State will retest soil near coal ash site

Multiple errors in groundwater testing have delayed the Town of Chapel Hill’s plan for dealing with the coal ash dump site discovered near the Chapel Hill Police Department three years ago.

Nicholas Torrey, attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, said the most recent round of testing has shown the coal ash dump poses a serious threat of contamination to Bolin Creek and the surrounding greenway.

“This is a pretty clear picture of something that actually needs to be cleaned up,” he said.

The town discovered the site, located at 828 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., in 2013. Officials immediately notified the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

A 2014 analysis by Falcon Engineering, a private engineering firm tasked with evaluating the property for sale, indicated the presence of arsenic, 14 times the limit; chromium, 93 times the limit; and lead, more than 16 times the limit. Levels of barium, selenium and mercury also exceeded groundwater standards.

Falcon Engineering claimed the initial results as inaccurate, however, because the groundwater tested was too cloudy. Another round of testing in 2014, using filters to reduce turbidity in the groundwater samples, found levels of contaminants to be below the legal limits.

But the NCDEQ rejected these results, citing discrepancies in the procedures used by Falcon Engineering.

Torrey said it’s unclear whether Falcon Engineering used correct protocol during early rounds of site testing.

“The town has been on a learning curve about all of this,” he said.

Julie McClintock, board president of Friends of Bolin Creek, said there should at least be signs in the Bolin Creek area warning people who use the surrounding trails of the contamination.

“Many people are not even aware of the coal ash site within their community,” she said.

Lance Norris said the town’s environmental consultant, Hart and Hickman, is currently preparing a remedial investigation plan that will further assess the site.

Additional testing of soil and groundwater is expected to begin in July, once the NCDEQ has approved the plan, he said.

According to the March 2016 revision of the environmental characterization report by Falcon Engineering, contaminants in both groundwater and soil at the site exceeded safety limits established by the state.

Norris said he anticipates the town’s environmental consultant will then provide the town with a variety of potential solutions, which may include removing the coal ash from the site, stabilizing the materials on the site, restricting public use of the site, or a combination of these strategies.

Torrey said the best strategy for dealing with a coal ash dump is to remove the materials completely. He referenced efforts by his firm, the Southern Environment Law Center, to clean up coal ash dump sites in South Carolina as an example of an effective approach.

Following legal action from the Southern Environmental Law Center, three of South Carolina’s major utilities providers began a significant cleanup of coal ash burrows that had been leaking contaminants into the state’s rivers, according to the Law Center website.

Torrey said the site’s coal ash materials were excavated over a period of years, and groundwater contamination levels plummeted, some by 90 percent.

Chapel Hill’s own site appears to have been used as a dumping site from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, according to Falcon Engineering’s initial report. Officials are unsure who is responsible for the coal ash.

According to the town’s proposed budget for the 2016-17 fiscal year, coal ash mitigation has not received specific funding.

“We were disappointed to see that,” Torrey said.

Norris said the costs of cleaning up the site cannot yet be assessed, but once the town receives recommendations on how to handle the site, a budget will be developed and sources of funding determined.

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