. The restriction also would require that the existing flooring, which prevents infiltration from runoff, be left intact. DHEC also recommended a contingency plan that would provide city water service to the area should residential wells ever become contaminated.

DHEC has scheduled an informal meeting March 17 in York SC at Hunter Elementary School, 1100 Hunter St. Residents can stop by anytime from 5 - 7 PM to voice concerns and have questions answered.

DHEC says it will be very expensive for the property owner to clean up the site .... well duhhhh they dumped the toxic waste. A member of our York County Council was at the last meeting and he was pushing for clean up as was the residents in attendance.

If you can't attend the March 17th meeting. Please send a message that we don't want this contamination left in our community. Please contact Angie Jones DHEC Project Manager via email, telephone or fax.

Angie Jones
Project Manager
803-896-4076
jonesar@dhec.sc.gov

I have email addresses for our elected representatives if anyone is interested in contacting them as proper clean up of this site is the only way we can be sure that our families are ensured a clean and healthy environment now and in the future.

[bmd69]

Having worked as environmental consultant in New York State and California there doesn't seem to be the urgency for cleanup of contaminated properties here.
These sites all get ranked by the lead agency. The wheels of cleaning up sites sometimes takes alot of time.

[CarolinaWoman]

This was in the newspaper ... DHEC testing since 1997 and it has taken until now 2008 to complete the test!!!

DHEC should have informed the residents sooner about the contamination, especially because testing has been conducted since 1997. Jones said wells neighboring the site have been tested quarterly and have never showed any indication that the contamination spread. It has taken until now to complete the tests and come up with proper solutions, she said.

[lovethecarolinas]

This is the kind of information you more than likely won't be aware of...unless you happen to live in the area....Thanks for sharing Carolina Woman!

[bmd69]

Originally Posted by CarolinaWoman

This was in the newspaper ... DHEC testing since 1997 and it has taken until now 2008 to complete the test!!!

DHEC should have informed the residents sooner about the contamination, especially because testing has been conducted since 1997. Jones said wells neighboring the site have been tested quarterly and have never showed any indication that the contamination spread. It has taken until now to complete the tests and come up with proper solutions, she said.

The water supply wells have been tested and been found either non detect or below max detection limits. The plume probably hasn't move site to impact any off site water supply wells.

[robhensing]

Originally Posted by bmd69

The water supply wells have been tested and been found either non detect or below max detection limits. The plume probably hasn't move site to impact any off site water supply wells.

I live on Campbell road and here are the facts and what you should know about this site (I attended the public meetings and so have been briefed by DHEC on the situation).

The site is roughly 5 acres in size and the contamination is contained to the site - there have been NO elevated levels of chromium detected at any of the off-site monitoring wells since DHEC started monitoring them in the 90's. If I remember correctly they monitor the on-site wells quarterly and the off-site wells at least yearly (they may be quarterly as well can't remember for sure). I live 1.3 miles away from the site on Campbell road and was concerned initially at the meeting . . . until a guy, probably in his mid 70's stood up and introduced himself as the guy who lives *right across the street* from the chromium site (literally). He mentioned that he'd owned his farm across the street since *before* the factory was built in the 50's and he's lived there ever since so he pre-dates the site! He was of course one of the monitoring wells that DHEC was testing frequently and he has never had chromium detected in *his* well and he seemed in quite good health for his age!

I also recently had my water tested just for peace of mind. The tests came back as <.005mg/L which basically means they didn't detect anything.

In case you are curious you can see the EPA standard for acceptable levels of Chromium here:
http://www.epa.gov/safewater/contaminants/index.html (you can see the acceptable level is .1mg/L so we are a couple orders of magnitude below that).

One final point that was mentioned at the meetings. The under ground water tables flow towards the lake (Lake Wylie) and away from all of the closest neighborhoods (Vander Lakes and Campbells Crossing) so even if the chromium should for some reason make it into the local water supply after all these decades - it would conceivably flow towards Lake Wylie (which is about 1.5 miles - 2 miles away from the site) and away from the neighborhoods which are upstream from the site and farther away from the lake.

The net net here is - there is no risk to Vander Lakes or Campbells Crossing home owners.

[CarolinaWoman]

I still think the manufacturing company responsible should clean up their mess.

[robhensing]

Originally Posted by CarolinaWoman

I still think the manufacturing company responsible should clean up their mess.

Were you at the meeting as well? DHEC *is* cleaning up the site - that's what the meetings were about. They are going to inject something into the contaminated soil which neutralizes the chromium! So the company / DHEC are definitely addressing the issue. At the meeting they laid out various options ranging from 'do nothing' to 'clean up the site using XYZ techniques' and they opted to clean up the site and were asking the public for feedback on the plan of action they had chosen to undertake. The 'do nothing' proposal was just part of the risk assesment they had performed and was an option that they knew they weren't going to take.

Anyhoo - it's no big deal . . . the site doesn't pose any present risk to anyone and they are going to clean it up soon anyways.