0743Site-ID ^-Break.•
P R O C E E D I N G S
of the
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
PROPOSED PLAN FOR CHEMICAL COMMODITIES SITE
JULY 2 6 , 2 0 0 5
7 : 0 0 P . M .
40215882
SUPERFUND RECORDS
FIRE ADMINISTRATION BUILDING
1225 SOUTH HAMILTON CIRCLE
OLATHE, KANSAS
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MS. MARY CARTER: Good evening and
welcome. I think we'll get started. I appreciate
you-all attending tonight this meeting. My name is
Mary Carter. I'm from the Region 7 Environmental
Protection Agency office in Kansas City, Kansas.
I'm a branch chief in the Superfund division, and I
have been designated as the hearing officer for this
meeting tonight.
I know that most of you signed in. If you
didn't sign in, please make sure you do that so that
we can have your name in the record. The purpose of;
this public hearing is to present the EPA's proposed
plan on the Chemical Commodities Superfund site in
Olathe and to take your comments and questions.
This meeting should allow you to
understand what we propose to do at this site and
what the conditions are at the site. Many of you
received a copy of the fact sheet and the proposed
plan. And if you haven't, we have additional copies
out on the table in the lobby. These and other
documents relevant to our decision making process
will be available in what is called the
administrative record, which is -- which will be at
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the Olathe Public Library at 201 East Park and at
the EPA office in Kansas City, Kansas.
There will be other documents in that
administrative record as well, and those are the
remedial investigation report and the feasibility
study. Those were placed there on July 19th, which
was the beginning of the comment period.
We have a court reporter here this
evening. This is Stacy Decker, and she'll be
recording the presentations and our conversations
that we have tonight. Then that transcript will be;
used to prepare a response to the comments that we
get during the public comment period, and those
responses will be in our responsiveness summary.
The transcript and the responsiveness
summary will be in the written record supporting
EPA's final decision, and that will be made
available to the public through the administrative
file, which is at the two repositories in Kansas
City, Kansas, at our office and at the Olathe Public
Library.
This evening we'll be giving a
presentation on our work at the Chemical Commodities
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site and on EPA's proposed plan. After the
presentations, we would like to hear your comments
and we'll answer any questions that you have.
If you have a question, I would ask that
you stand and speak loudly, state your name and
spell it if it's an unusual spelling, so that the
recorder can get that entered into the transcript.
I wanted to mention that we have worked
closely with the Kansas Department of Health and
Environment at this site and in other sites in the
state of Kansas. And I would like to introduce Rob?
Weber from the KDHE, and we'll ask him to make a
statement after our presentation. And I would just
mention that the State has concurred on our proposed
plan that we'll be discussing with you this evening.
Now I would like to introduce the others
that are here this evening from EPA. This is Mary
Peterson. She is the project manager on the
Chemical Commodities site. And over here is Barbara
Peterson, and she is our legal representative from
the office of regional counsel. And Fritz Hirter
who is with our office of external programs.
Our purpose here tonight is to provide a
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presentation on the Chemical Commodities site and to
hear your comments and get your input. This meeting
and the other meetings that we have held in the
community are part of our commitment to involve the
community in the Superfund process. Community
involvement and community input is a very important
part of the Superfund process.
The work that's been done at the Chemical
Commodities site has largely been funded through the
Superfund program. The Superfund law has provided
EPA with the authority to investigate this site andi
to respond to the various issues that affect human
health and the environment.
Now I would like to introduce -- or turn
it over to Mary Peterson to discuss the specifics.
MS. MARY PETERSON: Thank you. I would
like to say thank you all for being here tonight.
Thank you for coming out in the rain. I know it's a
welcome event given the recent heat wave.
Tonight I'm going to be talking with you,
as Mary mentioned, about the recently released
proposed plan for the CCI site or Chemical
Commodities, Inc.
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We're really pleased to be here tonight.
As you may recall, about a year or so -- actually
exactly a year ago, we were here presenting to you
our proposed plan. Last year we announced our
preferred alternatives for addressing soil and
groundwater at the site. And based on some feedback
we had received from the community and from the
state, we had determined that there was some
additional work necessary. And so after having done
that work, we are now back to you again with a
revised proposed plan.
Many of you in the room, or a few of you
anyway, may recall when the CCI site looked like
this, and this photo dates back to about 1970s. And
the CCI site operated at this location, which is at
320 South Blake Street in Olathe from 1951 to 1989,
so nearly 40 years of operation.
And what the business did, it was engaged
in the purchase and resale of used or
off-specification chemical products. And so for
those chemical products that it could not find a
purchaser for, it basically stored on the site and
it resulted in the mess you see in front of you, all
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kinds of chemicals stored in all different types of
containers in a very haphazard manner.
All the sheds and the outbuildings and the
main warehouse building were also jam-packed full of
containerized chemical wastes. And as you can
imagine, over time these containers were exposed to
the elements and they leaked, and their contents
then were absorbed into the soils, which then
penetrated down, ultimately impacting the
groundwater, so a very bad problem.
I also want to give you a little bit ofi
background while we're on this slide about the
Superfund law. Many people are familiar with the
term Superfund. They have heard of it, but they
don't really know the background or where it came
from.
Well, in 1980, the United States Congress
passed a law, and that law is titled the
Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation
and Liability Act. And that's kind of difficult to
say, it's a lot of words, but essentially what that
law did was it established a fund of money using
taxes from certain petroleum and chemical
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industries, and that pot of tax money was used -- or
designated to be used for the cleanup of abandoned
hazardous waste sites such as this one. And so
because that fund became quite large, it sort of
became nicknamed the Superfund. So that's where the
Superfund comes from.
And after that law was passed, EPA then
had to come up with a set of regulations which are
basically procedures for implementing the Superfund
law, and that set of regulations is called the
National Contingency Plan, or the NCP. And you mayi
hear me use that term, you may have heard it before,
you may hear me use it in tonight's presentation.
The intent of this slide is just to orient
you a bit to the location of the site. I'll use my
pointer here. Basically we have the Burlington
Northern Santa Fe rail lines that run just east of
the site. We have the CCI site proper. Everything
you see in red is actually owned by the CCI
corporation. But kind of a subset of this,
basically where I'm outlining here is the fenced
area, and that's the area you saw in the photograph.
That's where most of the CCI activities actually
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occurred. And then we have Blake Street, which kind
of dead-ends here into a cul-de-sac. And there is
the gate. The main entrance to CCI is right about
here. We have Cedar Street up on the north, and
then Keeler Street runs just to the west of the
site .
Basically the remaining problems at the
site include site soils that contain volatile
organic compounds, or VOCs, pesticides and metals in
the surface soils, and then we have volatile organic
compounds in the groundwater as well. And the;
groundwater has kind of migrated along the natural
groundwater pathway out westward into the
neighborhood or underneath the neighborhood. And
the primary contaminant that we see at the site is
trichlorethylene, otherwise known as TCE.
EPA has completed, along with other
parties, a number of response actions at the site to
deal with the immediate threats, basically all the
containerized chemicals that you saw in the previous
photograph.
Between 1989 and 1991, EPA did a pretty
massive response action. This picture shows where
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some of the sampling of the containerized material
was taking place, and then here we see some
overpacking operations. Overpacking is essentially
where we take a drum that's leaking and corroded and
in bad shape and we put it inside a container that's
not leaking and one that we can transport off site
for disposal.
And then to continue, these containers
here are being staged. They are going to be loaded
on a truck and transported off site.
We also did soil and groundwater sampling
to determine what additional threats were made at
the site. We excavated soil and either disposed of
it off site or we also capped some of the soil on
site if it was not contaminated to a high degree.
The main warehouse building you saw in
that first paragraph was actually sandblasted so
that the interior surfaces, the chemical residues,
were removed from the interior surfaces so that we
could continue to use that building, which we did
for some time.
And then a groundwater collection trench
was installed, and that's the picture of what you
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see here. This is part of the trench being
installed. You can see the railroad tracks running.
So this is basically between the CCI fence
line on the east side of the property and the
railroad tracks. And if any of you have been over
there, there is not a whole lot of room in between
there, so it was kind of a tight squeeze. But that
groundwater collection trench was installed for the
purpose of collecting the most highly contaminated
portions of the groundwater, and a treatment system
was actually installed and set up inside the
warehouse building.
Some other response actions that have
occurred over the years, in 1998, a group of
potentially responsible parties took over the
operation at the groundwater collection trench, the
treatment system was dismantled, because at that
time the groundwater collection trench was not
collecting enough volume of water to justify having
a 24-hour treatment system. So we went to a type of
drainage operation where currently the trench is
drained every six months.
And between 2003 and 2005, the potential
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responsible parties agreed to install ventilation
systems in 34 homes. Here is the CCI site to orient
you a little bit. And the shaded area is the area
where ventilation systems have been installed, and a
few more of them installed up here along Cedar
Street and here as well along Glendale. And those
ventilation systems were installed in response to
EPA's concern about vapor intrusion.
And what vapor intrusion means is that the
volatile organic compounds in the groundwater can
actually evaporate from the groundwater and travel;
up through the soil column and have an adverse
impact on the air quality in the homes that are
above the area of groundwater contamination. So EPA
had some concerns about that, and the PRPs responded
by installing these ventilation systems.
And then in 2003, EPA removed a stockpiled
soil pile, some of that soil that had been excavated
and capped on site in the earlier response action,
EPA removed that, and at the same time demolished
the old warehouse building which had become quite
dilapidated over time and was really presenting a
threat to on-site workers and any visitors that
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might get on the property.
So here we have where we are today, and
this is basically what CCI looks like today. We
have a grassy field with a fence around it. And we
have come a long way from the photograph you saw
earlier, but we still have work to do here.
And, honestly, if you were to walk past
the CCI site and you saw this grassy field with the
fence around it, you really would not be aware that
there are some environmental problems associated
with it, but there are, and those problems consist;
of soil contamination within the fence line and
groundwater contamination that has now traveled
westward underneath the neighborhood.
And while I'm on this slide, I also want
to mention the fence. While there yet remains a
fence around the property, it's EPA's goal to some
day have that fence be gone. Our hope is that,
following the final cleanup actions, that this site
can be restored to some beneficial use for the
community.
A remedial investigation was completed
starting in about the year 2000. And a remedial
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investigation is basically a comprehensive look at
the nature and extent of contamination at a site,
and there were a lot of waste characterization
activities that took place. Hundreds of soil and
groundwater samples were collected from both on-site
and off-site areas. I think more than 50
groundwater monitoring wells were installed, and
several bedrock groundwater studies were performed.
And the purpose of the bedrock groundwater
studies was to evaluate how does groundwater move
through the subsurface. Is it moving through the;
soil column or is it moving through the bedrock and
how is it moving, where is it moving, where is it
likely to be taking this contamination to.
And then the pilot studies were performed
to evaluate the effectiveness of various cleanup
technologies. A risk assessment was also performed
in order to evaluate the potential human health and
ecological risks that might be posed by the site.
This is called a conceptual site model,
and basically what it shows you is a cross-section
of what's going on underneath the ground. It's, I
think, a very handy tool. What we have over here on
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the right side of your screen is east and then going
over to the west on the left.
But here on the east we have the
Burlington Northern railroad tracks are here, the
interceptor trench or the collection trench is here,
and then the CCI site is basically right in this
area. And what you see happening here with the
reddish-orangeish discoloration through the soils is
the contents from the drums, from the soil pile,
from tanks, from all those containers you saw in the
earlier photograph. As they leaked, they leaked;
down all the way through the soil column. Then as
groundwater flows through, some of those
contaminants get dissolved in the groundwater and
they are just sort of carried off site. Wherever
the groundwater goes, it carries those dissolved
contaminants with it.
At a certain point, these contaminants, as
they migrated down, they hit the surface of bedrock,
which is this blue layer you see here, the
southbound limestone. And what we have discovered
through our groundwater bedrock investigations is
that the majority of groundwater flow actually
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occurs in the top 10 feet of bedrock.
In some sites that we deal with, we have
more of a sandy soil strata, and we actually have a
lot of groundwater flow occur there, because
groundwater will essentially go -- it will take the
path of least resistance. And at this site -- if
any of you have ever dug out in your yards, I'm sure
you're aware that you have very tightly compacted
clays, and the water can't flow very well through
those. So it actually preferentially will flow
through the bedrock instead of the soil.)
Here we have more of a top view of what's
going on at the site of the groundwater
concentrations. Here is the CCI site here to orient
you, the railroad tracks running east. The blue
lines represent the concentration of TCE in the
groundwater, and the inner lines being the more
highly concentrated.
So certainly the on-site areas, we have
very high concentrations. We have a very narrow
little finger of contamination that comes out to
about Ocheltree Street. And then we have a broader
area of lesser concentrations covering out into the
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west of the neighborhood. And then really the outer
line that you see is essentially the extent of
contamination.
And so what we have is basically at the
north Cedar Street and then on the west, roughly
Lane Street, and south roughly Lane Street, too,
between Lane and Wabash. So that kind of gives you
a feel for the extent of groundwater impact.
In 2004, following the remedial
investigation, a feasibility study was completed.
And in the feasibility study, what we do is we/
evaluate potential cleanup alternatives. And so for
this site, we needed to look at alternatives that
would address soil and alternatives that would
address groundwater. So the ones we had looked at
that addressed soil -- and this is a repeat from
last year. These haven't changed at all. I'll
bring you up to date here in a minute, but I wanted
to review for you.
We evaluated four main alternatives for
soil. First is a no action alternative, which is
required by the NCP, the National Contingency Plan.
We also evaluated an option for off-site disposal
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and low temperature thermal desorption. And
essentially what that means is we would be
excavating certain areas of the site and bringing a
mobile treatment center on site. So we would be
treating the soils on site, and we would be putting
them back in the ground where they had come out of.
Three different excavation options had
been evaluated there. And basically Option A was a
smaller volume of soil, Option B was a more mediocre
size volume, and Option C was essentially excavating
the entire site to bedrock. So a very large volume;
of soil; consequently, the very large costs you see
here .
The third alternative was off-site
disposal, which is another excavation alternative
where we would be excavating soils and transporting
them off site for disposal.
And Option A, B, and C were exactly the
same as evaluated here, so just different excavation
scenarios. And if you compare the costs, you can
see they are roughly in the same range with Option
C, the big large volume excavation, being
substantially less costly.
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But for this alternative, EPA actually
requested that an Option D be evaluated. And what
Option D involved was excavation of hot spot areas,
and those hot spot areas have been defined as
shallow soils in the zero to six foot range having a
concentration of 1,000 parts per million TCE.
And then the fourth alternative was
capping, which is essentially putting a protective
barrier cover on top, not removing anything, but
just covering what's there to prevent exposures.
And the cost associated with that you can see.
The 2004 feasibility study alternatives
for groundwater included, of course, the no action
as required. Also, in situ chemical oxidation. In
situ basically means in place. So instead of
removing the groundwater, we're going to try to
treat it in place using a technology called chemical
oxidation where essentially we inject an oxidizing
chemical into the groundwater, it reacts with the
contaminants in the ground and destroys them. And
the cost associated with that was 4.6 million.
We evaluated a pump and treat option,
which is basically removing the groundwater from the
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ground, you put in wells and pumps, and you extract
the groundwater and you run it through a treatment
system, and then you can either reinject the
groundwater or you can discharge it to a sewer or to
a body of water or something like that.
And then the fourth one we evaluated was
called monitored natural attenuation which is
essentially allowing the natural degradation
processes that mother nature provides us to break
down the chemicals over time, and we would monitor
that over time. And some people, when you sayI
monitored natural attenuation, think that that means
you are not doing anything, and that's really not
true, as you can see, because even that would cost
2.8 million dollars. So still a quite costly thing
to do .
The NCP, now that you all know what the
NCP is, has a set of criteria that we are required
to use in evaluating alternatives in a feasibility
study, and they kind of fall into three main
categories. The first one is the threshold
criteria, and that means that these criteria must be
met. You cannot consider an alternative that does
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not meet one of these criteria. And those criteria
include protection of human health and the
environment and that it meets regulatory
requirements. And what that essentially means is
that the alternative you choose needs to meet other
environmental laws. For example, if there is an air
permit -- not necessarily a permit, but if there is
discharge or emission levels that need to be met,
that you must meet those levels.
And then we have a set of balancing
criteria, and those are really helpful -- for all}
the alternatives that meet the threshold criteria,
it's really helpful to use these balancing criteria
to really take a hard look at, okay, which one
really performs the best. And those criteria
include long-term effectiveness and permanence, you
know, how effective is that alternative going to be
in meeting the cleanup goals in the long term and
does it provide a permanent solution, how effective
is that alternative in reducing the toxicity,
mobility, and volume of the compounds that are
present, does it chemically alter them and reduce
their toxicity, does it hinder their ability to move
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around in the environment, or does it just basically
remove their volume or their mass that's present.
Short-term effectiveness refers to things
like site workers' safety, the safety of residents
during implementation of a remedy, noise, traffic,
those kinds of things. Also, implementability is
essentially how easy is it to physically implement
this remedy, that is, are the services and materials
readily available to do this kind of work, are there
power lines that are in the way that we need to move
or are there roads that we need to close. Those are;
implementability issues that we need to look at.
And then the last one there is cost.
We also have two modifying criteria, and
those include state acceptance and community
acceptance. It is very important to EPA that we
have both the state and the community in favor of
what EPA is proposing to do, because, after all,
this is being done in your community. And the way
we really evaluate the modifying criteria is through
the public comment process, so that's what the
public comment period is for.
A year ago we presented to you a proposed
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plan that included these alternatives. The soil
alternative was alternative S3D. It was the
off-site disposal. It included excavation and
disposal of hot spot areas to a cleanup level of
1,000 parts per million TCE, construction of a soil
cap, and land use controls to prevent residential or
industrial development of the property.
And then the groundwater alternative was
G2 in situ chemical oxidation, including on-site and
off-site treatment. It also included a monitored
natural attenuation component. So it was really
kind of a combination of two alternatives. It
included groundwater use controls to prevent people
from installing drinking water wells or things like
that.
It's also important for you all to know
that you are not drinking this water. I should have
probably stated that up front. I think most of you
are aware that you are connected to a city water
supply, and Olathe gets its water from Lake Olathe,
which is about 12 miles west of the site. So your
water supply is safe. You are not drinking this
contaminated water.
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This alternative would also include
maintenance of the ventilation systems that we
previously installed.
So that's what we brought to you last
year. And the feedback we received from the state
and the community is that essentially we need more
on-site soil removal or treatment, we needed to do a
more aggressive cleanup action for the on-site area,
and we needed to better define DNAPL source zones.
And you-all are thinking what in the world
is a DNAPL. It's one of those acronyms that we use,
and it stands for dense nonaqueous phase liquid.
And what that essentially means is that some
contaminants will separate out when combined with
water, much like oil and water do. But in this
case, the dense means that this liquid will actually
separate out and go to the bottom. So instead of
floating on the water table, it will actually sink
down to the bottom. And in high enough
concentrations, TCE will actually separate out as a
separate phase and it will be found at the bottom of
the groundwater layer.
And this was the concern, was that if TCE
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has a tendency to do this, to become a DNAPL, and
there were very high concentrations on site, there
was some concern that there were actually pools of
DNAPL that might be found lying on top of the
bedrock on site. And perhaps if they were there, it
would be good that we if we could remove that and
that should be part of our remedy. So what we
needed to do was find out whether or not they were
there .
And in 2005, then, EPA requested the
potentially responsible parties to perform a
supplemental investigation, and that was done, and
we were able to better define the on-site soil
contamination by putting in 41 soil borings and
collecting 142 soil samples. And considering that
this property is only about an acre and a half
within the fence line, 41 soil borings is actually
quite a lot. The area was basically polka-dotted
with soil borings. So we were able to collect a lot
of really good information. And the good news that
we found was that we could not detect any sort of
recoverable DNAPL. So these pools of DNAPL that
people had envisioned might exist on the site were
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proven not to exist, so that was good to know.
Following the completion of the
supplemental investigation, a second feasibility
study addendum was prepared based on that new
information, and so we came up with a new
alternative, and we called it S3D-Plus, because it
essentially has some components that are similar to
S3D, which is what we proposed last year, but it
adds a few new things. And those things that have
been added are highlighted in orange here on your
screen, but we'll run through all of it.;
It includes the excavation of metals and
high volatile organic compounds in the shallow soil
zone. There were two options that were evaluated in
this new feasibility study addendum. Option A
evaluated an excavation scenario to 1,000 parts per
million, which is the same as what we previously
evaluated. And then Option B evaluated a cleanup
level of 110 parts per million TCE.
We also included excavation to bedrock, so
deeper excavations of highly contaminated areas.
And in those areas we would be adding chemical
oxidation treatment to deal with the entire soil
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column as well as some groundwater, too, at the
bedrock surface. And then it would include the soil
cover and the land use controls as were previously
included in the original S3D option.
As a result of the supplemental
investigation, what we basically have in the shallow
soil, zero to five foot depth, we basically have two
areas that contain high levels of VOCs. This other
area here is basically the metals area, and that
really hasn't changed from last year.
More the midrange soils, five to 15 foot
depth, we basically have two zones on site that
contain high levels of VOCs. And then in the deeper
soil zones, greater than 15 feet, are essentially on
the bedrock surface or near it, we have two zones,
two areas that have high VOC concentrations. So
these are the areas that we want to focus on in our
proposed remedy.
This table shows you a comparison of the
old alternative, S3D, and the new alternative being
considered, S3D-Plus, both Option A and Option B.
As I mentioned, Option A is the 1,000 part per
million cleanup level, and Option B is 110, so quite
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a difference there.
What we see when we look at the soil
volumes is that previously under S3D we were
removing about 500 cubic yards of VOC contaminated
material. Under S3D-Plus, Option A, it actually
goes down a little bit because we are going down to
five-foot depth, where here we were going to
six-foot depth, but the cleanup level remaining the
same .
S3D-Plus, Option B, if we broaden out to
110 parts per million, then we're removing quite a
bit more soil than S3D offered. And then where you
really see the benefit is down here in the VOC mass
or pounds of VOC being removed or treated. S3D was
about 2,300 pounds of VOCs being removed. With
S3D-Plus, Option A, a little over 8,000, and about
8,300 for Option B.
What's really interesting to me is here we
are getting nearly four times the VOC mass removed
or treated, and when you look at the cost, the costs
are marginally higher, but not substantially higher.
So we're getting a lot more accomplished for a
little more money, and I think that's a good thing.
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So you probably know where I was heading
with all that. Our preferred alternative is
S3D-Plus, Option B, excavation and off-site
disposal, including excavation of the top five feet
of soil in these areas where we found -- in the
supplemental investigation where we found the high
VOC areas in the shallow zone, those would be
excavated to the 110 part per million level as
defined by the supplemental investigation. The
metals contaminated area would be removed as well.
These little purple circular areas you see;
are representing the areas of deeper excavation, and
those would be done using a five-foot diameter drill
rig. And the reason this is pretty exciting to us
is one of our main concerns in evaluating highly
concentrated soil is safety of the residents. There
are emissions that occur during excavations. And if
we can use this five-foot diameter drilling rig,
there is actually a shroud around the rig that will
greatly, greatly reduce the emissions that are
produced during excavation. So we thought this was
a pretty exciting alternative for us to be able to
really dig down and get some of those deeper, highly
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concentrated soils. And so that technology would be
applied in the two areas where we had high
concentrations in the midrange depths.
And then we're also going to do
permanganate injection in those holes. After the
soil is removed, a permanganate slurry will
essentially go back in the hole, and so there will
be treatment all the way along the soil column as
well as down in the bedrock surface.
And then the other component here is that,
using the existing interceptor trench or collection
trench, we can actually do some permanganate
injection to deal with -- there was one area, if
you'll recall, in a previous slide that had some
high VOCs right at the bedrock surface, and we think
that we can address that contamination using
permanganate injection through the existing trench.
This alternative also includes the soil
cover. And after all these activities, it still
includes the soil coverage to provide that
protective barrier and land use controls.
The groundwater preferred alternative has
not changed since last year. We're still
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recommending the chemical oxidation in situ
treatment.
The public comment period opened on July
19th and runs through August 19th. Based on the
comments received, EPA will make a final decision
and will document that decision in a record of
decision, and the record of decision will include
what we call a responsiveness summary, which is
basically a written response to all comments
received during the comment period.
And the administrative record file, like
Mary Carter told you earlier, is located at the
Olathe Public Library. It contains all the
documents that EPA used to base its preferred
alternative on. That is there for your review. We
also have a copy of that at the EPA Region 7 offices
in Kansas City, Kansas.
And if you would like to submit written
comments, you may do so to Mr. Fritz Hirter at the
address shown here. You can also submit those via
email. Fritz's email address is here. All of this
information is provided to you on the fact sheet as
well, so you don't need to necessarily write it
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down. Just grab a copy of the fact sheet and you'll
know where to send your comments. That concludes my
part of the presentation.
MS. MARY CARTER: Thank you, Mary. Now I
would like to ask the state, Rob Weber from the
Kansas Department of Health and Environment, to make
a statement.
MR. WEBER: Good evening. And thank you,
Mary and Mary, for inviting me to make a brief
statement. I won't take up much of your time.
My name is Rob Weber, and many of you;
recognize me from my involvement at the CCI site.
I'm the unit manager with the Superfund unit, and
I'm responsible for the review of Superfund sites
throughout the state of Kansas.
As Mary had communicated, KDHE has
concurred with the EPA proposed plan for the site.
The revised proposed remedy for the site addresses
our concerns for contaminant mass removal in both
the source area and in the off-site groundwater and
on-site groundwater through active means.
Based on our review, the revised proposed
plan has significantly improved on the initial
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proposed plan in its scope of activities. We look
forward to a record of decision and remedial design,
remedial action at the site, and we also look
forward to our continued work with the community,
the city, the responsible parties, and EPA to reach
an end point at the site. Thank you very much.
MS. MARY CARTER: Thank you, Rob. We
appreciate your comments, assistance, and support at
this site and other sites in the state.
At this time I would like to ask if anyone
has a comment or would like to ask a question,
please stand and speak loudly and clearly so that we
can enter it in the record.
MS. HUGHES: I'm Sherry Hughes. I'm
actually here for someone else to ask some questions
for them and some for myself.
When I look at that map, I see like
sometimes it does go across the railroad tracks and
sometimes it doesn't. I mean, how do you know --
can you be absolutely sure there is no contaminants
further outside that area? It was near the end that
I saw it, though. I mean, did you test there?
MS. MARY PETERSON: I would have to look
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and see if we had any wells. The question she is
referring to -- or the street she is referring to is
over to Church Street.
Do you remember, Mike or Brian, if we have
wells over that far? It's east of the railroad
tracks.
MR. PEDICINO: There is two wells over
there, Mary, two wells on that street and both down
to top of rock.
MS. MARY PETERSON: Isn't that Mahaffie
Street? I don't think we went as far over as
Church. We have two wells that are on Mahaffie, and
I don't think we have ever really found anything
there. So those -- what you are seeing on the map
is just these contour lines, and they are computer
generated, so it sort of swings it out around where
our wells are. We don't have wells on Church
Street. We have them on Mahaffie, and we have not
found contamination there.
MS. HUGHES: So then the railroad tracks,
they are wondering whether or not, if they messed
with any of that area, it doesn't affect air quality
if they come in and elevate the railroad tracks
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there?
MS. MARY PETERSON: That's kind of a
different issue. I mean, that really shouldn't have
anything to do with the site really. They are not
really coming onto the CCI property to do the
railroad elevation. I mean, it might generate a
whole bunch of dust, a lot of dirt in the air,
but --
MS. HUGHES: Really it's kind of hard to
navigate the site for people like us that don't
really -- I mean, I had a difficult time myself when;
they were asking me questions trying to figure out
what I was reading.
They also said that there is a one-mile
buffer zone. I mean, is that something -- they said
they read that there was -- inside some of the
documents they read, there was a one-mile buffer
zone around that area.
MS. MARY PETERSON: Is that in relation to
the railroad track project?
MS. HUGHES: No. Around the CCI site.
MS. MARY PETERSON: I have not heard of
that before, so I'm not sure where that's coming
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from.
MS. HUGHES: It was in something she read
at the library.
Now, my question is on those houses that
you have treated that they have some kind of
ventilation system in, is that going to be
continually monitored, those --
MS. MARY PETERSON: Yes, that will
continue to be monitored.
MS. HUGHES: Now, this is a question from
my standpoint. Is that something where that's on
record somewhere which homes are being done?
MS. MARY PETERSON: Oh, yes. We've got --
MS. HUGHES: I mean, not just with you
or --
MS. MARY PETERSON: Right. Actually one
of the potentially responsible parties has been
putting in the ventilation systems. And every time
they do it -- they kind of have been doing it in
phases. And every time there is a new phase, there
is a report that comes out that documents the houses
that have been addressed. So those reports are
readily available.
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MS. HUGHES: Where do those go?
MS. MARY PETERSON: I have those, and they
will ultimately end up in the administrative record
file. I am not sure they are all in there yet.
They probably are. All the ones that exist so far
should be in the administrative record file.
MS. HUGHES: At the EPA?
• MS. MARY PETERSON: No. There is one at
the Olathe Public Library, and that's available for
your review. Or at the EPA, we've got them, too.
MS. HUGHES: When I listed this house, I
had never even heard about this Superfund. I know
that sounds stupid, but I'm not really from this
area, so it came as quite a shock. And, of course,
it -- you know, kind of at first it's like, oh, you
know, but if -- let's say you had a homeowner in one
of those spots. Disclosure is necessary. And if
you don't really have one that — my seller had no
clue that -- he hadn't heard of it, either. So how
would there be a way of notifying if, say, someone
purchased one of those homes?
MS. MARY PETERSON: Well, this has been an
issue that's been a topic of discussion since we
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started working out here, because actually some of
the homes that are impacted have been in that
situation. They have been bought and sold and new
purchasers didn't know anything about it and the
realtor didn't know anything about it.
You know, we have been in the news. There
has been lots of news articles.
MS. HUGHES: I notice they didn't have the
address in the paper of the CCI place. It just said
CCI .
MS. MARY PETERSON: Well, the address is
readily available. I mean, it's 320 South Blake
Street. That's always been the address, and it's
been published many times. But I think the problem
is there is just not a high degree of communication
between the real estate community and the EPA.
MS. HUGHES: Wouldn't there be a way of --
isn't there a way they could record it at the
courthouse in any manner?
MS. MARY PETERSON: Yes. Actually that's
one of the components that's being -- that will
probably be part of the record of decision. It's
called an institutional control.
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And, Barbara, I don't know if you want to
tell her what we're planning to do.
MS. BARBARA PETERSON: What we're planning
to propose will relate to the CCI site itself. But
as far as individual homes, we won't be recording
anything with respect to the individual homes.
I think that -- and I'm not a real estate
expert, but I think that the burden is going to be
on the seller to make that disclosure. I don't know
that -- I'm not aware of any process available to
EPA whereby we can file any kind of notices with
respect to private residences as to what's going on
in those residences. I don't know that we have the
authority to do that.
MS. HUGHES: So if it's ongoing
monitoring, is this something that they notify the
resident each time they have checked it?
MS. BARBARA PETERSON: The residents that
are there now, we have to get their permission,
number one, to install them. And we also let them
know when we put them in and we get their permission
to do the ongoing monitoring, and so the current
owners are well aware of this and have, in fact,
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given us permission to do that.
Again, like I said, it's really their
responsibility. Like I say, I don't know real
estate, but I think the property owners have a
responsibility to disclose certain defects or
whatever.
MS. HUGHES: It's sometimes like in the
event of a death, an outside family member comes in
to dispose of the property with no knowledge. I
mean, there would be no knowledge.
MR. PEDICINO: One of the things, ma'am,
most of these are visible on the outside. If it's a
crawl space, you'll be able to see a rather large
four-inch diameter white pipe that's either going
alongside the house or going up to the roof. There
is a motor attached to it. You'll hear a slight
hum.
MS. HUGHES: Kind of like radon?
MR. PEDICINO: That's exactly what it is.
So if somebody is going down to inspect the house,
you can't miss it. And the other thing, ma'am, is
this also doubles as a radon system. And a lot of
the houses around here do have radon. So, in
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effect, they are also solving the radon problem.
MS. HUGHES: Well, that pretty much
answers -- and all those things are in here?
MS. MARY PETERSON: Yes, ma'am.
MS. MARY CARTER: Are there any other
questions or anyone would like to make a comment or
statement ?
I'll just remind you again that the
comment period goes through August 19th. And you
can make your comments to Fritz Hirter, and his
address -- Fritz, is your address in the fact sheet?
MR. HIRTER: On the fact sheet.
MS. MARY CARTER: And we really appreciate
you participating in this meeting, we appreciate
your input and your comments, and thank you for
coming tonight.
(Meeting adjourned.)
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C E R T I F I C A T E
I, Stacy L. Decker, a Notary Public of the
State of Kansas, do hereby certify that I appeared
at the time and place first hereinbefore set forth,
that I took down in shorthand the entire proceedings
had at said time and place, and that the foregoing
constitutes a true, correct, and complete transcript
of my said shorthand notes.
Witness my hand and seal this 27th day of
July, 2005.
Stacy L. D
N o t a r y Publ ic , State of Kansas
My commiss ion expires 7 / 2 1 / 0 8
STACY L. DECKER
My Appl. Exp.
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