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The
Warren Sentinel Open Forum Article
date: September 6, 2001 Storing
Sludge in Flood Plain Risks Ecosystem By Maya
White Sparks The
former Avtex Fibers plant in Front Royal was closed in 1989 due to
violations of environmental regulations. The site was added to the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency’s (EPA’s) Superfund program in 1986, but it was kept open
another three years for a NASA contract, despite the pollution and
safety violations. A
grassroots community group, the Coalition for the SAFE Redevelopment
of Avtex, has been keeping an eye on the clean-up of the site for the
past year and a half. It
has been sharing information with the community, canvassing people in
the Avtex neighborhood about their concerns, and giving feedback to
the EPA and others who have a stake in what happens there. After
studying the EPA’s plan to store toxic sludge in the 100 year flood
plain of the Shenandoah River, the coalition resolved to oppose the
plan. We have been
calling on those who share our point of view to put public pressure on
the EPA to remove the waste from this sensitive, unstable environment. In
1999, with great fanfare, the former EPA administrator Carol M.
Browner came to Front Royal and touted the Avtex superfund site as a
model for the redevelopment of future superfund sites throughout the
U.S. It
is not our idea of a model cleanup to store zinc, arsenic, chromium ,
cadmium, copper, lead, nickel, pyrene, and other unnamed substances in
a river flood plain. This
is the wrong kind of precedent to set as the EPA kicks off its pilot
“Superfund Redevelopment Initiative.” The
EPA itself has warned against storing hazardous waste in flood plains.
Their document #530K-97-003 says, “Floodwaters spilling into
flood plains may damage waste management structures such as tanks or
berms (walls of earth)...”. When
it comes to the basin closure plan at Avtex, however, the EPA asserts
that their computers can predict the exact pressures Shenandoah
floodwaters will put on the basins earthen walls.
According to EPA manager Bonnie Gross, their plan “will
ensure the waste remains safely covered and intact during flood
event.” Can
they guarantee their calculations will be accurate until the end of
time? We do not want an
accidental release of approximately one million cubic yards of sludge
and fly ash to be our gift to a future generation.
The EPA’s own Final Ecological Risk Assessment
(February 1999) states that most of the above named substances have
been shown to have harmful effects on insects and fish and thus pose
an ecological risk to birds and mammals, such as kingfishers and
raccoons, who feed on the lower organisms.
I would remind them that people eat fish, too. Flowing
water is an unpredictable force.
Just ask the people who live along the Mississippi River.
They were recently hit with massive flooding just four years
after the last big flood, when statistics had predicted it would not
happen again for another 100 years. In the
rivers running by Harper’s Ferry, W.Va., you can observe brick, metal,
and cement remnants of factories that were destroyed when waters rose.
Or, you can drive through Madison County, Va., and see where the
river actually changed its course and made a new bed for itself during
unprecedented flooding. It is
just plain common sense to remove the toxic waste from what the EPA
itself calls a “sensitive” environment. But
there are other reasons to relocate the sludge and fly ash.
The waste basins are situated in an area that the Front Royal
community has designated to be a “Conservancy Park,” with public
access and adjacent reconstructed wetlands.
The storage of sludge and fly ash in this area contradicts the
true nature of a conservancy and could threaten a wetland habitat as
well as the river ecology. The
Smithsonian has become interested in the project of restoring the
ecology at the Avtex site, They
plan a forum on the topic this September at the local Conservation and
Resource Center. We ask
that they fully restore the Conservancy Park at Avtex.
To leave huge amounts of sludge stored in holes in the earth is
like trying to heal a sore while leaving it filled with poison. The
EPA says it would be too expensive and time consuming to truck the huge
amount of waste off site. In
their risk cost analysis of options (as presented to the Coalition in
March 2000) they did not evaluate using the railroad that runs near the
basins. Nor did they
consider moving the sludge out of the floodplain onto another part of
the site. For
years, U.S. government contracts supported manufacturing rayon at Avtex,
despite violations of environmental regulations.
Our government has karma to pay here, and it is up to the public
to demand that it pays its debt. Let us truly cleanse this land that has been sacrificed for ,
among other things, the making of rayon noose cones for intercontinental
ballistic missiles. I
thank the many people who are risking their health and well being as
they work at cleaning up the second worst superfund site in the U.S.
I am grateful that the EPA and FMC Corporation (a former site
user) are there, funding these efforts.
Along with the approximately 300 people in the community who have
signed a petition. I simply ask that they do the job right. For
further information, contact the Coalition for the SAFE Redevelopment of
Avtex at 540-542-1618 or send an e-mail to:
Earthfrienttdly_WAEJR@hotmail.com Maya
White Sparks is a member of the Coalition for the SAFE Redevelopment of
Avtex |