Freedom Industries Hard At Work - No Idea On Extent Of Soil, Water Pollution
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Cleanup crews at Freedom Industries are still several weeks away from emptying all of the site's chemical storage tanks, and still don't have a clear idea of how much of which materials could have contaminated soil at the site.
The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection is overseeing the cleanup, which is being carried out by Freedom Industries and contractors for the chemical company. Mike Dorsey, director of emergency response and homeland security for the DEP, said he hopes remediation of the facility might be completed by late spring. However, state and federal government officials remain unsure of the extent of contamination in a key part of the site.
The area around the chemical tanks in the northern end of the site -- including Tank 396, which leaked Crude MCHM into the Elk River on Jan. 9 -- has yet to be fully investigated, largely because the eight chemical tanks there haven't been removed.
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Dorsey said another problem cleanup crews have had is the large amount of stormwater runoff coming from off the site onto Freedom's property. Officials have looked into whether any of that runoff was made worse by construction projects several years ago at Yeager Airport, atop the hill above the Freedom site. They concluded that there was "no obvious stream of water coming off the hillside," Dorsey said. "We're not seeing that." A stormwater pipe that was intended to carry runoff from the tank-farm site across the property and into the river, though, was a major conduit for the MCHM that got into the Elk, Dorsey said. He said that when he arrived at the site the day of the leak, MCHM from the leaking tank was entering that runoff pipe, which was rusted through on the bottom, and being carried into the Elk.
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