Source: Times Union (Albany, NY), July 15, 2014
Posted on: http://envfpn.advisen.com
The ongoing pollution cleanup of a former mercury recycling plant will continue this summer when some mercury-tainted soil will be stabilized in the ground to prevent the toxic heavy metal from leaking into groundwater and the nearby Patroon Creek.
Work is expected to wrap up this summer under a $9.3 million plan by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to clean Mercury Refining, located on Railroad Avenue, said EPA Regional Administrator Judith Enck on Monday.
Last year, about 5,600 tons of mercury-contaminated soil and asphalt were removed from the site. This summer’s work will rely on a process involving chemicals and concrete to solidify up to 70 feet of mercury-tainted soil so the heavy metal “located deep underground (is) locked in place (and) will no longer pose a threat to human health and the environment,” said Enck.
Plans call for solidifying about 14,500 cubic yards of tainted soil, or the equivalent of more than four Olympic-size swimming pools.
The work is being paid for by companies that were responsible for the contamination, including former customers like the Gillette Company, KeySpan Gas East Corp., Energizer Battery Manufacturing Inc., Union Carbide Corp. and Spectrum Brands Inc.
EPA Regional Attorney Sharon Kivowitz said the five companies are implementing the cleanup. “This is not a taxpayer-funded cleanup,” she said.
Last year, another four former customers — Clean Harbours, Bramble Environmental, Quest Communications and Verizon New York — agreed to pay $1.3 million to support the cleanup.
Also, 19 federal agencies that disposed of mercury products at the plant agreed to pay $2 million toward the project. In 2009, the EPA reached an agreement with 291 smaller customers who agreed to pay a combined $3.8 million to support the cleanup.
Kivowitz said EPA has collected about $5.3 million that will reimburse the agency for about 88 percent of its costs in investigating the site, legally pursuing the companies that used the facility and crafting a cleanup plan.
The plant, which handled more than 7 million pounds of mercury-tainted materials such as batteries, thermometers and pressure regulators from the 1950s until 1998, has been on the federal Superfund pollution cleanup list since 1983.
From about 1956 to 1998, Mercury Refining Inc. used an industrial oven to recover mercury from mercury-containing materials, including batteries, thermometers, pressure regulators and dental amalgams. Consequently, soil at the facility became contaminated with mercury, and contaminated soil and storm water drained into the unnamed tributary to the Patroon Creek. Mercury reclamation activities ended at the site in 1998.
In late 2008, EPA announced a plan that called for removing mercury from the site and nearby creek, as well as from the sites of several nearby businesses, and for using chemical and concrete injections to stabilize buried mercury that cannot be easily dug up.
Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that can cause developmental disabilities in children and developing fetuses, and also can concentrate in fish, birds and invertebrates. The nearest homes to the site are about a quarter-mile away.
EPA-ordered tests at the site found buried mercury concentrations of up to 38 parts per billion and concentrations in sediments in catch basins near the creek of up to 263 parts per billion. The EPA has a mercury limit of 2 parts per billion for drinking water. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has a mercury limit of 10 parts per billion in seafood.
The company still operates under the name Mercury Refining, but now recovers tiny amounts of silver from silver-oxide watch batteries. Under a settlement with EPA, the company will impose deed restrictions that bar future uses that could disturb areas where stabilized mercury will remain buried.
For five years after the cleanup, tests will continue on fish, surface water and sediments in the Patroon Creek, an unnamed tributary and the pond near Interstate 90 that’s formed by a city of Albany-owned dam.