ER - Another soil test for former mill site?

Another soil test for former mill site?
by Wendy Butler, 8/18/2006

Simpson Timber Co. Director of Environment Dave McEntee said that sampling the soil on the business’ approximately 16-acre site for dioxin has become comparable to an archaeological investigation, due to a potential soil shift.

But, he added, Simpson never said its work, mandated by a 1998 North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board cleanup and abatement order, was complete.

Simpson put in groundwater wells, took soil samples and then, in 2003, removed contaminated soil from the site, which is located near the foot of Del Norte Street on Eureka’s Waterfront.

Humboldt Baykeeper and Californians for Alternatives to Toxics filed a lawsuit in July in federal court asking it to order Simpson and current owner Preston Properties to clean alleged existing toxic contamination at the former Simpson Plywood Mill site.

The parcel is located adjacent to PALCO Marsh and a public fishing pier.

The groups argue that the site’s soil is dioxin-laden and the contamination is not being dealt with properly.

The lawsuit is for violations under the Clean Water Act and the Resource Conservation Recovery Act.

Humboldt Baykeeper, which is a project of the Garberville-based Ecological Rights Foundation, and CAT maintain that the site was contaminated with the wood preservative pentachlorophenol or “penta,” when Simpson used it to treat marine plywood manufactured at the site.

Penta is a known carcinogen and is “widely known to be contaminated with the more toxic dioxin, the same toxic chemical found in Agent Orange,” the plaintiffs stated.

Humboldt Baykeeper Director Pete Nichols said its consultants, Southern California-based Soil/Water/Air Protection Enterprise, sampled mud from the same ditch out of which Simpson had removed contaminated soil and found dioxin at levels “tens of thousands times higher than the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe.”

“We’d like to see a full characterization of the site for dioxin,” Nichols said on Friday. “There should be a full sampling plan developed for the site that is specifically designed to detect dioxin contamination.”

McEntee said that the property has been an active forest-product site since the late 1800s. Simpson operated its mill there from 1957-1967. The property was then sold in 1985 and went through a number of owners until Preston bought it in about 1990, he said.

Simpson took about 130 soil samples and put in 12 or more groundwater wells to look at the groundwater conditions.

That’s as opposed to the nine samples, seven of which were ditch samples, that SWAPE took, McEntee said.

Simpson was told by the Water Board to look for dioxins in the ground water, which it did, he said.

McEntee said he disagrees with the Baykeeper-CAT argument that Simpson failed to test for dioxin.

When examining the soil for penta, if there had been dioxin present, it would have been discovered because it is a “co-located contaminant.”

“In the effort to identify penta, you will find the other co-located compounds that are present in the mixture, which would include mineral spirits and trace amounts of dioxins.”

McEntee said that Preston, in 2001, also commissioned its own independent review of the data and that review indicated that active remediation was necessary based on, in large part, penta found on the site.

CAT was copied on all of this, McEntee said.

“We got no comments back expressing any concern with what we were doing,” he said.

In 2003, Simpson removed upland and ditch soils — almost 2,000 tons of soil was removed from the site, he said.

The soil was sent to a landfill in Manteca, a “class-two” landfill, which is permitted to take certain levels of contaminated products, McEntee said.

“Part of our sampling plan that CAT reviewed and the Water Board approved (was) we were required to do confirmation sampling,” he said.

They did upwards of 40 samples of this type in the ditch for penta and it appeared the contaminants had been removed.

“The only way to know if there is a problem that has to be dealt with, is with the data,” Water Board Executive Officer Catherine Kuhlman previously told The Eureka Reporter.

Kuhlman said Simpson has been making progress with its cleanup order and Water Board staff has not had concerns from its data that contaminants are migrating into the bay.

After reviewing SWAPE’s recent report, samples that were close to Simpson’s excavation location, Simpson was in a quandary.

“We were kind of scratching our heads,” McEntee said. “How could th is be? We just did this cleanup not too long ago.”

Then, Simpson reviewed historic aerial photographs. After viewing these, it appears that there has been soil movement, caused primarily by railroad spurs that were moved around, as were ditches, he said.

This may or may not have been during the time when Simpson ran the mill, he said.

“Now we’re coming to a partial understanding that maybe this wasn’t just a matter of remnant soil staying in place,” McEntee said.

Soil deposits might have moved around.

“They haven’t been moved far, but placed in areas not consistent with the upland samplings and our understanding of how the contamination occurred,” he said.

Perhaps Simpson has missed “pockets of contamination,” McEntee said.

“We’re going to probably go out and do some additional sampling ourselves and try to draw a little bit bigger circle around the SWAPE data,” he said. “If there’s additional cleanup warranted, we’re going to do it.”

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