Rebecca Morlock, 41, of Spelter, WVa., stands in front of the fence of former DuPont zinc-smelting plant in the town of Spelter, WV on July 27, 2009. Morlock keeps watching the demolished factory. “I’ll stay on top of it because people’s lives could possibly be at stake,” she says. (AP Photo / Lingbing Hang)

Here’s the latest from Vicki Smith at The Associated Press:

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) — Environmental regulators want DuPont to submit plans for determining whether seepage and runoff from the site of a former zinc-smelting plant in north-central West Virginia are contaminating groundwater or streams.

A resident who lives near the former smelter in Spelter went to the state Department of Environmental Protection earlier this year with concerns about both new seeps she spotted at the site and surface drainage ditches that go into Simpson Creek.

DEP project manager David Hight says it’s unclear whether either is causing contamination offsite, but DuPont must submit a plan to find out using either water sampling or new community wells, or both.

Monitoring wells onsite do show contamination, he said, but DEP can’t tell whether that contamination is going beyond the property lines.

“It may be,” he says. “We don’t know.”

Although there’s no deadline for the plan, Hight expects it to be submitted soon.

DuPont spokesman Dan Turner said the company routinely samples groundwater and monitors the Spelter site, the West Fork River, and where the river meets Simpson Creek. It turns those results in to DEP.

“Based on WVDEP’s recent request,” he said in an email Thursday, “we will add more sampling points in Simpson Creek.”

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A Senior design engineer Dave Bush inspects the sprawling mercury cell room at PPG Industries chemical plant in Natrium, Marshall County. Photo from 2005 courtesy PPG.

If we needed more proof that PPG Industries isn’t going mercury-free at its chlorine manufacturing plant in Natrium, W.Va., just check out the new public notice issued yesterday by the Ohio River Water Sanitation Commission:

The Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission (ORSANCO) is requesting public comment on a request for a variance from its Pollution Control Standards provision which prohibits mixing zones for bioaccumulative chemicals of concern beginning no later than October 16, 2013. The request for a variance was received from PPG Industries, Natrium, WV facility and is in regard to their discharge of mercury to the Ohio River.

My friend Jim Bruggers at the Courier-Journal in Louisville broke the story, explaining:

A West Virginia chlorine manufacturing plant is seeking to avoid a 90 percent cut in the amount of mercury that it’s allowed to dump into the Ohio River.

At issue is a 2009 decision by the commission to phase out what it calls “mixing zones” down river from industrial plants that discharge chemicals that build up in the environment, such as mercury. Mixing zones allow pollution limits to be met some distance from factory outfalls, after effluent has mixed with river water and become diluted.

Now, regular readers know that PPG is a huge source of mercury pollution, because of its continued use what critics say is an outdated technology. Activists have targeted the facility and PPG has faced permit challenges and litigation over its mercury emissions, but has received friendly treatment from West Virginia regulators, who have repeatedly extended the company’s compliance deadlines.

But faced with a lawsuit from the state of Maryland — which alleged PPG’s air emissions were polluting that state’s waterways with mercury — PPG entered into a deal to make major pollution reductions and to consider other steps, with a goal of eliminating all mercury emissions. Jim Bruggers reports the company has made progress:

In correspondence with the commission posted on the commission’s Website, PPG officials said they have been reducing their mercury discharges …  U.S. Environmental Protection Agency records show that the plant cut its mercury discharges from 32 pounds in 2004 to 17 pounds in 2010.

Still, PPG argues in its request for a variance from the new ORSANCO rule that “after several years of diligent effort,” the company believes its permit limits for mercury “cannot be reasonably achieved” without a mixing zone.

It’s also worth pointing out that the ORSANCO rules for water quality standards only allow for variances because of a push for such language from the West Virginia Manufacturers Association and PPG.

(more…)

While I was down in Beckley earlier this week, some potential news came in concerning the PPG Industries plant up in Natrium, W.Va.  The website “Marketwatch” was reporting:

As part of our North American Project Database, Industrial Info is tracking about $200 million in PPG spending on active projects in the U.S., including the $100 million conversion of a mercury cell chlorine plant in New Martinsville, West Virginia.

This was potentially huge news, given the long campaign by state and national environmental groups to convince (or force) PPG to eliminate the huge mercury emissions from its chlor-alkali facility (see previous coverage here, here and here).

In fact, the group Oceana sent us this statement about this potential development:

“PPG’s intention to convert its New Martinsville plant to mercury-free technology is long-overdue, very welcome news. PPG’s plant on the Ohio River has needlessly fouled the air and water of West Virginia and neighboring states with mercury pollution for the past 54 years,” said Oceana senior campaign director Jackie Savitz. “We sincerely hope that PPG Industries does convert the plan to modern technology, and that the company also keeps its recovered mercury out of the global environment,” she added.

Oceana has campaigned since 2005 to end mercury use in the production of chlorine and caustic soda in the United States. Only nine U.S. chlorine plants used the outdated technology in 2005. If PPG does convert its New Martinsville mercury cell chlorine plant to cleaner technology, there will be only one U.S. plant, operated by Ashta Chemicals of Ashtabula, OH, that has failed to convert its chlor-alkali plant to cleaner technology.

Well, I checked with PPG spokesman Jeremy Neuhart and here’s what he said:

Yes, we saw the announcement from Industrial Info that references a “$100 million conversion of a mercury cell chlorine plant in New Martinsville, West Virginia.”

This information is inaccurate.

PPG has made no announcements to this effect, and we have no current plans to make such a conversion at the PPG Natrium plant near New Martinsville.

Keep in mind, though, that PGG has pledged – as part of a court settlement with the state of Maryland (not West Virginia) to reduce its mercury emissions and to consider even more reductions in the future … so stay tuned …

It’s all the rage in Washington these days to talk about “EPA overreach.” But I’m wondering if a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office is describing something that might be best known as “EPA underreach.”

The new GAO report looks at what steps EPA has taken over the last 15 years to regulate new contaminants under the Safe Drinking Water Act. It concludes:

Systemic limitations in EPA’s implementation of requirements for determining whether additional drinking water contaminants warrant regulation have impeded the agency’s progress in assuring the public of safe drinking water.

EPA’s selection of contaminants for regulatory determination in 2003 and 2008 was driven by data availability–not consideration of public health concern. EPA does not have criteria for identifying contaminants of greatest public health concern and based most of its final determinations to not regulate 20 contaminants on the rationale of little or no occurrence of the contaminants in public water systems.

Moreover, EPA’s testing program for unregulated contaminants–which can provide key data to inform regulatory determinations–has fallen short in both the number of contaminants tested and the utility of the data provided because of management decisions and program delays. In addition, EPA has not developed policies or guidance for interpreting the amendments’ broad statutory criteria for selecting contaminants and making regulatory determinations, increasing the potential for inconsistent decision making.

A news release from congressional Democrats was a little more pointed:

Today Reps. Henry A. Waxman and Edward J. Markey and Senator Barbara Boxer released a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) which found that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has not made a determination to regulate any new drinking water contaminants, with one very recent exception, since 1996 when the Safe Drinking Water Act was amended. This comes at a time when there has been growing evidence about the threats to public health from unregulated drinking water contaminants.