Date: Fri 30-Aug-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: KAAREN

Quick Words:

pollution-Batchelder

Full Text:

EPA Starts Evaluation Of Batchelder Site

B Y K AAREN V ALENTA

Investigators from the US Environmental Protection Agency visited the 30-acre

site of the bankrupt Charles Batchelder Company on Swamp Road Thursday morning

to evaluate the extent of pollution which has kept the former aluminum

smelting factory on federal/state hazardous waste site lists.

On-Scene Coordinator Gary Lipson from EPA's Region 1 environmental services

division said his agency had been asked by the State Department of

Enviromental Protection to assist in the evaluation earlier this year, but it

tooks months to get approval from the trustee of the case in bankruptcy court.

"We were here two months ago with the state and Martha Wright (of the Newtown

Health Department) and my contractor to get a look at the property," Mr Lipson

said. "Today we are doing a preliminary assessment site investigation - a

PASI. We will do a field screening for volatile organic analysis, for metals

and for PCBs."

Technicians from the contractor, Roy F. Weston of Burlington, Mass., under the

supervision of project leader Joseph Resca, donned white disposable Ty-Vek

suits, booties and layers of gloves. They carefully wound tape around their

wrists and ankles to prevent air from entering at the edges of the suit, then

put on air purifying respirators (masks with build-in air filters).

Mr Lipson said three members of the technician team would spend much of the

day gathering samples that would be tested on-site by three technicians

trained to run the analytical instruments.

"If we find anything, then we will go deeper (for additional samples)," he

said.

Ten percent of the samples will be sent to the EPA labatory in Lexington,

Mass., for confirmation testing, a process which will take two to three weeks,

he said.

"By the end of September we should have a good feel about what we should do,

then it may become a budgetary issue," he said. "It has been a tough year for

the EPA with employee furloughs and a lack of money."

The Batchelder company, which employed 125 people at its peak in the late

1970s and early 1980s, closed its doors in February 1987 and filed papers to

reorganize its debts under the bankruptcy laws later that year.

In March 1987 John Anderson, the acting commissioner of the State Department

of Environmental Protection, asked the DEP's hazardous waste unit to check out

the site and take an inventory of masterials handled and stored there. Two

months later the state's attorney general's office sued the company and issued

a mandatory injunction to clean up the environmental problems on the site.

Under an agreement approved by the Board of Selectmen and the Legislative

Council in January 1992, the company agreed to make $300,000 available to

assess pollution at the site and do limited cleanup work including the removal

of oil tanks. Mr Lipson said that about a foot and a half of oily residue had

been found on the surface of water in manholes on the site so a subsurface

interception system was installed but the money ran out about halfway through

the project.

The DEP has been monitoring wells in the area for years and apparently has

found no contamination, Mr Lipson said. But a few drums with unknown,

potentially volatile, contents are scattered around the site and there are

enormous mounds of dross, piles that contain residue metals from the smelting

process. Mr Lipson said that if there is enough metal content in the piles,

the EPA might be able to interest a recycler in hauling the material away.

"We haven't had much luck in other cases," he admitted.

The piles of waste material might not be hazardous, but when the weather is

dry they produce a dry dust which can cause respiratory problems for people

who spend much time at the site, he said.

"Someone walking through here probably wouldn't be at risk, but technicians

who work with contaminants on a daily basis wear protective gear. This is

Level C gear. The levels run from D to A with Level A requiring fully

contained suits that are worn at truck or railway spills where there are

strong liquid or gas emissions."

One of the first steps the EPA may take is to try to limit access to the site

by youths who come in with cars and dirt bikes to party. "If we put up a metal

fence, it will be destroyed overnight," he said. "We might try something like

large boulders or jersey barriers."

Once the only smelting plant of its kind in New England, Batchelder operated

for more than 30 years in Newtown. But it never fully recovered from an April

1984 explosion, which killed one worker at the plant.

The Connecticut Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited the

company for violations which included excess noise, airborne concentrations of

hydrogen chloride, inorganic arsenic, lead and dust. As part of a settlement,

the company was fined $10,000.

The company also had financial problems relating to other smelting plants

owned by the Batchelder family. When it declared bankruptcy, it listed assets

of $4.5 million and liabilities of $15 million, including $5 million in

secured debt and $10 million in unsecured debt. There were more than 400

creditors including the Town of Newtown. The company owed $262,657 in real

estate taxes and $470,000 in personal property taxes.

One source of contamination was what were called baghouse wastes - wastes from

operations designed to minimize air pollution. Beginning in 1978 these

hazardous wastes were trucked to a landfill in Ohio. But there was a time when

baghouse wastes were stored on the site, the DEP said, and because of this the

company was ordered to remove contaminated soil and place a protective berm

over the area. Monitoring wells were installed in the mid-1980s, and at that

time the company hired a consulting firm to do a study evaluating the degree

of groundwater pollution. None showed then.

Later, however, in conjunction with a storm water system constructed by the

company, additional tests were done. These showed sediment excavated from the

site and samplings of the storm water contained concentrations of arsenic,

lead and other pollutants.

Mr Lipson said there are areas where the protective berm has been breeched.

The area may be re-covered, rather than removed, because digging out the fine

a material "can cause a big mess," he said, adding "We don't want to make

things worse."

Mr Lipson said he will be working with Tom O'Connor, DEP project coordinator,

and representatives of the Newtown Health District to coordinate the

evaluation process.

"We still aren't even sure if the buildings are safe," he said. "There is a

lot of corosion and some might have to be torn down."

Otherwise, it is an excellent industrial site, he said, close to a major

highway and a rail line.

"Sometimes if you guarantee that a new owner will be indemnified against

liability, you can interest a company in purchasing the site," he said. "There

has been a big push to use cleaned-up sites. To work, the process has to be

made user friendly."