After tests, cleanup debate may reopen

Some, including Stauffer Chemical officials, still favor the mound-and-cap plan. But those who want the waste hauled away hope the EPA's pause for testing means change is afoot.

By ROBERT FARLEY

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 16, 2000

A year after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency added Stauffer Chemical to its list of the country's most polluted sites, Heather Malinowski of Tarpon Springs decided to get involved.

She heard the EPA explain its plan to mound up Stauffer's toxic soil and cover it with a protective cap.

She even joined a technical advisory group formed to review the plan. She figured it would be a six-month commitment, maybe a year.

That was five years ago.

"Five years later and we are talking about the exact same issues," Malinowski said.

But now, as the EPA has paused to conduct scientific tests that could steer the cleanup in one of two directions, a debate that many people feared had closed may be reopened, perhaps with more intensity than ever.

On July 7, EPA and Stauffer officials bowed to public pressure and agreed to postpone the mound-and-cap cleanup plan pending a year's worth of soil and water testing at the site.

That has some wondering, after six years, where exactly does the cleanup process stand?

For those who favor the mound-and-cap plan, including Stauffer officials, they hope the announcement is merely a bump in the road. For those who want the waste hauled away, they hope the EPA's announcement signals the beginning of the end for the mound-and-cap plan.

EPA's John Blanchard, project manager for the Stauffer site, warns this latter group not to jump ahead. He said the recent decision to wait until the tests are done does not reopen discussion of the cleanup plan. Rather, it has merely been postponed until the tests are done.

The discussion will not be reopened, he said, unless those tests show the mound-and-cap plan to be unworkable.

But residents smell the winds of change, believing the tests inevitably will bear out their fears about the mound-and-cap plan.

"The debate never ended," Malinowski said. "It was artificially closed when they sent the (cleanup plan) to the judge."

At the very least, Carlene Hobbs, co-chair of the newly formed Community Advisory Group, is convinced withdrawal of the plan provides an opportunity for frustrated residents to have meaningful input into cleanup of the site on the Pinellas-Pasco border.

Hugh Kaufman, lead investigator for the EPA's ombudsman's office, believes the mound-and-cap plan is doomed. The site's geology is too fragile, he said.

Stauffer officials are equally convinced the tests will reaffirm the decision to go with a mound-and-cap. Nonetheless, the mound-and-cap plan appears to have taken a number of direct hits this year.

Last month, the EPA announced it would formally abandon its mound-and-cap cleanup of the Shattuck Superfund site in Denver, the only other site in the country where a mound-and-cap had been attempted with radioactive waste in a populated area.

Then came the issue of sinkholes. Critics argued if a sinkhole were to open up beneath one of the mounds, the contaminated soil would drop right into the area's drinking water supply. Residents' fears were bolstered when material piled from a nearby dredge triggered a sinkhole.

Then the state Department of Environmental Protection got into the game, filing a lawsuit to intervene in the cleanup debate. Among other things, the suit took aim at the cleanup standards for arsenic.

Meanwhile, the EPA's mound-and-cap plan came under intense scrutiny from two powerful sources, U.S. Rep. Mike Bilirakis and the EPA's ombudsman's office, a small watchdog arm of the agency.

During a series of hearings, the ombudsman's Kaufman criticized the EPA for failing to perform a number of important studies before settling on the mound-and-cap plan.

The EPA submitted an amended plan in federal court in hopes of satisfying the state's concerns as well as those raised in the ombudsman's hearings. But local hostilities to the plan continued to mount, leading to the decision last week to postpone the plan.

Hobbs said that while it appears much time has been wasted in the cleanup process, "that may be a double-edged sword." While delays have left the Stauffer contamination largely untreated, she said, they have given community activists time to do research and mount resistance.

"Hopefully, the EPA will do a turnaround and work with us," Hobbs said. "We have an opportunity to do the right thing this time."

"They'll have to do things right now because they're being watched," added Mary Mosley, the other co-chair of the community advisory group. "EPA was running their agency like a freight train, going so fast to get that monolith no matter what."

Ultimately, many residents hope the discussion leads to the waste being hauled off-site. That possibility was considered in a 1996 feasibility study but was discarded.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to the haul-away plan was cost, estimated then at more than $200-million -- 20 times higher than the estimated cost of the mound-and-cap plan.

Kevin Pegg, whose biotechnology research firm was hired by the Pinellas-Pasco Technical Advisory Group to review the cleanup plan, believes hauling off the contaminated soil, or at least the worst of it, would cost considerably less, perhaps $50-million to $100-million. He believes the cost was grossly overinflated in the 1996 feasibility report to discourage its consideration.

But EPA officials say there's more to consider than cost. Unearthing the elemental phosphorus, which ignites with air, could pose a risk to workers. Then, Blanchard said, it would have to be transported all the way to a special waste facility in Utah.

Blanchard said it would require as many as 15,000 truckloads a year for one to two years. Think of the increased risk of accidents, he said, and the danger posed if one of those trucks overturned.

While simply hauling away the waste may appear attractive to many area residents, Don Harris of the state Department of Environmental Protection suggested the public might think differently if it knew how big an ordeal that would be.

"I think trucking would be maybe more of a problem than anyone imagines," Harris said. "We're talking about a very large volume -- 300,000 cubic yards."

Instead of trucking, Harris suggests hauling by rail may make more sense. At one time, there were rail lines onto the Stauffer property that would have to be re-established. It would be cheaper and safer, he said.

Blanchard said rails were never considered.

Pegg proposes a partial removal of contaminants. He believes it would be possible to haul away the soil contaminated with arsenic. But the phosphorus, which may be dangerous to move, could safely be stabilized in place. Such a plan would be much cheaper and safer, he said.

But Pegg is skeptical the EPA would really consider an alternative cleanup plan.

"I think they're going to let things quiet down a bit, do some touchy-feely things with the community and then they'll head back to where they started," Pegg said.

Blanchard acknowledged that Stauffer presents some unique challenges and unknowns: a possible propensity for sinkholes, saltwater intrusion that could erode the base of the mound; contamination of the ground water; and volatile phosphorus.

"It is a unique mix," Blanchard said.

That's why the treatability tests to be performed and analyzed over the next year are so important, he said.

Blanchard said the EPA is taking a wait-and-see approach.

"We have to do the testing first," he said. "That's all we're focusing on. We're not looking beyond that."

- Staff writer Robert Farley can be reached at (727) 445-4185 or at farley@sptimes.com.

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.