[edgeywood]

A Virginia newspaper, the Virginian Pilot, featured the Town of Pines in a story today. You may remember that the town waged a battle with NIPSCO and Brown Inc over the 520 dump contamination.

Interesting that we get very little local coverage of this ongoing issue...

http://hamptonroads.com/2008/10/indiana-to...%80%99t-be-easy

If you prefer video:

http://hamptonroads.tv/hrtv.php?id=2278377

Indiana town to Chesapeake: Fly-ash battle won’t be easy

TOWN OF PINES, Ind.

Jan Nona watched and carefully recorded what happened to her hometown when fly ash contaminated the water supply. Dangerous things came out of the wells. Regulators arrived. Legal fights began. Eight years passed. And the fly ash remains.

That is why she thinks she knows what will happen in Chesapeake, even though she lives about 850 miles away and has only driven through Virginia once.

“They’ve got so much coming their way that they don’t understand,” she said.

Nona lives in Town of Pines, Ind., an enclave of working-class people in post-World War II homes close to the shore of Lake Michigan.

It seems a world away from the wide-open spaces along Murray Drive and Whittamore Road in Chesapeake’s Fentress area . But e ach community has had to deal with ground water contamination either directly under or downstream from massive placements of fly ash, the powdery, contaminant-laden residue left from the burning of coal for electricity.

There are several overlapping plot lines: intervention by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Superfund connections; at least 1 million tons of fly ash placed near homes with wells; early assurances that fly ash is safe; extension of city water to residents, at power companies’ expense; and continuing investigations.

An EPA report released last year cited 67 cases nationwide of proven or potential damage to ground or surface water because of coal-combustion products. Town of Pines is one of them .

T here is no federal regulation for the disposal of fly ash. It’s left up to each state, leaving a patchwork quilt of widely varying policies nationwide.

After years of complaints and suspicion by Town of Pines residents that something was wrong with the water in the community, Indiana state officials found benzene, a known human carcinogen, in the well water of one resident in 2000.

Follow-up tests on the wells of others in the area found high levels of arsenic, lead and manganese.

Three years later, the EPA designated the affected parts of town as an “alternative approach agreement” Superfund site – a Superfund category reserved for responsive “potentially responsible parties.”

Last summer, tests at Chesapeake’s Battlefield Golf Club at Centerville, which opened a year ago, revealed elevated levels of arsenic, lead, manganese, chromium and other contaminants in groundwater under the course.

Two rounds of city-funded tests to determine whether contaminants had affected any residential wells nearby found some evidence of boron – a well-known marker of fly-ash contamination.

Boron levels at Town of Pines ranged as high as 16,000 parts per billion, dwarfing the highest boron reading posted near the Chesapeake golf course as of last spring – 905 parts per billion.

The EPA’s “removal action level” for boron in drinking water is 900 parts per billion .

Those familiar with the situations in Indiana and Virginia, however, caution that the contamination under the golf course may be just getting going. The fly ash at the golf course was placed there between 2002 and 2007. A sh dumping in Town of Pines began decades ago, by at least the mid-1970s , records show.

An Oct. 7 EPA p ollution r eport about the golf course site found that the boron results “thus far are not indicating a definite pattern.”

Further assistance from an EPA team is being requested to determine the relationship of the boron results to the fly ash.

“I’m concerned about Chesapeake, I really am,” said Nona, who became the driving force behind a grass-roots community organization called People In Need of Environmental Safety, or PINES, which formed after reports surfaced of well contamination .

Members of the Indiana group took their fight to Washington . They pushed for and won support from members of Congress and state representatives.

They applied for and won grants , enabling them to conduct independent water testing that challenged EPA conclusions about the extent of the contamination in their community.

The number of homes that eventually received connections to city water – 270 – was more than double the 130 first ordered.

They were parties to a civil lawsuit against the utility and other firms. The suit was settled and the plaintiffs received some money, though a confidentiality agreement prevented anyone from discussing it in detail.

The extension of city water may offer some relief, but it doesn’t address the problem of future contamination, Nona said.

“It’s just going to seep into your groundwater and go wherever your aquifers take it,” she said.

The dispute started eight years ago. In the spring of 2000, Phyllis DaMota bought a small, comfortable two-story home on Walnut Street.

She didn’t know it, but her house sits about a quarter-mile north of Yard 520, a roughly 50-acre, state-regulated landfill. Over roughly two decades, 1 million tons of fly ash and other coal-combustion products from Northern Indiana Public Service Co.’s Michigan City and Bailly power plants had been placed there, according to the EPA.

The landfill was active until 2001.

DaMota was troubled by an unusual odor that seemed to come from the tap water, which came from a well.

“It smelled like walking into a hair salon,” she said.

She called the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. State officials responded promptly and tested her water; they quickly found high levels of benzene, which can cause cancer . Testing of other homes in the area soon found high levels of arsenic, lead and manganese.

DaMota’s call to the state triggered a series of events that included more extensive testing , eventual extension of city water to her home and many others, and Superfund status for the town.

Public records and news clips, however, show that fly ash, the landfill and questions about water quality had been on the radar screen of the EPA, local officials and town residents for decades.

In January 2003, the EPA signed a consent order with Northern Indiana Public Service Co. and three other companies, including the owner of the landfill and a trucking firm.

The 2003 order specifically states that the firms’ participation “shall not constitute an admission of liability.”

Officially designated “potentially responsible parties,” the firms paid $1.8 million that year to extend Michigan City water lines to 130 homes in Town of Pines, according to utility officials.

After independent test s paid for by the community group showed that contamination was wider than first thought, EPA amended the order to require the companies to extend city water to another 140 homes.

The total cost was $3.6 million, according to utility officials, who declined to comment on any other costs incurred, such as legal expenses, or whether any of the costs were covered by insurance.

In September, Dominion Virginia Power – the source of the 1.5 million tons of ash used to build the golf course – committed to paying up to $6 million to bring city water to affected residences in Chesapeake .

Debbie Loyd keeps a small Canada Dry bottle filled with a final sampling of water from her well. The date “11/26/05” is scrawled on the bottle cap – the date her well was sealed.

When the bottle is shaken slightly, the water turns black, thick with charcoal-colored flakes.

“It’s not a fix-it for the contamination,” Loyd said of the city-water extension. “They have not even begun to start to fix it.”

Loyd and other residents are now focused on the latest phase of the Town of Pines case – a “remedial investigation” of the area ordered by the EPA.

Town residents say fly ash was dumped not only in the nearby landfill, but all over the town as roadbed material and as fill for swampy areas.

Northern Indiana Public Service Co. is still looking into the scale and scope of fly-ash dumping decades ago in Town of Pines.

“We’re going about that process, to investigate those claims right now,” said Dan Sullivan, a utility engineer. “That’s part of what’s ongoing and still has a lot of work to go.”

An EPA update on the site, released in June, reported that coal-combustion products “were hauled from the generating plant to the Town of Pines area and were used as roadbed and fill for driveways and residential yards.”

Not every resident in the area was offered a city-water hook up .

Peggy Richardson and her family have lived in their home just outside Town of Pines since 1976.

EPA testing of their well in 2003 found boron at 1,950 parts per billion.

When Richardson turns on her kitchen tap, a faint scent of sulfur hangs in the air.

Though she and her family use their well water to clean dishes and for bathing, they rely on a dozen 5-gallon bottles of water, delivered every two weeks, for everything else.

It’s paid for by the “potentially responsible parties.”

Her county assessment has remained unchanged since 2002 – fixed at $75,000.

Gordon Tharp, 66, spent 24 years working for U.S. Steel in Gary, Ind. He lives just across the railroad tracks from Richardson’s home and now is connected to city water.

“Just because they have monitoring wells in a place doesn’t mean they’re going to do anything if the readings are bad,” he said.

Asked what advice, if any, he might offer to Chesapeake residents living near the golf course, Tharp was blunt.

“Tell them the squeaky wheel gets the grease,” he said. “If they don’t squeak loud enough and long enough, they won’t get the grease.”

Robert McCabe, (757) 222-5217, robert.mccabe@pilotonline.com

[Southsider2k12]

Great find! Thanks for posting that article.

[Ang]

I have a friend who lives in Chesapeake. He said that the golf course may have to be torn up and something else used to fill the land, and that running city water out to the homes is out of the question because the location is too rural.

[ChickenCityRoller]

Thanks for posting this! I agree, it's embarrassing how a story like this isn't picked up locally.

[southyards]

And . . . . . the Boron issue wasn’t confined to just the Pines. Before the city water system was extended to Beverly Shores, there were homes out there that were receiving weekly delivery of large jugs of drinking water (at no charge) from the EPA. (Because a large concentration of Boron was found to be present). Also, I believe the EPA is looking for landowners in selected areas of Beverly Shores that will agree to have testing wells installed on their property to monitor aquifer quality.

[Southsider2k12]

Hopefully the local media will pick up on this... This type of investigative reporting is the stuff that awards are made of!

[edgeywood]

Hopefully the local media will pick up on this... This type of investigative reporting is the stuff that awards are made of!

Just posted on Circle of Blue: The latest on the water problems in the Pines and a detailed explanation of the problem:

http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2009...-contamination/

Maybe the local media will follow-up on this.

[CaddyRich]

I'm reading this story...and I'm shocked. I had no idea the extent of the problem. I knew it was bad, but to know the back story amazes me. As far as local coverage is concerned, or lack thereof, don't be surprised. This story requires investigative reporting - something we haven't had in this town in years. The local angle on this with US Steel, Brown Trucking, and the Town of Pines (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) will probably never be known after this all shakes out to protect those "connected".

[Southsider2k12]

Coal Ash: Town’s Toxic Water Embodies National Challenge

July 20, 2009

Dirty Legacy Contaminates Groundwater of an Indiana Town
Uncovered coal ash roads like this one are a common sight in the Town of Pines. The ash once used as filler material for roads, building projects and dumped in the local landfill, now contaminates the ground water in the small town.Uncovered coal ash roads like this one are a common sight in the Town of Pines. The ash once used as filler material for roads, building projects and dumped in the local landfill, now contaminates the ground water in the small town.

TOWN OF PINES, Ind. — Peggy Richardson was still in high school nearly 40 years ago when trucks began dumping the ash from a nearby coal-fired power plant in this working-class community 50 miles east of Chicago.

Like the other 800 residents, she and her family never considered whether there was a risk when a heap of ash –- known here as Yard 520 — steadily grew into a mountain of coal wastes a half-mile long and four stories tall, higher than any building in town.

Even today the risks of coal ash in the Town of Pines are not perfectly clear. In addition to Yard 520, ash was spread across the town, dumped as the foundation for roads and as fill for construction sites. Nine years ago, a resident alerted the federal Environmental Protection Agency that there was something wrong with their drinking water. The EPA found heavy metals and other contaminants in groundwater in the region.
VIDEO: The Faces of Pines

Residents of the Town of Pines reflect on nearly 10 years of fighting coal ash contamination. A working-class village of about 800 living in the divide between the Indiana Dunes and the steel belt that spans from Indiana to Chicago, the Town of Pines is home to the nation’s shortest highway and more than 100 million tons of coal ash. Deposited in an unlined landfill, the coal ash mixed with the groundwater, sending a toxic plume of heavy metals into residents’ wells.

Richardson, who lives just blocks from the ash mountain, has a good idea that exposure to contaminated water and such close proximity to Yard 520 is not safe. What leads her to this conclusion? During an interview in her kitchen here she reached into a drawer and pulled out a stainless steel table knife she bought less than a year ago. The metal blade was scarred and pitted. “This water eats my sink and silverware,” she said. “What has it done to me?”

In the next week — after nearly a decade of deliberation — the EPA is scheduled to release a report that will add more clarity to the consequences of coal ash in the Town of Pines, and define a formal path to cleaning up a landfill that contains over one million tons of coal wastes.

One hundred and thirty million tons of coal ash are produced annually. Of that, more than half is dumped in landfills and holding ponds around the country.
The National Academy of Sciences reports that coal ash contains 24 potentially hazardous metals such as arsenic, boron, cadmium selenium, and mercury.
In 2000, the EPA identified at least 600 coal ash disposal sites around the country. The EPA reports more than 180 coal ash dumps nationwide are either unlined or partially lined.
Presently, coal ash is not considered a hazardous waste by the EPA. It is not regulated federally.
In a 2002 study of groundwater in the Town of Pines, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry found that arsenic was 112 times, boron 41 times and manganese nine times above minimum risk levels.
Since the discovery of contaminates water in the Town of Pines, residents report up to a 40 percent drop in property values.

“Currently, we’re working on the remedial investigation,” said Tim Drexler, the EPA’s Yard 520 project manager. “The disposal predated a lot of regulations both on a state and a federal level.”

The federal environmental agency got involved in 2000 after a resident reported that her water smelled like a “beauty salon.” Today, Yard 520 is slated for cleanup as an Alternative Superfund Site — an EPA program that takes care of abandoned toxic waste sites.

Though it is one of the largest coal ash piles in the Great Lakes basin, Yard 520 nevertheless is just one example of the trail of some 600 impoundments, landfills, and storage ponds for coal wastes that are scattered across the Midwest and other regions of the United States, according to the EPA. Some 63 are toxic and leaking. Most have grown to huge dimensions, in part because neither the federal nor state governments required the same stringent health and environmental safeguards that apply to municipal landfills or chemical toxic waste sites.

That may change. In December a coal ash storage pond in Tennessee ruptured, spilling more than a billion gallons of ash slurry laden with heavy metals — a spill 50 times larger than the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster — into tributaries of the Tennessee River. In a new report published earlier this month that was prompted by the Tennessee incident, the EPA detailed 44 “high hazard potential” coal ash storage pond dump sites across the country.

Yard 520 is not one of those high hazard sites. But its rigorously documented history of seeps and water contamination make it an emblem of the multiple costs of generating power from coal and a factor in the growing national debate over clean energy, climate change and the American economy.
Around the corner from Yard 520, Peggy Richardson is not hooked up to city water. Drinking bottled water, but still bathing in her well water, Richardson notes that her hands are perpetually peeling. She can't help but wonder what the water is doing to her body.
Around the corner from Yard 520, Peggy Richardson is not hooked up to city water. Drinking bottled water, but still bathing in her well water, Richardson notes that her hands are perpetually peeling. She can’t help but wonder what the water is doing to her body. Click image to enlarge.

There are more than 500 power plants across the United States that burn coal, producing more than 100 million tons of coal ash annually — enough to fill a million railroad cars. Some ash finds its way into industry products, but more than half of it is dumped into landfills like Yard 520 or into holding ponds like those in Tennessee.

Regardless of the storage method, environmental scientists say, when water and coal ash mix they generate hazardous compounds that are readily mobile. In the Town of Pines, toxins from the coal ash mixed with the shallow water table to release a plume of contamination into the town’s groundwater. The legacy of this town’s ash pile is the long-running struggle here to secure clean fresh water.

Peggy Richardson’s drinking water, for instance, comes from five-gallon jugs. Though the majority of the town has municipal water, Richardson is still waiting for a line to reach her house. “I felt sorry for the people who started doing this, but at some point they had to have known it wasn’t good,” she said, “which is when I stop feeling sorry.”

In the early 1970s, the Northern Indiana Public Service Corporation began dumping ash from its nearby coal-fired power plant in a cattail-filled wetland in the Town of Pines. Mixing with the groundwater, the ash generated a plume of contaminants that seeped from the landfill, according to the EPA. Toxic levels of heavy metals, including lead, arsenic, manganese and boron seeped into the town’s wells.

For the past nine years, EPA conducted tests, while residents sued. Though city water is provided to some residents, the struggle to secure safe water for the whole town has been an uphill battle. In 2002 seven residents formed People in Need of Environmental Safety, or PINES. The advocacy group is credited with many of the successes in contending with the coal ash.

A founding member of the group, 72-year-old Jan Nona has been a resident for 43 years and is at the center of the PINES strategy and execution. Nona has convened neighbors, gone to EPA hearings, and met with senators and representatives in her kitchen to combat the coal ash contamination. Nona’s “war room” is a study stacked with binders and boxes full of documents, videotapes, photographs and contact sheets. Living in an elderly community with a background in industry, she makes it clear that she is not a “tree hugger.”

“I’m an activist as far as the community is concerned,” Nona said, “not an environmentalist.”

“We’ve still got groundwater contamination which they’re probably never going to be able to eliminate,” she said. “We’ve still got a million ton of fly ash landfill that they’re never going to be able to get rid of. We’ve still got fly ash all over town in road, driveways and yards that we’re probably never going to get rid of. This town is trashed.”
Jan Nona stands in front of well water samples in her war room, where she has aggregated everything tied to the contamination she can. Nona was one of the founding members of the People in Need of Environmental Safety (PINES) group.
Jan Nona stands in front of well water samples in her “war room,” where she has aggregated everything tied to the contamination she can. Nona was one of the founding members of the People in Need of Environmental Safety (PINES) group. Click image to enlarge.

Nona added: “You have the right to safe drinking water in this country. They took that right away from us.”

Another lifelong resident is Debbie Loyd, 49, who watched her community being built on a foundation of black fly ash. Local contractors dumped the ash everywhere, a building block for the village infrastructure — filling in lots, making roadbeds, driveways and even serving as the base of a playground.

“It’s not just the landfill — it’s all of the community,” Loyd said.

She remembers biking a paper route through the town as a child just when the ash was packed down for roadbeds. The black dust would swirl in clouds along the ditches during the summer, turning into a pitch, gooey “quicksand” when it rained.

In the beginning town leaders saw the ash as benign. “For many years, fly ash was viewed by many to be a wonderful fill that could be used for a variety of things like road-bedding, like filling in low areas, and this town took advantage of that,” said Paul Kysel, vice president of PINES. As the trucks hauling coal ash came, residents assumed officials were on the lookout for any hazards and that the monitoring wells that dot the perimeter of the landfill would alert them if anything was wrong.

They were wrong. Groundwater tests dating back to the 1980s show that high arsenic levels seeped from the landfill. Residents say they were never told about the contaminants.

Many residents, among them Gordon Tharp, feel betrayed. Forging a living in the steel mills and making bridges, Gordon and his wife, Pat, moved into their house in the heart of the Town of Pines 36 years ago, a week before their second daughter was born.

Like the rest of the community, the Tharps thought the ash was harmless. “What did I do to my grandchildren and what did I do to my children,” Gordon Tharp asked. He cannot see an effect, but “what could have been” is always at the back of his mind.
Close to Yard 520, this elementary school had high levels of contamination. Originally supplied with drinking water and now hooked to a reverse osmosis system. The school is slated to close as a new building hooked to city water is under construction.
Close to Yard 520, this elementary school had high levels of contamination. Originally supplied with drinking water and now hooked to a reverse osmosis system. The school is slated to close as a new building hooked to city water is under construction. Click image to enlarge.

“They knew that those wells were bad, but they never told anybody. They kept it a secret,” Tharp said.

In the wake of the discovery of contamination, Debbie Loyd stopped remodeling her house because property values plunged. She has a new bathroom that has never been connected to running water.

Loyd remembers what the water from her well used to be like. “It got to the point where it was sucking fly ash straight, and the check valve in my well wouldn’t close. My sinks wouldn’t shut off because I had all of that fly ash in there. I had to replace everything.”

Despite declining property values and environmental damage, Nona sees the drinking water contamination as something more fundamental.

After residents filed a federal lawsuit, the companies responsible for the groundwater contamination agreed in 2004 to pay to extend municipal water from nearby Michigan City to about two-thirds of Pines. For the PINES group and the community, this was a major victory, but Cathi Murray still remembers what was coming out of her tap for years on end.
I will always wonder that in trying to do the best for my babies, did I actually poison them?
– Cathi Murray

Murray moved to Pines from Chicago with her husband Allen nearly 20 years ago. Drawn by the natural beauty of the area, the Murrays were looking for a house to settle down and raise a family.

It was not until after the birth of her two daughters — one is hearing impaired and another was born with a rare bowel disorder — that she learned about the water. “I will always wonder that in trying to do the best for my babies, did I actually poison them?” Murray asked.

For Peggy Richardson, the victory was bittersweet. She lives closer to Yard 520 than many others but is still without municipal water. Living off of five-gallon containers, the water that ate away two faucets and a stainless steel sink still gurgles up from her well. “I worry I’m going to live the rest of my time out with contaminated water,” she said.

“There’s no way to get away from it — you can’t sell your house, your property value just goes in the toilet,” Richardson said. “It’s a waiting game.”

Aaron Jaffe is a video producer and reporter for Circle of Blue. Reach him at aaron@circleofblue.org. Keith Schneider contributed to this story.