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CONCORD —Two asphalt production plants in Concord are among sites the N.C. Department of Transportation has targeted for cleanup after finding dangerous chemicals in groundwater and soil.
Both of the sites had concentrations of one or more contaminants in the groundwater beneath them drastically higher than the state says is safe. And a state environmental official says studies on the sites still haven’t determined how far the contamination has spread. But those studies didn’t detect the chemicals in residential or industrial wells within 1,500 feet, a distance predetermined for testing based on the distance experts believed the contamination could have traveled.
Blythe Construction Inc., at the intersection of Poplar Tent and Goodman roads just west of I-85, and the now-closed M&M Minerals plant, off N.C. 73 just west of U.S. 29, are numbers 17 and 21 respectively on the state’s “active remediation” priority list.
Studies of those and other sites across the state in 1996 and 1997 found that certain chemical solvents used by DOT in on-site laboratories to test asphalt integrity for state-project specifications infiltrated soil and groundwater.
The testing required the use of one or more of three chlorinated solvents — carbon tetrachloride, trichloroethene and trichloroe-thane. Studies targeted those and the chemical components they can break down into over time.
Those solvents likely were poured onto the ground outside the labs in small amounts, a common practice until it was determined the chemicals increase the risk of cancer and liver disease, say officials with the state and an asphalt industry group.
“During that time, the accepted method of disposal for the solvents was to throw them on the ground,” said Christie Barbee, executive director of the Carolina Asphalt Pavement Association. “The belief was that it filtered out.”
Residents and business people around the sites say they didn’t know anything about the nature of the chemicals used for years at the plants until better, safer methods of asphalt testing were developed. And they said last week they hadn’t heard of the state’s findings or plans.
Even county and city officials were caught off guard last week with news that two of the sites are in Cabarrus County, news that came to light after residents around a Salisbury plant voiced concerns about a possible “cancer cluster” near the plant.
“We would not be involved in it in any way,” said Alan Scott, Concord’s environmental services director, who worked for one of the firms DOT contracted with to assess the sites. “It was something DOT did, and they kind of kept it low-key.”
Cabarrus’ top health official said he received a letter that Rowan County Health Director Leonard Wood sent to his counterparts in other counties detailing concerns in Salisbury.
Fred Pilkington, director of the Cabarrus Health Alliance, said his agency has requested copies of assessments done at the two sites for the state by outside consulting firms.
“Until we get those, we really don’t know where we are,” Pilkington said on Friday. “I guess we’re, right now, just sitting back to see what we get.”
Blythe Construction
Charlotte-based Blythe Construction has asphalt plants in Charlotte and Concord. Both sites have produced asphalt for state road work for years and have been assessed by the state for contamination.
The Concord site assessment did not detect the chemical solvents above the state’s allowed levels in an on-site well that supplies water to restrooms, sinks and spigots. Employees at the site drink bottled water.
Since that well is only 160 feet from the testing lab, the researchers didn’t test a well at the neighboring Vulcan Materials quarry, which is uphill from the contaminated site. The report says there are no other wells within 1,500 feet of the lab.
The report says there is a public or institutional well nearby, probably a gas station or convenience store. But officials at the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources regional office in Mooresville say they find no evidence of that place now, and the only nearby store, across Goodman Road, is on city water.
But the assessment did find contamination at the site. AJune 1997 test revealed trichloroethene at a concentration of 1,200 parts per billion in groundwater. And a soil sample taken behind the lab revealed the same solvent in a concentration six times higher than that.
“That’s a lot,” said Peggy Finley, a hydrogeological technician who monitors groundwater quality for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
The state now allows trichloroethene at a concentration of only 2.8 parts per billion in groundwater, she said. There are no such guidelines for soil. The question is its extent — how deep and how far the contamination has traveled.
“But it’s a significant concentration,” she said. “And the fact that it’s in both the soil and groundwater means it moved through the soil into the groundwater before it had a chance to degrade to any extent.”
Residents behind Blythe along Goodman Road, where 15 houses, rows of corn and fields dead end at I-85, say they didn’t know about the testing. Their wells are north of Blythe, downhill and in the path of groundwater flow, from the site, the report says.
Donnie Wood said he’s lived on Goodman Road for 35 years, long before the asphalt plant or the quarry located there. He said he and many of his neighbors have had to replace wells, they believe because of blasting at Vulcan.
“That really concerns me, it really does,” Wood said of the state’s finding contamination at Blythe. “It concerns me enough to get my well tested,” even though his water was tested when he put in his new well in December.
M&M Minerals
A few hundred feet from U.S. 29, off N.C. 73, or Davidson Highway as it’s called locally, sits a site once used to produce asphalt for state roads. It is overgrown with weeds, its machinery sits idle and rusty, its buildings are graffiti-covered shells.
This site, directly behind the Davidson Apartments, is site number 21 on the state’s cleanup priority list. On that list, it is known as M&M Minerals, though only a few people here recognize the name.
Cabarrus County tax records show the land is owned by the Blythe family. It’s the same family who founded Blythe Construction but are no longer associated with the company, a company official said.
An assessment of the site, where DOT tested asphalt from 1965 to 1987, found all three of the solvents in high concentrations in water taken from a monitoring well beside the former testing lab. Samples taken from seven other monitoring wells yielded concentrations of at least one of the compounds in levels exceeding state standards.
And testing found traces of one solvent in a creek, in amounts a little higher than the state’s surface water standards allow. A report says researchers believe the source of the solvent was groundwater discharging into the creek, which feeds into Irish Buffalo Creek.
In this heavily developed area of Concord, a consulting firm located 11 wells within 1,700 feet of the site. Of those, five were still in use in 1997, one of them an on-site well used by M&M. None of the wells contained the solvents in concentrations exceeding state-allowed levels.
Ed Miller, land acquisition manager for David Drye Co., owner of Davidson Apartments and other complexes on N.C. 73, said he wasn’t aware of the testing or its results.But it doesn’t affect any of the company’s properties.
“None of our stuff around here has ever been on a well,”Miller said. “It’s all on city water.”
Unfinished work
Finley, the groundwater technician, said that although the reports came out in 1997 and the state is working on plans to clean up the contamination, assessment at the two Concord asphalt plants is incomplete.
“What you’re looking for is a well far enough out and deep enough, and that gives you the extent of” the
contamination, she said. “Apparently, they haven’t put in enough monitor wells at this point to really give a good picture.”
But given time constraints placed on the assessment process by the General Assembly when it approved funding in 1996, DOT is allowed to do that as part of the corrective action plans for the sites, Finley said.
Others familiar with the asphalt plant findings say it could be difficult in some situations to determine who is responsible for the contamination, if the companies used the same solvents to do non-state work.
The report on Blythe Construction’s Poplar Tent Road site says the methods lab workers used to dispose of the testing solvents are not well documented, and there are no records of the volume of solvents used.
But Jim Rynkewicz, who heads Blythe’s asphalt production, said his company didn’t use the solvent for private contracts.
State work requires that the makeup of the asphalt meet certain standards, and those standards are not necessarily required in other commercial asphalt production and paving that Blythe does, he said.
“There was no reason to test it,” he said of asphalt for other projects. “There were no contract specifications or obligation to test it.”
Barbee, the industry association director, said it’s unlikely other companies used the solvents. DOT set up its own labs at the asphalt plants and did its own testing using the solvents, which were very expensive, she said.
When the companies required testing for private contracts, they typically sent asphalt samples to off-site commercial labs, she said. If they must test asphalt now, they use a specially designed oven that takes the needed measurements and uses no chemicals.
Rynkewicz said that is the method used in the white trailer at Blythe Construction that houses the lab where testing is done for the company’s state projects.
“It’s totally safe, environmentally friendly,”he said.
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