State looking into possible pollution at Monsanto site

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Saturday, February 9, 2002

State looking into possible pollution at Monsanto site

By Nomee Landis

Staff writer

State environmental officials say they have reason to believe that there are

hazardous substances buried in a landfill at Monsanto's Cedar Creek Road

plant.

Monsanto officials discount those worries. They say the company never used

the landfill, it knows of no hazardous substances that were buried there by

a previous company, that no toxins have leached from the landfill and that

no cleanup is needed. They say chemicals detected in the water on the

property came from spills at neighboring plants, which are working to clean

up the pollution.

''All the investigations indicate there are no problems there, " said Jeff

Waldbeser, who handles environmental remediation projects for Monsanto,

which is headquartered in St. Louis. ''There is really nothing to do. There

are no contaminants in the soil or groundwater on our site as a result of

our operations. There is nothing to be concerned about. "

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The landfill, along with tests that have detected toxic chemicals in

groundwater and streams on the property, have put Monsanto site at No.19 in

terms of priority on the state's roster of 474 inactive hazardous waste

sites, said Snavely of the N.C. Division of Waste Management. Rohm &

Haas Co., the original owner of the Monsanto property, is listed along with

Monsanto.

''We know the waste is still on the site, " Snavely said. ''We have reason to

believe the stuff is buried there and is still there, and that is why it is

ranked. "

That waste contains arsenic and heavy metals as well as some chlorinated

solvents, Snavely said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency investigated the site in the 1980s

and passed the project on to the state. Chrystal Bartlett, a spokes- woman

for the N.C. Division of Waste Management, said the EPA determined that the

federal government would not spend more money at the site, but that does not

mean that a cleanup is not needed.

But the state has yet to sample the landfill or to begin work in earnest

there because of a limited staff. So questions still exist about just what

was buried in the landfill and how much, if any, further cleanup of the

property is needed.

Spill from neighbors

Waldbeser said Monsanto's name should not be on the state list at all

because the pollution found in groundwater tests came from the spills at its

industrial neighbors, Dupont and Wellman. The groundwater on the property

flows from those plants, past Monsanto and into the Cape Fear River.

Waldbeser cites recent groundwater tests as proof that minimal levels of

contamination still persist. And he and Manhar Patel, a chemical engineer at

the Fayetteville plant, say Monsanto has never dumped waste in the landfill,

which was used by Rohm & Haas in the 1970s.

The Monsanto plant, which is on about 300 acres off Cedar Creek Road, shut

down production on Dec. 31. It produced Glyphosate, the active ingredient in

the herbicide Roundup. Waldbeser and Patel say no chemicals used in the

production of Roundup have been found on the site.

Patel said the landfill, which is about six or eight acres, is fenced and

covered in grass.

''As a result of making Roundup, there has been no impact to this site, "

Patel said. ''We are not pleased that we're still listed. But because we own

the property, it is an unfortunate part of our ownership. All landfill

owners within North Carolina were listed. "

Bartlett said the company will be held responsible for a cleanup if it is

necessary, even after the company moves out.

Waldbeser said Monsanto has never tested the landfill and does not know what

was buried there. But if problems were found in the future, Monsanto would

clean it up, along with Rohm & Haas.

State records

According to state environmental records, Rohm & Haas received a one-time

approval to bury some of its waste in an on-site landfill in the mid-1960s.

That company ran a fibers operation there from 1967 until Monsanto bought

the plant in 1976. An official with Rohm & Haas' headquarters in

Philadelphia did not know what was buried in the landfill.

Snavely said the Monsanto property was assessed and placed on the state's

inactive hazardous waste priorities list in 1998.

According to a summary report from the engineer who conducted that

assessment, Rohm & Haas buried 99 drums of the plastic polyethylene

terephthalate, or PET, which contained antimony hydroxide, a hazardous

substance.

The report says Rohm & Haas also buried arsenic-containing waste and

thousands of gallons of waste containing heavy metals. Arsenic is known to

cause cancer, and some metals are toxic. The report said the EPA assessment

of the site also lists heavy metals and the solvent trichloroethylene, or

TCE, as being disposed of at the site, but she said there is no evidence to

prove that TCE was dumped there. TCE is toxic and is suspected of causing

cancer.

Monsanto has never used TCE in its operations, according to records filed

with the Fayetteville office of the Division of Water Quality.

Five small streams near the landfill empty into the Cape Fear River, which

is about 600 feet from the landfill. Low concentrations of heavy metals were

detected in three of these streams in the early 1980s. But recent

groundwater samples showed only one chemical, chloroethane, in one of the

streams at levels above state standards.

Chloroethane is one of the compounds released in a spill at ICI Americas

that was discovered in the early 1990s.

Current tenants

Dupont Teijin Films manufactures polyester films at the plant that was once

ICI Americas. And DAK Americas runs a fiber resin operation there. These two

companies occupy space that used to belong to ICI Americas.

Harvey Iwerks, the safety, health and environmental specialist with Dupont

Teijin Films, said chemical leaks at the plant were discovered in the early

1990s. Iwerks said no one knows how long chemicals, including diphenyl

ether, were seeping into the environment before they were discovered.

Iwerks said Dupont agreed to continue to clean up the spill after it

purchased the plant from ICI Americas. Since about 1997, he said, they have

injected air into the groundwater there to encourage the growth of bacteria

that eat the chemicals. He said groundwater monitoring has shown that it is

working.

Another spill, this one at Wellman, was also discovered in the early 1990s.

An underground storage tank on that property was leaking perchloroethylene,

a solvent, into the ground. Willie Bethea, Wellman's human resources

manager, said that company is working with the state to clean that up.

Recent groundwater samples taken from wells near Monsanto's border with

Dupont Teijin Films and DAK Americas contained substances that have been

attributed to the spills at Wellman and ICI Americas, including chloroform,

diphenyl ether and chloroethane.

PCE was detected in one of Monsanto's 20 monitoring wells. The state

engineer who assessed the site said the PCE likely came from a leaking

underground tank at Wellman.

No one knows

While environmental records attribute much of the pollution in the

groundwater to these spills, no one really knows what lies under the grass

in the landfill. Before the mid-1980s, companies routinely dumped toxic

substances in their back yards because there were few environmental

regulations to keep them from doing it.

Monsanto did it, too. For decades, at a plant in Anniston, Ala., the company

dumped millions of pounds of extremely toxic PCBs in open landfills,

polluting streams and rivers. Even after company officials knew their

toxicity, the company continued to produce them and dump them, officials

said. PCBs were banned in 1979. Solutia Inc., the company that now runs the

chemical operations that used to belong to Monsanto, is involved in a

lawsuit with residents of Anniston, who believe the PCBs made them sick.

But Patel said he is proud of the way Monsanto has treated the environment

around the Fayetteville plant. He said he believes the state has much bigger

environmental problems than Monsanto's landfill. He said the benefits of

digging up such a site must be weighed against the cost of such a project,

especially if there is nothing there.

Jim Bateson, the head of the site evaluation and removal branch of the state

's Superfund section, said it does not take much for a company to be listed

on the state priorities list. And once a site is listed, particularly if

groundwater contamination is involved, it may be next to impossible for it

to be removed from that list.

State law forbids the Division of Waste Management from removing a site from

the list if even one groundwater monitoring well says that water contains

even a single chemical in levels above the state's drinking water standards,

Bateson said.

''The law says if the groundwater is out of compliance, you're on it --

maybe forever, " Bateson said. ''There are a lot of sites like that, that are

just stuck there. They should have called it their prioritized list. People

get the impression that if you're on that list, you're somehow a priority.

But all sites are on that list. "

Until the state begins working at the site, though, no one will know for

sure.

Years of monitoring by Monsanto have shown that if there is anything

hazardous buried in the landfill, it is not endangering human health or the

environment, said Waldbeser, of Monsanto's St. Louis headquarters. ''If

there is a problem, it is contained. "

Staff writer Nomee Landis can be reached at 486-3595 or at

landisn@...

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