8/9/2019 Out of sight, always in mind: Underground pollution breeds fears

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conee-Pickens Edition/Sunday, Nov. 25, 2001 "Anderson ent-Mail

"Out of sight, always in mindUnderground .. reeds fears

Will Chandler Independent -Mail photosEnvironmental specialist Ben Day, right, pours water collected from a well at the Seneca Landfill -into a container heldby environmental operator David Kurtz. The two employees of Goldie and Associates of Seneca were at the site collecting water samples from various wells. The company is monitoring the landfill for pol)utants that could cause illnessin humans.People living around landfill worry about pollutantsBy Kelly Davis~ e p e n d e n t M a i i SENECA - Fact: Dozens of people in a neighborhood are sick or even dying from a variety ofillnesses - gallbladder infections, prostate cancer, lung cancer, kidney problems and more. Fact:All live around a landfill.The two'are related, right?Several neighbors in the Reedy Fork community near the closed 56-acre Seneca Landfill say so.But state health officials and pollution experts sayjust because there are multiple illnesses around asource of contamination doesn 't mean there is alink, even i f the source has a less-then-perfectPlease see Pollution, Page SA

A conductivity meter,right, and pH meter, ."eft; take r e ~ d i n g s from water collectedfrom a well at theSeneca Landfill. Thelandfill no longercollects domesticwaste, but Someresidents are worriedthat pollutants "already undergroundare causing itsneighbors to get sickby the dozens.

8/9/2019 Out of sight, always in mind: Underground pollution breeds fears

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SA Anderson Independent-Mail, Sunday, Nov. 25, 2001 FROM PAGE lAPollution breeds .unquenchable fearsFrom Page 1Atrack record and is known tohave leaked chemicals intothe groundwater beneath it.But people are conditionedto fear pollution they can'tsee, such as trace amounts ofchemicals in their water.Determining that people aresafe from such dangers is abig job for public officials, butconvincing them is eventougher."I'm convinced it's safe"Oconee Cbunty SupervisorAnn Hughes said. "But untilwe have someone other thanmyself, someone who has abackground in hazardousmaterials and pollution,assure them everything issafe, I don't think they'regoing to be sat isfied."Cynicism piles up

Orville Colegrove movednine years ago from WestVirginia coal country toCrooks Road near the landfillowned by the county, and the58-year-old isn't buying theDepartment of Health andEnvironmental Control'sassurances that his wife'sand neighbors' health problems are not unusual and.have nothing to do with thesoilcovered trash pile.For nearly four decades,the landfill received household and industrial waste,including some illegal hazardous waste in the late 1980s,and Mr. Colegrove maintainsthat the health department isparticipating in a coverup of/ J t n l l ! t ! i n r a 1 f e c d i I g ~ J p . J J 1 . . } l Iluartermile doughnutaround the site.A nearly finished groundwater assessment, orders to~ s t a l l a methane gas extracFon system a.nd required regular monitoring of the landfill for the next few decades(lon't comfort Mr. Colegrove,whose skepticism has grownover years of what he considers lax oversight by therealth department.l His wife, Pearl, has hadgallbladder problems, a com ;n:lOn illness on the list of 135sick neighbors he presentedto health officials this year."The health departmentdidn't do their job;" he said.Documents prove that lacquer and paint thinner wereallowed into the landfill, andMr. Colegrove complains thehealth department has actedtoo slowly to address resulting contamination.

"They let it happen andnow they sit there and tell menothing's wrong," he said,referring to responses to hisletters and community meetings conducted by the healthdepartment.Health department andOconee Co(mty officials haveacknowledged the illiciteumping, but they aren'tt.eady to blame Mr.Colegrove's list on the landtill or respond with moreextreme action."There's no general rulethat if yo u live near a landfillfind have an illness they'rere lated," said Dr. Roberta r i n o of the health departent's Office of Health

Hazard Evaluation.To make such a connecion, investigators must findhe right type of contamination at high enough concentrations in a form or locationwhere there is a reasonablechance a person might beexposed for a long enoughperiod of time, Dr. Marinosaid.Past monitoring at thelandfill has not found such apathway, he said."We haven't received anyevitlence of private wells andother groundwater sourcesbeing contaminated," he said.The health department hasasked the county to completea new assessment of groundwater in the landfill's vicinity, and future monthlygroundwater testing is part ofthe landfill's closure agreement.Ms. Hughes also wrote aletter to health departmentofficials in mid-Novemberasking for even wider monioring to help soothe residents' fears."I think at this pOint theolks out there need to knowif their fears are grounded ornot," she said.The monitoring looks forevidence of "priority pollutants" on a list established bythe EnvironmentalProtection Agency that arelikely to pose problems forhuman health.The latest assessment, conducted by SenecabasedGoldie & Associates, shouldbe done in a few weeks, saidArt Braswell, director of thehealth department's Miningand Solid Waste Division,which oversees landfills.

- - - - - ~ - - - , - - ~ - - - - - - - - - - - -"If there's 'l,l,l-methylethyl-bad stuff in theground, those people have to ingest that insome form or fashion. If I live near the landfillbut I don't drink the groundwater than I'm notat risk. And nobody close is on a well, andthere are no known contaminated wells."Paul Lewi

Goldie 6- Associates environmental mginuroute of exposure to a significant dose , and investigationsof the Seneca Landfill so farhave failed to turn up eitherfactor, Goldie & Associatesenvironmental engineer PaulLewis said.

"Aspirin is hazardous iyou take too much of it," hsaid.But for any of that to evematter, the chemicals have tget inside people, Mr. Lewisaid."If there's 1,1,1

Will Chandler Independent-MailEnvironmental specialist Ben Day, left, with Seneca-based Goldie an d Associates, measuresthe depth of a well at the Seneca Landfill before taking water samples,

Even if there were wellscontaminated throughgroundwater, it wouldn't necessarily be a serious concernwhen considering the safetyfactors built into the EPA'sdrinking water standards, hesaid. There's a much higherlifettme risk of injury fromdriving down the road everyday than from trace amountsof solvent in the tap water, hesaid.

methylethyl-bad stuff inground, those people haveingest that in some formfashion," he said, "If I livnear the landfill but I don'drink the groundwater thI'm not at risk. And nobodclose is on a well, and therare no known contaminatwells."Mr . Lewis also discountethe possibility ofairborne pollution because of the landfill'cap,Not a stellar recordThe Seneca Landfill wasowned by the city of Senecaand used as an unlined,unregulated garbage dumpfrom the 1960s to 1973, whenrules for sanitary landfillswere created by the state, andOconee County took thereins.In 1989, the county received"tlealtJi oepartment Nonce ofViolation for allowing paintand lacquer thinner to bedumped somewhere in thelandfilL The dumping sitewas never found, but i t led to

a $6,000 civil penalty paid bythe county in 1990,Following complaintsabout the water quality innearby Speeds Creek, a biological assessment was conducted there by the healthdepartment in 1998.A sl:lbsequent report, referring to higher-than-normalamounts of soil and copper,cadmium and other heavymetals, said the "water quality of Speeds Creek is moderately impacted due to operations at the Seneca LandfilL"nother penalty, ihis timefor $15,000, was levied on thecounty in 1999 for violationsof storm water and erosioncontrol regulations. That pollution affects wildlife andmight harm people whoingested creek water or animals, but it would not affectwell water.The last seGtion of the landfill to accept municipal andindustrial solid waste wasclosed in 1999, Mr, Braswellsaid. Today only a small areais open for construction anddemolition debris.The closed area was"capped" with layers of clayand soil according to stringent new regulations thatlimit how much rainwatercan seep into the filled areaand thereby carry contaminates into groundwater.Sections closed earlier alsowere capped but under lessstringent standards thatallow niore water to penetrate, Mr, Braswell said.S ate law req aires landfilloperators to monitor closedlandfills for 30 years, whichwill keep the Seneca Landfillin Oconee County's lap forthe next 28 years.Pollution appears containedThe groundwater monitoring now being carried out byGoldie & Associates isdesigned to determine howmuch contamination hasreached the water tableunder the landfill and if it isspreading outward. To get atthe water, engineers drillwells in strategic locations,The water then is analyzed ina laboratory."Based on what we 've seen,it doesn't look like there iscontamination off-site," Mr.Braswell said.If the monitoring ever doesdetect a dangerous amount ofcontamination creepingaway, the health departmentprobably will requirestronger capping over thesource area and possiblyother measures, he said.Keeping rainfall out wouldstop leaching and the underground plume of pollutionwould stop spreading, hesaid.Methane gas from the landfill also has been detectedabove acceptable limits, inone case near, but not inSide,a garage, Mr . Braswell said.Methane is more a safetyhazard than a health hazard,but none of the gas wasdetected inside any structures where it could become

concentrated and explode if for their illnesses, andsparked, he said. rema ins un convinced thatTo prevent that from occur- ilie report and assessmentsring, the county has been disprove any connection toordered to build a gas-extrac- . the landfill. He also worrieshon system to collect and that the missing hazardousburn off the gas. Current waste was dumped in a placeplans call for construction to that never received a soil cap,begin in December and be "They have done nothingcomplete by ApriL except try to cover it up ," heMr. Colegrove also worries ~ a i r ' l "These are door-todoor~ ? b < > " t . ' t . , s . r ' ' ' ' g 2 " orjginating in sicknesses. The ZIP code covthe landfill that flowed to . ers quite a bit of area. I'mnearby Speeds Creek. talking in a quarter-mileWith ~ t a t e approval, the around the landfill wherecounty piped the sprmg to the you've got all this (sickness)."landfill s sedlmentatlOn If the cancer assessmentp o n ~ , but samples of water had thrown up any red flags,commg out of the pOD;d an analysis of smaller geo turned up no t h r e a t ~ to publlc graphic areas would have fol-'health or the envrronment, 1 d C t ICaccording to a September let- owe, .en ra ancerter to Mr. Colegrove from act- Reg.lstry . , Director Susaning health department BO,!lck. saId. .Commissioner C. Earl ThiS IS a standard protoHunter col modeled after the Centers. for Disease Control andSick in droves? Prevention protocol," shesaid.At the health department'srequest, the South CarolinaCentral Cancer Registry conducted an analysis of theSeneca ZIP code area to checkfor, a cancer cluster, characterized by the onset of rarecancers in several peopleover a short period of time.The results showed that foronly three types of cancer didSeneca have rates of newcases significantly differentthan state and national averages, and two of those rates,for prostate cancer and nonHodgkin's lymphoma, actually were lower than average,wrote report author LauraSanders.The third deviation was forcervical cancer, where therewere seven new cases whenonly three were expected, Ms.Sanders reported,The report also looked atcancer deaths. Between 1995-.:.. when the registry begaflcollecting cancer death data- and 1999, eight people inthe Seneca ZIP code died ofkidney cancer compared tofour expected, and seven diedof oral cancer when threewere expected.The report concluded therewas no evidence of a cancercluster in Seneca because thecancers present were not rareor unusual and did not occurtogether in a short time."For the cancers where Significantly more cases ordeaths occurred than expected, the risk factors associatedwith these cancers are knownto be lifestyle related (Le.smoking, alcohol use, high fatdiets)," the report said.

Danger, and true dangerIllness from a hazardousmaterial requires a steady

The standards state howgreat a chance a person has ofgetting ill after drinking twoliters of water contaminated,at a given level every day for70 years, Mr, Lewis said.The contamination levelsare based on relatively shortterm animal studies and typ icallv have safetv factors of 100or more, That is, the maximum "safe" level for anygiven chElmical may be set 100or more times more dilutethan the actual amount needed to cause illness in a rat."It's a public perceptionthing," he said, "If! ask you 'ifyou would drink a liter ofwater that contained 2,3butane dione, pyrazine, pyrrole and 1-proponol-2-one,you'd say 'I think I'll pass,'and yet, that's all in coffee."In official health literature,2,3-butanedione is considereda "toxic chemical," pyrazine"may be harmful," 1-proponol-2-one "may cause cancer in. lab rats" and ingestion of pyrrole "may be fataL"Dose makes the poison, Dr,Marino said.

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Despite those comfortinwords, it takes a leap of faitfor the average person to feesafe when they ' live bdecades' worth of trash pilein an unlined pit that harborknown hazardous chemicalsomewhere in its depths.. Y et hydro-geologists, scientists who study the cnaracteristics of groundwater; haveconfidence in their ever-moresophisticated methods, andlab workers' ability to detectcontaminates in even the tiIiiest concentrations hasbecome astonishing.The groundwater samplesat the Seneca Landfill arebeing analyzed at the level ofparts per billion, and the engineers are confident about thewater's movement, Mr. Lewis,said,"That's not a hard scienceto go out and measure the.depth of wells and knowwhich direction the water'sgoing," he said. "If there'ssomething out there, the sampling will fmd it."

The registry had records ofonly five of the dozens of people with cancer on Mr.Colegrove's list of sick neighbors, the report said. The oth~ r s were diagnosed in theyears before the registry wasestablished, making it likelythey occurred over a longperiod of time, Ms. SanderSlwrote'. That implies theyprobably match the background rates of various cancers.

E RESTOThe people on Mr,Colegrove's list had many i1lnesses other than cancer,such as skin rashes, allergies,gallbladder problems andprostate problems, Many arelifestyle-related or otherwisefairly common in aging populations. And some, such ashepatitis C, are contractedonly by non-environmental

means such as blood transfusions.Mr. Colegrove, who haswaged a letter-writing cam paign with health departmeniand elected officials, isangered by the implicationthat his neighbors are atfaull

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