Location contaminated with chemical made famous in "Erin Brockovich"
The E.P.A. has begun an innovative clean-up at the Frontier Hard Chrome Location in Vancouver. This former chrome-plating Location is contaminated with hexavalent chromium, the chemical made famous in the movie "Erin Brockovich".
If not controlled, the chemical could migrate into surface or groundwater sources and threaten human health and the environment.
Recently, the E.P.A. demolished 2 buildings which sat over the most contaminated "hot-spot" of the former FHC site. With the buildings out of the way, the E.P.A. is injecting a reducing agent into the ground that will change the highly toxic hexavalent chromium into the non-toxic trivalent chromium.
The 1st injections are forming an underground barrier wall about 150 feet long to keep contamination from spreading.
After removing the buildings' foundations, the E.P.A. will mix reducing agents into newly exposed soil, in some places as deep as 30 feet. The agency expects to finish treating the remaining soil and groundwater throughout the "hot spot" by September.
"This is a new cleanup process," says E.P.A. Plan Manager Sean Sheldrake. "This modern technology is allowing us to clean up this Location in a very effective way. We'll be monitoring the results over the long term. And when we walk away, we'll leave behind a much safer site."
The Frontier Hard Chrome Location is about a half-mile north of the Columbia River. Chrome plating operations took place at this Location between 1958 and 1982. FHC operated at the Location from 1970 to 1982 and discharged wastewater with hexavalent chromium to an on-site dry well. Concerned that contaminated water could reach the Columbia River or drinking water wells, the E.P.A. added the Location to the Countrywide Priorities (Superfund) List in 1983.
When 1st detected, seriously contaminated groundwater extended about 1600 feet southwest from the facility. Subsequent monitoring indicates that the area of groundwater contamination has changed in size and shape over time. However, the "hot spot" under the Location has shown consistently high levels of chromium.
In the 1980s the E.P.A. evaluated ways to clean up contamination, but the agency was not able to find a cost-effective clean-up option at that time. Also, because the groundwater plume was decreasing, E.P.A. did not move forward with groundwater cleanup. E.P.A. and the Washington Department of Ecology removed some contaminated surface soil from the Location in 1994, and continued monitoring and evaluating new cleanup technologies.
Now that this new treatment technology is available, E.P.A. can move forward with cleanup.
Web Site:
http://yosemite.epa.gov/r10/cleanup.nsf/sites/fhc
