Source: http://powersource.post-gazette.com, September 22, 2015
By: Anya Litvak
Since the 1930s, a chunk of land in Beaver County has been growing richer in all the wrong types of ways — building up reserves of lead, arsenic, cadmium and mercury.
The land, which until last year housed the largest zinc smelter in the nation, is now in the process of a major upheaval. Shell Chemical Co. is preparing the site for a multibillion dollar petrochemical complex, should the company decide to go through with plans to build it.
Over the next two years, Shell will spend around $80 million dealing with the environmental contamination it inherited in buying the 300-acre site from Horsehead Corp.
Shell’s plan to essentially raise the ground level by about six feet and cap the metal-laden soil with pavement, roads and buildings has been approved by the state Department of Environmental Protection.
Years of use in zinc smelting
Now a sprawling expanse of dirt along the Ohio River, the property once housed a zinc smelter, a powerplant, two landfills, a paint booth and various smaller shops and storage areas.
The contamination that has built up over the past 85 years came from a number of sources: unlined ponds and landfills, out-of-date storage techniques, air emissions from the smelter and storm water runoff.
The metals in the ground and in the water have been the subject of state and federal interest.
In 2008, an environmental group sued Horsehead for 135 violations of its water discharge permit, claiming the company allowed excessive amounts of zinc, selenium, lead and chlorine to flow into the Ohio River.
A 2011 document from the Environmental Protection Agency states that wind sometimes carried recycled zinc scraps and dust from an electric arc furnace off their storage piles and dispersed them on soil at the site. Those storage areas also leached lead and cadmium.
“There are relics of our industrial past,” said Mark Urbassik, owner of the Duquesne environmental firm KU Resources. “That’s what Act 2 is. It recognizes that we can’t dig everything up and haul everything way, and that we need to look at it from a risk-based approach.”
Act 2 is Pennsylvania’s voluntary land recycling program that encourages redevelopment of industrial sites through cleanup plans and liability relief.
For Shell, that means if it executes on a plan approved by the Department of Environmental Protection now, it won’t be required to do further clean up of the site. A Shell spokesman, Michael Marr, said the program was a motivator for Shell to consider the Beaver County site.
Capping the site with clean soil
In its 3,097 page Act 2 application, Shell said its analysis found high levels of lead, arsenic and several other contaminants in the soil and groundwater.
It evaluated several options including excavating all the impacted soil — some 2.3 million cubic yards — and hauling it away, which Shell estimated would cost between $150 million and $200 million; and stabilizing the soil with material that would prevent metals from leaching into the groundwater at a cost between $90 million and $250 million.
The company settled on a plan to cap the site and restrict its future use through a deed.
Jim Sewell, environmental manager for the project, said Shell will put between five and seven feet of clean soil on the ground, which will prevent rain water from flowing through the contaminated soil layer.
“Assuming we go ahead with the project, we’ll put in foundation, buildings and roadways,” he said. That would further isolate the contaminated soil from rainfall.
Culverts will be built for portions of two streams running through the property and the company has already installed retention ponds and a water treatment system to prevent contaminated runoff into the Ohio River.
Shell is drafting the deed it plans to file with the Beaver County Clerk of Courts that will specify that untreated groundwater from the site can’t be used for potable or agricultural purposes.
The whole remediation plan is expected to take one to two years, Mr. Sewell said.