MEWS FOCUS
Stringfellow Cleanup Mishaps Show Need To Alter Superfund Law Thirteen years after the site stopped receiving liquid toxic wastes, and five years after the acid pits were capped, groundwater is being fouled; solutions are still being sought Lois R. Ember, C&EN Washington
On an early spring day the sun warms the cool morning air, and billowy waves of clouds cast shadows on the canyon walls. Grass, weeds, and small, bright sunflowers dot the rolling contours of the canyon floor. Birds chirp and, somewhere off in the distance, sheep bleat. The scene is bucolic. And deceptive. The grass, weeds, and sunflowers grow on soil and clay that cover "one of the nation's most complicated, uncontrolled hazardous waste sites." These are the words Environmental Protection Agency Superfund chief William N. Hedeman Jr. uses to describe the Stringfellow acid pits near Riverside, Calif. Stringfellow is distinctive—every site is unique technically, financially, and legally. Still, some issues are generic to all sites. So a spotlight on Stringfellow illuminates the issues and problems of cleanup of abandoned hazardous wastes under the Superfund program. Such scrutiny places in doubt reauthorization of the Superfund law in its current form, although every bill introduced to date offers only evolutionary change in the law. Superfund's taxing authorities expire Sept. 30. Most major leaking hazardous waste dumps have been engulfed in controversy. But over the decades Stringfellow has garnered more than its fair share of unseemly notoriety. Most recently, Reagan-appointed EPA officials played politics with the site and were banished from office. More typical, though, is the poor judgment, downright ineptitude, and conflicting agendas at local, state, and federal levels that have
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compounded Stringfellow's challenges and have increased the risks to the public and the environment. For nearly 17 years until voluntary closure in 1972, Stringfellow acid pits, under a county planning agency permit, accepted about 34 million gal of industrial, agricultural, and Defense Department wastes. The operation was shut down two years after rains flooded the site and sent contaminated water through Glen Avon, a small community 5 miles from Riverside. But before it was closed, 20 ponds had been carved out of bedrock that was then thought to be impermeable. Tailings from James B. Stringfellow's nearby quarry operation and sludges dredged from previously excavated pits were used to construct the ponds. Into these unengineered ponds went strong inorganic acids, heavy metals—some suspected cancercausing agents—and chlorinated hydrocarbons, principally industrial solvents and pesticides. Spray evaporation of the deposited wastes contaminated the canyon walls. But some unknown portion of the concoction of toxic compounds also seeped slowly downward through the bedrock, contaminating groundwater. The complex hydrogeology of the site still confounds scientists, engineers, and public officials. Despite costly steps to contain the toxic wastes seeping from the site, the plume of contamination continues moving off site. Unchecked, the plume will continue to foul a major groundwater basin, the source of drinking water for the nearby community of Glen Avon. If more than one highly polluted plume enters the basin, or if the single plume is large, contains high May 27, 1985 C&EN
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News Focus concentrations of chemicals, and enters a fast-moving flow of water in the basin, the drinking water supplies of many more communities than Glen Avon will be spoiled. Back in the 1950s, the floor of Pyrite Canyon, the location of the Stringfellow site, was thought to be impermeable, an ideal spot for disposing of hazardous liquid wastes. Though monitoring-well data were misread, it soon became evident that the bedrock was fractured. And over the years, little attention was paid to the site's location over a major aquifer, or to underground springs that perfused the highly fractured bedrock and the deposited wastes. Stringfellow's hydrogeology may be exceptional— if not unique—to hazardous waste sites. But that its wastes continue to pollute groundwater is not. The acid pits have joined a list of some 812 sites that EPA deems most hazardous to human health and the environment and most in need of cleanup. By EPA's own reckoning, 75% of these sites on the so-called national priorities list (NPL) are polluting groundwater. "It is not at all clear that contaminated aquifers can be restored to drinking water quality with existing [cleanup] technology," Joel S. Hirschhorn, a senior associate in the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, recently told a House Public Works & Transportation subcommittee. Stringfellow also proves OTA's contention that hauling toxic wastes off site to other landfills and/or containing but not treating the wastes on site—the two main courses of action taken to date to clean up abandoned hazardous waste sites—are misguided and problematic. Millions of gallons of Stringfellow wastes have been trucked to another landfill. That landfill is now leaking and may become a Superfund, or NPL, site. Unknown quantities of very toxic wastes still remain at Stringfellow, buried under a clay cap or trapped in bedrock. Various forms of containment technologies have been used to isolate these wastes and prevent them from migrating. These have failed at Stringfellow, as they have at other sites. Containment methods—slurry walls, grout curtains, clay caps—designed for purposes other than isolating landfilled toxic wastes are unlikely to remain effective for the length of time the hazardous wastes they are supposed to isolate remain dangerous. EPA recently has recognized that this hazardous waste merry-go-round—moving Superfund wastes to other landfills that then begin to leak—has to stop. EPA Administrator Lee M. Thomas has instituted a new policy that encourages treatment of Superfund wastes over land disposal. But because the treatment must be cost-effective (whatever that may mean when decisions are made), it is not a foregone conclusion that in the future more wastes will be treated than will be disposed of on land. Back in 1977, five years after the acid pits were closed but before measures were taken to contain the wastes, an engineering study estimated that total removal of all contaminated material from the site would cost $3.4 million. That was deemed too costly. A year later, heavy rains inundated the pits, forcing the re12
May 27, 1985 C&EN
gional water quality board to release under "controlled" conditions 800,000 gal of contaminated liquids to Pyrite Channel, which runs through Glen Avon. This controlled release flooded some streets and homes in the community. In 1979, when the water board reconsidered excavating the wastes, the price tag had leaped to about $14 million. Asked in March 1985 to hazard a guess what cleanup might cost now, Brian Ullensvang, an environmental engineer who is EPA Region IX's project officer assigned to Stringfellow, answered: "It's hard to estimate the cost of cleanup when you don't know what the technical solution will be." However, he points out that the Justice Department's 1983 civil suit filed against 30 of more than 200 owners/operators, and waste disposers and transporters sets cleanup costs at $40 million. Ullensvang's California counterpart on the Stringfellow project, Mark Galloway of the state toxic substances control division, says the cost could escalate to $65 million. Assemblyman Steve Clute, a Democrat who represents Riverside, has introduced a bill in the state assembly that would set aside $6.5 million for Stringfellow cleanup. That money would come from the $100 million bond issue for toxic waste cleanup approved by voters last November, and it would represent the state's 10% share for cleaning up the site. But even Galloway's guesstimate may be too low. Unnamed state and EPA officials are reported to have pegged the final cleanup costs as high as $100 million— for a site that probably never made more than $1.5 million in profit during its nearly 17 years of operation. And that $100 million price tag probably will not buy complete removal of contamination. "The cleanup is likely to be less than.perfect no matter how much money is spent," says University of California, Riverside, soil physicist William Jury. He also serves as an adviser on Stringfellow to State Sen. Robert Presley. Certainly if funds spent on interim containment measures and the initial phases of the ultimate cleanup solution are any guide, the $100 million figure may be the most accurate. For comparison, EPA estimates an average cost of $8.1 million for remedial cleanup of priority sites. Before EPA became involved in the acid pits in 1980, California had taken measures to contain the wastes on site. In a report on Stringfellow prepared for OTA, George J. Trezak, a mechanical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley, writes that the abatement scheme "involved removal of contaminated liquids and DDT-saturated soils, on-site neutralization [of deposited acids in the] soil with kiln dust, placement of a clay cap, and the installation of monitoring and interceptor wells." The interceptor wells extract contaminated water from the site before it can contribute to the migrating plume of contamination. "It's like bailing out a boat that still leaks," Jury explains. These containment measures, including the hauling of millions of gallons of wastewater to a certified landfill—which now is closed—cost the state about $5 million, most of which was reimbursed by EPA under
Stringfellow acid pits nestled in Pyrite Canyon near Glen Avon Wells sampled monthly" φ Existing monitoring wells • New interceptor wells A New monitoring wells φ New monitoring well clusters • Residential wells Λ Seepage zones
Drain
· · Northern pit area -To Pyrite Channel
^ s / / f ^ Ί
Seepage area
Northern pit area Southern pit area
Chemicals found in monitoring wells in concentrations above drinking water standards:
Glen Avon Elementary School
Trichloroethylene Chloroform Chlorobenzene Dichloromethane Tetrachloroethene 1,1,1-Trichloroethane 1,2-Dichlorobenzene 1,3-Dichlorobenzene 1,4-Dichlorobenzene
a Additional well clusters have yet to be located.
Superfund. If this reimbursement is included, EPA has obligated $16.4 million and spent $9.2 million at Stringfellow through March 31. Some 50,000 gal of contaminated water pumped from the interceptor wells now has to be trucked daily to yet another landfill in southern California. The cost to haul this liquid waste is considerable. To reduce these costs, the state and EPA have decid ed to construct an on-site water treatment plant, de signed to remove organic compounds (activated car bon) and heavy metals (lime precipitation). Cost of construction: $4 million. Estimated cost to operate and maintain: $1 million per month. Most recent startup date: early June. Trezak says, "The plant is designed to fail." Those firms being sued by the U.S. and California also have
concerns about its viability. These defendants have formed a technical committee to consider, among oth er things, "ways to optimize the operation of the water pretreatment plant." It is a pretreatment plant because its effluent will be delivered to an industrial brine line in Orange County, where it will be further treated and then piped to an ocean outfall. The state, with the concurrence of EPA, also has contracted with JRB Associates of La Jolla, Calif., an operating arm of Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), to perform a "remedial investigation/ feasibility study" (RI/FS). This effort calls for a char acterization of the site as to geology and disposed wastes, and recommendations for workable and costeffective cleanup technologies. The $1.6 million contract was signed in March 1984 May 27,1985 CAEN 13
News Focus !
Stringfellow id pits in 1980 (left) before clay cap was placed over waste pi us and site contoured (above) to channel water to drains for an 18-month period. In March 1985, Galloway told C&EN that the contract was then at $3.4 million. This month, Russel H. Wyer, director of EPA's hazardous site control division, said, "The current estimated cost is $5.3 million." This is more than triple the original contract, and "one of the highest contracts for an RI/FS," he says. Rep. George E. Brown Jr. (D.-Calif.), who represents the citizens of Glen Avon, is "extremely unhappy" about the cost overrun. "If all contractors had equal opportunity to bid based on the knowledge that the cost was going to run that high, you would have gotten a different set of bidders, and probably better ones," he contends. A portion of the cost escalation and project slippage can be laid to inexperienced EPA and state personnel managing the contract. Hedeman ideally would like "to have staff monitoring these projects who have the experience to manage and track them to ensure that they stay on schedule." This is not the case at Stringfellow, he notes. But he adds that the remedy is not "to accelerate the [Superfund] program two- or threefold," as Congress seems about to do in reauthorizing the law. "All you'll be doing," he says, "is introducing even more people with even less experience." Part of the contract cost increase can be legitimately explained by the additional work JRB had to perform to determine whether the unanticipated finding of low levels of radiation in community wells was related to wastes disposed of at the site. According to state government representatives who studied JRB's findings, the source of radiation is natural, a leaching of uranium from the canyon's granite rock. Beth Jines, a state waste management specialist, explains: "We think the acids deposited at the site are leaching naturally occurring radionuclides from the 14
May 27, 1985 CAEN
granitic materials at the site, and this is contributing to a higher level of radiation." The citizens have not received the official results of the radiation report. Aside from the radiation work, most of the other reasons given by EPA's Wyer to explain the additional time and money seem less than convincing. For instance, he says that downgradient surveys had to be increased because the plume had migrated further south from the site than had originally been known. Rep. Brown says this "comes from a failure to anticipate the spreading of the toxic plume which, of course, was predicted by Trezak's OTA study." Wyer also cites additional on-site/upgradient hydrogeologic studies to evaluate alternate cleanup technologies, and enhanced community relations efforts. Again, these were part of the original proposal and their level of effort should have been better defined at the start. The estimated completion date for the RI/FS is now the end of December, three months after the contractual date. (Because of delays at the state level, signing of the contract occurred about four months after JRB had actually been awarded the contract, so in essence the completion date is now seven months behind schedule.) Several state officials say that a major "preliminary work product" will be made public in July. Still, there is widespread concern—expressed most strongly by Brown—that there will be further delays with escalating costs, and that the final product will not be very useful. That concern is being expressed publicly now primarily because of the quality of reports JRB is producing. Yet it really began to congeal at the time of the contract selection procedure. Then, a panel of University of California engineers and scientists advised Democratic State Sen. Robert Presley that, after reviewing the various proposals, they had concluded
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News Focus A Stringfellow chronology 1955: Riverside County Planning Commission grants Stringfellow Quarry Co. a permit to operate site as landfill. 1956: U.S. Air Force becomes the first major dumper. 1969: Heavy rains flood the site; contaminated water overflows barrier and dam into Pyrite Channel and floods parts of Glen Avon; contaminated water has pH of 3.4, and chromium (suspected carcinogen) content of 0.01 to 0.04 mg per L; Stringfellow stops accepting wastes to repair site. 1972: Monitoring well on site shows significant increases in sulfate, chloride, nitrate, and hexavalent chromium; Stringfellow Quarry Co. voluntarily closes site. 1974: Stringfellow Quarry ceases to maintain the site, which becomes Riverside County's responsibility.
1978: Rains again fill the ponds; water board performs "controlled" release of 800,000 gal of wastewater through Glen Avon; toxic substances in excess of drinking water standards found in runoff 4 miles from site. 1979: Heavy rains force the removal of 2 million gal of wastewater, which is hauled to certified landfill. 1980: Heavy rains inundate the site; EPA becomes involved for first time in an emergency removal of 3.6 million gal of liquids to another landfill; Riverside County buys site, which is later purchased by state. 1981: Interim abatement program begins; site is capped with kiln dust, clay, native soil, but is not seeded; monitoring and interceptor wells installed; state assumes lead for longterm cleanup under Superfund.
that JRB was not the most technically qualified to solve the thorny problems Stringfellow presents. Says panel member Jerome F. Thomas, a University of California professor of civil engineering on the Berkeley faculty, "There's no question that Woodward-Clyde Consultants [another firm that bid on the RI/FS contract and was ranked the highest technically by a state-EPA evaluation panel] was the superior group, with the greatest potential for doing the job correctly/' Thomas characterizes WoodwardClyde's proposal as "very complete," and JRB's as "superficial." Another panel member, Paul A. Witherspoon, a professor of geological engineering at Berkeley and a recognized expert on fractured rock, says he is "not sure that JRB can do an adequate job based on its proposal." Robert F. Shokes, a JRB/SAIC vice president and manager of the Stringfellow project, says, "The only way we can respond [to these charges] is by doing the best job that we can. We have a serious commitment to completing this project... to finding and developing the information and providing the evaluation that will lead to a selection of remedial technologies to close that site." SAIC is a privately held firm with projected revenues of more than $420 million this year, most (66%) from defense and national security contracts. About $40 million of these revenues will come from environmental projects. SAIC has 97 people with "direct waste management experience," senior vice president Michael J. Higgins says. Another 200 or so professionals—chemists, toxicologists, and the like—could be used to perform work similar to that involved in the Stringfellow project, he adds. 16
May 27, 1985 CAEN
1983: Rita M. Lavelle, assistant EPA administrator in charge of Superfund, fired from EPA, and jailed in 1985 for lying about Stringfellow (Aerojet General) involvement; EPA Administrator Anne M. Burford resigns under fire; Congressmen charge her with politically manipulating Superfund program; U.S. and California file civil suit against 30 generators, transporters, owners of the site; Aerojet General, Lavelle's former company, is not sued; choice of potential defendants is based on amount of waste deposited and financial solvency. 1984: JRB Associates, La Jolla, Calif., selected to perform remedial investigation/feasibility study; site is finally fenced. 1985: On-site water treatment plant to begin operating; RI/FS to be completed by end of year.
In the past two or three years, SAIC has performed a majority of its hazardous waste site work at military bases. But according to company documents, it has "conducted a geotechnical investigation of the Love Canal hazardous waste disposal site" for an EPA contractor, GCA Corp. And for the past couple of years, it has been part of EPA's contract laboratory program, meaning it analyzes samples from hazardous waste sites for the agency. Despite the firm's experience, citizen activist Penny J. Newman, chairman of Concerned Neighbors in Action, voiced concerns about JRB during the public participation phase of the contractor selection process. These were rejected by staff members of the California toxic substances division and by the contractor selection committee composed of representatives from the state, EPA, and EPA contractors. This highly unusual practice of having EPA contractors sit in judgment of competing firms has now been prohibited by Hedeman. Newman thinks her concerns are now being corroborated. Her attorney, Joel Reynolds of the Center for Law in the Public Interest, says that "even the defendants' experts have expressed concern about the adequacy of JRB's approach at the site." The defendants have formed a technical committee comprised of scientists and engineers from the firms being sued by the U.S. and California governments. Trezak, who now serves as a nonpaid technical consultant to Concerned Neighbors, has sat in on defendant technical committee meetings. He says the defendants "are doing their own RI/FS basically because they don't have much confidence in JRB or the state to do anything reasonable."
The technical committee has hired Bechtel National "to organize data and provide assistance in interpreting and presenting data." Some remote sensing data that identify "pertinent geological features of the area," and computerized topographical data have already been shared with the state, EPA, citizen groups, and their respective contractors and consultants. Trezak calls the defendant technical committee output "very impressive." JRB's Shokes says its data to date have made only "a minor contribution." The defendant committee will contribute more. In a statement prepared by its lawyers, the committee says its intentions are "to assist in identifying the best and most cost-effective solution at Stringfellow." Stringfellow has foiled every technical solution tried to date. It's obviously important that the best exper tise be brought to bear on the final cleanup solution. In this context, the issue of JRB's competency becomes relevant. State and federal officials continue to support their choice of JRB. Joel Moskowitz, deputy director of the toxic substances control department in California's Department of Health Services, says he doesn't "think JRB is unqualified." Richard Wilcoxon, chief of toxic substances control in Moskowitz's department, who selected JRB, says he felt that "JRB would be an ade quate contractor." EPA's Hedeman says he has "a great deal of comfort with JRB as a national contractor well familiar with the problems such as the String fellow site." He says this because JRB helped develop EPA's remedial investigation and feasibility study guid ance documents. JRB is now proceeding with the RI/FS as that study has been designed by the state and approved by EPA. But by proceeding with the RI/FS as structured, the company, the state, and EPA are delaying the time when cleanup actually begins at the site. According to EPA's Ullensvang, that could mean beginning clean up at the end of 1986, with actual site closure proba bly around 1990-91. As Trezak warned in his OTA-sponsored study of Stringfellow, "There are substantial penalties for delaying effective cleanup." One of the largest is con tamination of the Chino Basin. He said in August 1984 that the plume was moving at an estimated ve locity of 3.5 feet per day, and would enter the main flow of the basin in 12 to 18 months. Trezak recommended monitoring Chino Basin to determine whether contamination from the site had spread to the main part of the basin; this is now being done in a preliminary way. And he urged a costly but, in his view, necessary step: "A commitment to exca vate toxic wastes and contaminated s o i l . . . with on-site storage followed by treatment of the materials to ren der them as harmless as possible." He also called for an assessment of physical and chemical ways to seal the bedrock "to create a barrier to groundwater." Jury agrees in principle with Trezak. He believes the correct order of events should be: first, stem the source of contamination, that is, remove the wastes buried under the cap; then conduct "the RI/FS for the residual contaminants in the soil [under the pits]."
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Hirschhorn: Stringfellow's lesson is the need to act quickly and effectively to separate toxic wastes from the ground and from groundwater Unfortunately, because of provisions in the current Superfund law and because interim containment mea sures have already been done, Jury's approach can't be taken. According to Hedeman, EPA has authority to remove such wastes only in an emergency situa tion, which Stringfellow is not at present. Before ex cavating the wastes now, he says, the site and its problems must be fully characterized "so the most cost-effective solution can be used in the remedial action." Theoretically, since the state performed the initial containment measures, the wastes could have been removed from the ponds at that point. Had EPA done the work, however, removal of the wastes probably would not have been possible because costs would have exceeded the $1 million limit set by the Superfund law for emergency actions. Given the law as written, JRB must proceed as it is now doing. So JRB is drilling new monitoring wells to chart the path(s) of a migrating plume(s), testing the integrity of the cap and a subsurface barrier wall, and characterizing the wastes and hydrology of the site to render a cost-effective solution. The last exer cise will help determine how much polluted ground water has to be pumped to the surface to retard move ment of the contaminated plume. The composition and the integrity of the clay cap, which was placed over the waste-filled ponds in 1981-82, have been questioned. Citizen activist Ruth Kirkby, secretary of Parents of Jurupa and the first to alert Glen Avon residents (in 1969) to the dangerous nature of the materials flooding their community, says she observed men "scraping the sides of the canyon, putting decomposed granite and sagebrush where they were supposed to be putting high-quality clay. And that [cap], I'm sure, must be leaking." There May 27, 1985 CAEN
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News Focus are barren areas on the site known as "seeps/' Here groundwater wells up, carrying toxic pollutants to the surface, killing off any vegetation present. This could indicate that the material used to form the cap is not so impermeable as it was supposed to be. JRB also is investigating the geology—especially fracture patterns—of Pyrite Canyon. Of particular concern is the so-called upgradient area north of the site. Here the canyon walls act as collectors of clean rainwater, and it is the intent of the contractors to propose a way to divert the clean water so that it doesn't mingle with the contaminated groundwater. And the company is monitoring residential wells on a routine basis and will be conducting treatability studies to define the remedial options available for cleanup. Initial indications of the plume's location came from the work of geophysicist Donald Stierman, formerly with the University of California, Riverside, and now at the University of Toledo and a member of the JRB team. Stierman developed easy and cheap, but not definitive, methods—electrical resistivity measurements and electromagnetic induction surveys—for locating salt-containing groundwater. Such a solution conducts electricity because of its low resistivity. Stierman's methods indicate the more fruitful places to drill expensive monitoring wells. JRB has sunk additional monitoring wells using data gleaned from Stierman's methods plus something called soil-gas measurement tests, which detect volatile organics, mainly trichloroethylene (TCE). The firm is using TCE, an industrial solvent, as the indicator pollutant for the plume because it is found in the highest concentrations (above drinking water standards) and more consistently than any other compound. From data collected from these wells, JRB appears to have confirmed Stierman's initial finding of a single, narrow plume. JRB's results are still preliminary. (The head of the plume, for example, is not defined.) Still, EPA's Wyer describes the contamination as seemingly "migrating as a narrow—like an elongated needle—plume." Thomas E. Bailey, a California official in the Health Services Department's toxic substances control division, adds, "The known plume is restricted to an old stream bed to the east side of the canyon, to the east side of Pyrite Channel." He bases the statement on information JRB has gathered mainly from soil-gas sampling, not from monitoring-well data. In contrast, Leannah Bradley, Rep. Brown's aide, who follows Stringfellow issues closely, says she understands the plume to be moving between Pyrite St. and Pyrite Channel, which would put it west of the channel. She says that "latest soil-gas sampling," which she says is a crude test, "indicates that the plume is still moving straight south, that it hasn't turned as some suggested it might." Activist Newman, who receives technical advice from many sources but principally from Trezak, says she has questions about the approach taken to define the plume. "My understanding of how you define a plume is that you begin closer to the source, actually making a band of wells to define which direction it is going in. Then you narrow it down from there. The 1·
May 27,1985 CAEN
way JRB appears to be approaching it is that it found one little finger of a plume and it looked to each side of that. They may be missing other little fingers that are going off in different directions." JRB has not set up a comprehensive groundwater monitoring program in the community—which in actuality would be monitpring the main part of Chino Basin. Such a program would describe how groundwater is moving, predict where contamination may appear in the future, and rule out the possibility of more than one plume, says Bradley. High levels of TCE have been found in groundwater sampled from a few new monitoring wells placed south of Highway 60, about a quarter of a mile south of the site. This is the farthest from the site that contamination has been found. But this is the farthest point that wells have been drilled. No monitoring wells have yet been sunk in the heart of the community of Glen Avon. Sampling of residential well water has uncovered perchloroethylene contamination at the elementary school and at nearby homes close to Mission Boulevard, near the suspected course of the single known plume. The state claims the contamination is not from Stringfellow wastes, but doesn't have conclusive data to support such contentions. Thirteen years after the acid pits were closed, and five years after Superfund was enacted, studies still haven't determined just how far contamination has moved from its source in Pyrite Canyon, or how this pollution might affect residents. Even more disturbing is that the source of contamination remains. Stringfellow illustrates all too clearly the slow pace of cleanup under Superfund. EPA's priority list of final or proposed sites for long-term cleanup now numbers 812. Six or 10 sites— depending on who's counting—have been cleaned up and taken off the list. But, an environmental coalition, the National Campaign Against Toxic Hazards, says that even some of these will present future problems. Currently, EPA and the states have started longterm cleanup at 62 sites, and private parties have made commitments to clean up another 72 sites. The pace is expected to quicken as enforcement efforts now under way bear fruit. "In the next year and a half, we will have well over 850 sites coming out of the [RI/FS] pipeline and going into design and construction [final cleanup]," Hedeman says. But given the scope of the problem, the pace is still disappointing. EPA estimates that its list of Superfund sites eventually will number about 2200, though Hedeman admits that the agency is not "aggressively looking for new sites." The General Accounting Office, using EPA statistics, places the likely number of Superfund sites at 4000. An association of solid waste officials conducted a survey for EPA, and arrived at a potential list of 7100, which EPA then ignored. OTA, including types of sites excluded by EPA—surface impoundments like Stringfellow, for example—estimates that the likely number of Superfund sites may exceed 10,000. Earlier this year, EPA Administrator Thomas said all Superfund sites would be cleaned up in eight to 10
Citizen activists Newman (top, left) and Kirkby (top, right) keep close watch over the cleanup managed by EPA's Ullensvang (left) and California's Galloway
years at a cost of $11.6 billion to $22.7 billion. He assumes that 50% of these sites will be cleaned up by responsible (private) parties, and the Chemical Manufacturers Association concurs. However, CMA points out that only 16% of responsible parties at Superfund sites, including Stringfellow, are chemical companies. GAO says cleanup costs could reach $39.1 billion. And OTA estimates costs as high as $100 billion over 50 years. The various estimates of size and cost of the problem reflect different fiscal and philosophical concerns. OTA's toxic waste expert Hirschhorn alleges "a clear, intentional, and consistent tactic by the Administration to minimize the extent of the problem/ 7 The Administration does want the program narrowly focused on 2200 hazardous waste sites. With the burgeoning deficit in mind, it wants to zero out the contribution to the fund from general revenues but, at the same time, it doesn't want to overburden industries taxed. To that end, the Administration has offered a Superfund renewal bill for $5.3 billion over a five-year period. About one third of the funding would come from a tax on crude oil and 42 feedstock chemicals, and two thirds from a waste disposal tax. No funds would come from general revenues. There are no mandatory cleanup standards or schedules.
Hedeman says EPA cannot "manage realistically or well anything beyond 2200 sites/' or $1 billion per year. He bases this partly on the lack of trained personnel. "Unless you have trained staff, major mistakes are going to be made, and major squandering of money is going to occur," he says. He could be describing the situation at Stringfellow. He was, of course, speaking to the generic problem at the federal level. Rep. John D. Dingell's (D.-Mich.) House Energy & Commerce Committee has documented the same paucity of experienced, senior personnel at the state and regional levels. In its study "Superfund Strategy," OTA recognizes the need for trained personnel and suggests that in reauthorizing Superfund, Congress consider setting aside money for training. No bill offered to date in either house contains such a provision, however. Most, in fact, retain the general outline of the current law. The Senate bill, shepherded through the Environment Committee by chairman Robert T. Stafford (R.-Vt.), narrows the scope of coverage slightly to exclude such things as naturally occurring releases, and contamination from building structures (asbestos, radon). It sets very flexible cleanup standards, and allows citizen suits to prod EPA into enforcing the law. And it sets up a mandatory cleanup schedule for federal hazardous wastes sites, which are not eligible for Superfund money. Stafford's bill authorized $7.5 billion for Superfund over the next five years and stipulated that $206 million per year come from general revenues. It was then referred to the Finance Committee, which reported out a bill May 17 that approved taxes for Stafford's bill. As crafted by Finance, most of the funds—more than $1 billion annually—would come from a new excise tax on manufacturers with annual sales over $5 million. The Administration opposes any new broadbased tax, but officials refuse to say whether the President would veto such a program. Finance retained the feedstock tax at the current level—$300 million annually. It eliminated a provision in Stafford's bill that would have created a $30 million per-year demonstration program to compensate victims exposed to hazardous waste. All money bills must originate in the House. That being the case, floor action in the Senate can't begin until the House sends over a Superfund bill with taxing authority. The markup vehicle in the House is expected to be a bill recently introduced by Rep. James Florio (D.-N.J.). This bill authorizes a $10.1 billion Superfund over the next five years, retains the same 12.5% general revenue contribution as the current law, but defers the remaining taxing structure to the House Ways & Means Committee. In addition to the current feedstock tax* Ways & Means is considering both a broad-based tax, and a levy on wastes disposed (a waste-end tax), with the latter believed to be favored. Florio's bill sets strict mandatory cleanup standards and schedules—both odious to EPA. Hedeman doesn't think strict cleanup standards "would have any legitiMay27,1985C&EN 19
News Focus
Contract selection under cloud, questions remain In November 1983, JRB Associates, a part of Science Applications International Corp., was selected from among 11 bidders to perform work at the Stringfellow acid pits that would define the most cost-effective permanent cleanup solution. Because of delays within the California government, the contract was not signed—and work could not begin—until March 1984. Several elected officials and their scientific advisers, and citizen activists have raised questions about the contract selection process. Despite responses from the California Department of Health Services (DHS)—the lead agency on the Stringfellow project—and a state auditor general's report, these questions largely remain unanswered. Of the 11 firms bidding on the remedial investigation/feasibility study (RI/FS) contract, five became finalists. These five were eventually subjected to what some of them considered a poorly explained interview process. The interview turned out to be pivotal to the ultimate selection. Before the interview phase, a selection panel of 14 members—seven from
DHS, three from the Environmental Protection Agency, which has oversight responsibility on the project, and four EPA contractors—reviewed and ranked the technical proposals submitted by the bidders. According to a state document, the greatest weight—50%—was given to the approach/methodology portions of the proposals; experience and qualifications of firms were weighted 4 0 % ; and organizational suitability was weighted 10%. Of the five finalists, a company named Woodward-Clyde Consultants received the highest technical score, JRB received the lowest. Woodward-Clyde also submitted the lowest cost bid. JRB submitted the second lowest. Eight of the 14 members of the selection panel then interviewed the five finalists. At this point, the selection panel comprised five representatives from DHS, one from EPA, and two from an EPA contractor. At the end of the interview process, JRB was ranked number one, and Woodward-Clyde had fallen to third place. In reviewing the selection process for then-director of DHS Peter Rank, an
mate meaning/' There are too many variables at sites "to give us any comfortable feeling of working on a schedule/' he adds. The OTA report states that schedules "could be counterproductive because there are no national cleanup standards and no cleanup technologies that work/' Hirschhorn paraphrases. Rep. Gerry Sikorski (D.-Minn.) has introduced an $11.7 billion, five-year program that appropriates most of its funds from a vastly increased feedstock levy, but waste-end taxes and general revenues are also included. The bill creates mandatory cleanup standards, allows citizens to sue responsible parties for compensation in federal court, and sets up a victim compensation demonstration program. His bill is favored by environmental groups. Like every bill except the Administration's, Sikorski's contains a "Bhopal clause," named for the chemical disaster in India that killed more than 2000 people. The clause varies from bill to bill. But basically it is a federal right-to-know provision that forces companies handling hazardous substances to report these emissions and disclose the health effects of chemicals they use. All the bills focus on long-term remedial cleanups. OTA says this strategy is costly both in fiscal terms and in harm done to the environment, and possibly to human health. Permanent, effective cleanup technol20
May 27,1985 CAEN
attorney in the Office of Legal Services concluded that the entire RFP [request for proposal] process was applied equally to all bidders. However, a state auditor general's report did not agree. "We found that [DHS] did not follow all the contractor selection procedures in its RFP and that the department's selection procedures did not ensure that the department treated all prospective contractors fairly. . . . The state should proceed with the contractor it selected from these five prospective contractors since repeating the [RFP] process would be costly and since the bids from the five prospective contractors were below the $1.7 million budgeted for the contract," the report stated. Thomas E. Bailey, in the toxic substances control division of DHS, says, "Woodward-Clyde's proposal lacked a significant number of technical elements and was not adequate; even JRB's proposal was not broad enough to include all the elements." Stanley R. Phillippe, who reports to Bailey, says that "it only became apparent in the interview that Woodward-Clyde's proposal did not include the full complement of priority
ogies, and trained, experienced personnel to carry them out are usually not available. This being the case, OTA suggests shifting the cleanup strategy: Spend about $1 million at every Superfund site, undertaking safe, stopgap measures to stem the spread of pollution. OTA also suggests spending money on research, development, and demonstration projects for innovative cleanup methods, and on training programs. OTA especially cites a scarcity of hydrogeologists and certified analytical laboratories. And though a Congressional Research Study recently reported that these specialists are available in sufficient numbers, Hedeman insists they are not. Further, he claims, federal hiring restrictions and more attractive offers from private industry ensure that needed personnel will not be available to the federal government. Hirschhorn reports that even private industry is having a difficult time hiring those with the required expertise. Basically, what OTA is calling for is "a rethinking of the fundamental strategy of the Superfund program," says Hirschhorn. The focus, he adds, should be on how money is spent, not on how much is spent. OTA's study was probably released too late to influence this yearns renewal of Superfund. It certainly had no effect on the Administration's bill whose costsharing provision, if enacted, could well cripple the Superfund effort.
pollulant samples," and this was re* fleeted in their low cost proposal. A University of California, Berkeley, engineering professor, Jerome F. Thomas, who, as an adviser to State Sen. Robert Presley, reviewed both firms' proposals, says, ''Woodward-Clyde, with Its technical foundation, is capable of deciding the number of samples to take based on experience. Good engineering is doing the best job for the least amount of money." Yet the rules say that no mailer how meaningless the requirements of an RFP may be, all of them must be met. So the question remains: If Woodward-Clyde was not fully responsive to the RFP, how could it be ranked number one technically? Interesting, too, JRB is now not analyzing for all priority pollutants requested in the RFP, but is using the detection of trichloroethylene as the indicator of contamination. Aside from the completeness of technical proposals, the appropriateness of contractors sitting in Judgment on firms they compete with has been raised— and answered, firmly. EPA Superfund chief William N. Hedeman Jr. says: "EPA
contractors should not have been on that panel. I was not aware of that situation. When I learned of it after the fact, i issued a policy nationwide that prohibits that practice thereafter." As submitted, JRB's proposal named Michael Heeb as project manager. Heeb had worked for EPA in its Office of Research & Development. In the proposal Heeb is called ORD's "chief of Superfund research," and he is listed as managing "the $16 million per-year Superfund research program." Sybil Francis, an aide to Rep. George Brown (D.-Calif.), was told by EPA in November 1983 that Heeb was an environmental scientist in an engineering division of ORD, and that division "represented $3.5 million of the $6.4 million per-year total for the Superfund research program." in a December 1983 letter to DHS, JRB wrote: "This reference was not to a formal title carried by Heeb, but rather to a shorthand description of the function he last performed at the ËPA Office of Research & Development." However, EPA wrote Brown that Heeb's "overall responsibility was to ensure that ORD commit-
Under current law and every bill introduced except for the Administration's, a state's share for cleaning up private, abandoned waste sites is 10%. The Administration's bill would double that share to 20% and raise the state share for cleanup of state-operated sites from 50% to 75%. Florio, whose state of New Jersey not only has the dubious distinction of having the most NPL sites but is actively cleaning up dangerous dumps, lambasted this provision. Florio's anger is especially justified if California is a harbinger of things to come. Under cooperative agreements with EPA, the state has taken the lead in cleaning up Stringfeliow and most of its other 60 Superfund sites. Now Hedeman says, "I'm advised that the state that took the lead, that selected the contractor, that has proceeded through a variety of steps at [Stringfellow] is about to turn that lead back to EPA, as well as the lead for every other site in California on the NPL." Moskowitz says the state is relinquishing control over the federal Superfund sites to concentrate the state's limited resources—money and personnel—on 180 other hazardous waste sites in the state that don't qualify for Superfund money. California will retain for an unspecified period of time the lead on some aspects of the Stringfeliow project, but it is likely that "discrete programs" will be turned back to EPA im-
ments to the Office of Emergency & Remedial Response [Superfund] were met in a timely ana efficient manner." Though still with JRB, Heeb is no longer on the Stringfeliow contract. He was replaced as project manager by Robert F. Shokes, a JRB vice president. Why? "The complexity of the project escalated to a point in late fell 1984, that I decided we neeôeu to have m^f experience managing the project." Shokes said he was better able than Heeb to call on all the resources of t i e company. SAIC has some 5700 scientists, engineers, and support personnel, scattered throughout 12 offices in t i e U.S. Ninety-seven employees, 43 of whom hold doctorales, have direct waste management experience, SAIC senior vice president Michael J. Higgins says* But the company can call on an additional 200 chemists, toxicologists, and other professionals "in performing remedial investigation/feasibility studyrelated work/' he adds. This year, this privately held company prelects revenues of more than $420 million, 6 6 % of which will come from defense contracts.
mediately, he says. In fact, the state already has turned over the operation and maintenance of the water treatment plant. According to spokeswoman Marcia Murphy, the "state will complete the RI/FS, and if there is a transition it [will] be at that point." Bradley, Brown's aide, expects the site will be turned back after JRB completes the RI/FS. Bailey says the Army Corps of Engineers will be brought in to ease the transition. Brown thinks "EPA should have maintained the responsibility for [Stringfeliow] cleanup from the beginning. I felt that trying to put the responsibility on the states, which in most cases were not equipped to handle it, was going to cause some problems. And this action illustrates that it did." An aide to State Sen. Presley says the Senator "firmly believes that the state has a responsibility to take care of its own wastes." With the sixth largest economy in the world, and one of the finest university systems in the country, the state has the resources to undertake this responsibility, the aide says. Hirschhorn, who charts toxic wastes affairs closely, says California's action is unprecedented. It should be a lesson learned, he adds. But Stringfellow's main lesson, Hirschhorn says, "is the need to act quickly and effectively to separate toxic wastes from the ground and from groundwater." D May 27,1985 C&EN
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