Source: http://www.citizen-times.com, May 16, 2015
By: Tonya Maxwell
CTS Corp. will expand testing near its long-closed manufacturing plant, agreeing to a federal government request that raises concern over whether underground contamination from the Superfund site might be more widespread than once thought.
Representatives with the Indiana-based company in a March meeting with the Environmental Protection Agency said CTS would conduct more testing on the western edge of an underground contamination plume covering 119 acres.
That plume — about the size of 90 football fields — pushes into the backyards of some homes in Southside Village, a gated community near the former plant off Mills Gap Road.
New testing would fill in data gaps on the western side of the contamination, said Davina Marraccini, an EPA spokeswoman.
“CTS agreed and their contractor is planning to conduct additional sampling of the air, groundwater, surface water and sediments,” she wrote in an email. “Pending permission from adjacent property owners, the data will be collected this summer.”
That agreement came shortly after EPA officials released a conceptual site model that includes a graphic depiction of the pollution overlaid on satellite images.
The model indicates the chemical degreaser trichloroethylene, also known as TCE, has been detected in underground wells and natural springs.
Private property bordering the CTS land to the east is cordoned off behind a chain link fence that carries trespassing and danger warnings. Testing of a spring in that restricted area has shown TCE readings of 30,000 parts per billion. The drinking water guideline set by the EPA is 5 parts per billion.
CTS shuttered the facility, at 235 Mills Gap Road, nearly three decades ago. TCE was among chemicals the plant used to manufacture industrial switches and resistors.
While much of the information about contamination from the plant has long been available in reports and schematic drawings, the new easy-to-read color renderings more clearly illustrate the scope of the contamination.
EPA released the conceptual site model in March, following a September memo that included criticisms of CTS for failing to create the document.
Since at least 2012, the EPA has been calling for a conceptual site model, with EPA hydrologist Kay Wischkaemper writing in a memo that the document would act as a cornerstone for facilitating communication between government agencies.
“A common understanding is critical for this initial work plan and historically that common understanding has not been communicated adequately between EPA, CTS and the state of North Carolina,” she wrote.
The graphics show the TCE plume extending about 7/10 of a mile northeast of the CTS plant site. But monitoring of its western edge — the side nearest Southside Village — appears not to have extended far beyond the suspected contamination source.
The distance from the concrete pad where the plant once stood to the farthest monitoring site is about 300 feet.
A spring at that point has tested with TCE levels of 330 parts per billion. That spring is in a wooded area not far off Mills Gap Road and is unfenced. It poses no unacceptable risk from recreational exposure and does not require fencing, Marraccini said.
Monitoring along the western side of CTS has not occurred since 2012 and is now being planned to fill in data gaps that have been identified since at least 2009, according to EPA officials.
A CTS contractor, who will install the new monitoring devices, will first use direct push points, said Craig Zeller, the EPA manager for the CTS Superfund site. Direct push points are a relatively quick and temporary way to assess potential contamination.
“Once that plume is better defined, more permanent monitoring wells will be installed both inside and outside of the known plume area for monitoring (and potential remediation) purposes,” Zeller said in an email.
Tate MacQueen, who lives near the plume to the northeast and has long advocated for cleanup of the site, said he is happy to see installation of any monitoring wells that might provide a better understanding of groundwater movement.
“If there are plans to expand the monitoring, that would be a step in the right direction,” he said. “We in our community would welcome it.”
Home construction in Southside Village, at 149 Mills Gap Road, began in the late 1990s. The residences linked into city water and many sit on a mountainside above the CTS site.
Terese Figura, a board member of the Southside Village Homeowner’s Association, asked the EPA earlier this year to better explain their agency’s understanding of potential risk posed by the CTS site.
In a pair of letters, the director of the EPA’s Superfund Division wrote that indoor and outdoor air testing and soil sampling carried no unacceptable risks to human health. Drinking water was also not an issue, Franklin Hill wrote, because residents are connected to the municipal supply.
But the documents also indicate that further investigation will better determine the extent of groundwater contamination and options for cleaning it up.
“At the CTS of Asheville site, a Remedial Investigation is underway — one purpose of which is to collect data to further characterize site conditions,” Hill wrote. “When that investigation is completed, we will know more about the extent of the contamination in relation to your neighborhood.”
Testing has long happened in Southside Village, Figura said Thursday.
“We look forward to continued testing because it reassures us we live in a safe environment,” she said. “We welcome it. It gives us benchmarks and we want what’s best for the Mills Gap corridor.”