Although the agency had been notified about the detection of trichloroethylene (TCE) in the water in Broad Run Farms in 2005, the site was officially added to the Superfund program in 2008, three years later. It took that much time because “we don’t give the designation of Superfund site lightly,” said Fred MacMillan, EPA’s remedial project manager for the Hidden Lane Landfill.
During those three years, EPA officials took samples of their own, in addition to what was provided to them by the Loudoun County Health Department and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, to determine what the contamination was, and to what extent. They then evaluated the data next to certain criteria the agency has.
“The EPA is looking at sites all over the country all the time, so we can’t list them all [on the NPL] as soon as we find them,” MacMillan said. “Sites that may have been worse had to go on the NPL first.”
When the EPA first got involved, Larry Johnson, the agency’s community involvement coordinator for Hidden Lane, distributed fact sheets to residents about the Superfund process and what they should expect regarding the cleanup.
In addition, Johnson has attended a number of community meetings to update residents about the progress being made and fielding their questions and concerns.
Below, the “Hidden Truth on Hidden Lane” series will highlight options to address the cleanup of the Hidden Lane Landfill, a detailed description of the steps in the Superfund process, financing the cleanup, what has been accomplished so far and what is happening now.
Roads to Cleanup
Once the EPA has decided that a site poses a threat to public health or the environment, there are two routes the agency chooses between when determining how to best clean up the situation – removal or remedial action.
Removal actions are short-term steps taken to respond, clean up or remove released hazardous substances or substances with the potential to release. Sites in this class are broken up into three categories: emergency removal actions, time-critical removal actions and non-time-critical removal actions.
Remedial actions, the method used to respond to the cleanup of the Hidden Lane Landfill, are typically more long-term response actions than those in the removal category. These actions include the discovery, selection, study, design, and construction of longer-term actions aimed at a permanent solution.
“There are usually more removal sites [than remedial sites],” said Larry Johnson, the community involvement coordinator for the Hidden Lane Landfill. “But removal sites… it depends on the severity of the response. It’s an emergency response, if there’s a particular hazard or chemical that we require a very rapid response to. While it is a part of Superfund, it’s strictly an emergency response program. The remedial program does take more time and does require more process than the removal program does.”
Liability and Finances
The Superfund program does not have enough funds to finance the cleanup of even a small percentage of sites listed on the NPL by itself, so whenever possible, the EPA likes to identify “potential responsible parties” of the contamination problem to bear the brunt of the cleanup costs.
There tend to be four classes of these parties: the current owner or operator of the site; the owner or operator of the site at the time that disposal of a hazardous substance, pollutant or contaminant occurred; a person who arranged for the disposal of a hazardous substance, pollutant or contaminant at the site; a person who transported a hazardous substance, pollutant or contaminant to a site.
In the case of the Hidden Lane Landfill, the potential responsible parties could possibly be the estates of the owners, Philip Smith and Albert Moran, both of whom are now deceased. However, this is just speculation among various involved officials.
“This is treading on legal ground,” Johnson said. “Responsible parties may have profited from the work they did, but may not have the resources to pay [for the resulting cleanup]. We try not to go after people who can’t solve it. It’s not fair to the citizens to wait to see what [Smith and Moran’s] estates can pay. If we can recover some of the costs, we will later.” In the meantime, the EPA’s priority is cleaning up the contaminated site.
To be clear, Johnson’s explanations were not the official EPA response regarding liability. “EPA does not discuss its ongoing enforcement activities,” MacMillan said.
As a part of the cleanup process, the EPA and potential responsible parties together complete an Administrative Order on Consent, whereby the potential responsible parties agree to perform and/or pay for some or all of the costs involved in cleaning up the site. This was completed for Hidden Lane on August 27, 2008.
In the event that no potential responsible parties can be named, the EPA bears the brunt of the costs.
However, if the potential responsible parties fail to pay for the cleanup, the Commonwealth of Virginia would be responsible for paying 10 percent of the final cleanup costs, EPA staff has told county officials.
MacMillan would not confirm that number. “EPA has no predictions for the cost of the cleanup or any cost share for any party, including the Commonwealth of Virginia, at this time,” he said.
Superfund Process
Site Discovery – The EPA is alerted about a contaminated site, either by residents or government agencies.
Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Information System – The site is added to the EPA’s computerized inventory of potential hazardous substance release sites.
Preliminary Assessment/Site Inspection – During this stage, investigators with the EPA examine site conditions and possible contamination. They decide if the response needs to be immediate or short-term, as determined by the release of hazardous substances.
Entered on the National Priority List – Once a site makes it onto the NPL, it has qualified for the Superfund program to have the site cleaned up. The site is first proposed to the NPL, where it is listed in the Federal Register, the official journal of the federal government. After a 60-day public comment period, the site may be officially added to the NPL.
Remedial Investigation/Feasibility Study – During this stage, EPA officials assess the extent of contamination and deliberate various clean-up solutions. This step includes extensive sampling program and risk assessment in order to define the degree of the site contamination and risks. They also determine the treatability of the contamination and weigh the costs of the proposed solutions. EPA officials are currently in this stage of the process with the Hidden Lane Landfill.
Records of Decision – This stage explains which cleanup option will be used at each site. When remedies exceed $25 million, they are reviewed by the National Remedy Review Board. Because the Hidden Lane Landfill has not reached the point of assessing solutions, it is not yet known how much the project is estimated to cost.
Remedial Design/Remedial Action – EPA officials, in this stage, prepare and implement the remedy plans for the site. The bulk of the cleanup occurs during this stage, according to the EPA.
Construction Completion – This status indicates that the physical cleanup construction has been finished, but not necessarily whether final desired cleanup levels have been achieved.
Post Construction Completion – This step ensures that the actions taken through the Superfund response provide for the long-term protection of human health and the environment, including operation and maintenance, institutional controls, five-year reviews and remedy optimization.
National Priorities List Deletion – Once all of the response actions are complete and the goals for cleanup have been achieved, the site is officially removed from the National Priorities List.
Site Reuse/Redevelopment – This step provides information about how the Superfund program is working with communities to reuse the site safely and productively, without adversely affecting the remedy.
What’s Been Done
Since the EPA has taken control of the cleanup at the Hidden Lane Landfill, officials have been taking small but calculated steps toward coming up with a remedy.
First, the agency has assumed responsibility for the installation and maintenance of the whole-house carbon filtration units for homes with detected TCE, removing the onus from the DEQ, the agency that had been responsible for the systems.
The EPA has also installed eight gas monitoring wells around the landfill, in addition to the 14 monitoring wells Virginia had installed. These structures are small tubes that go into the landfill and can take samples of soil gas to see if methane is found in it. The EPA is sampling these wells quarterly and have found no signs of methane gas spreading, MacMillan said.
“When you have any kind of a landfill where only trash was placed, the byproduct is methane,” MacMillan said. “You can smell it in a house because of an additional chemical with a bad odor. Methane itself doesn’t have odor, [but it is] flammable. If it finds its way into space where it can be concentrated, it can be a fire or explosion hazard. In structures nearby, if methane is underground, like in a basement, there can be fires or explosions.”
In addition to the gas monitoring wells, the EPA has installed wells to monitor the groundwater. These wells were installed at different depths to find out where the contamination is and how concentrated at different depths, which will inform officials and residents if their wells are contaminated or are likely to be.
“If you have underground water bearing zone, you can have water supplied from underground from anywhere between 40 feet to 200 feet. You could find a contaminant at any area, but if you don’t isolate and sample at different depths, we don’t know,” MacMillan said.
These wells do not produce water for drinking, Johnson said, but are sensitive scientific instruments. The samples taken there are sent to Fort Meade for analysis.
To date, the EPA has installed 19 monitoring wells, but the agency does not yet have definitive information regarding the groundwater contamination, MacMillan said.
What’s Happening Now
The EPA is currently in the remedial investigation stage of the cleanup process. As a rule of thumb, this stage typically takes between 18 months and two years to finish, MacMillan said. The remedial investigation began at Hidden Lane in December 2008.
Addressing residents who were frustrated the process was taking so long, Johnson said that there was a proper, effective way to clean the site up. “Good science takes time. If we want to do this project right, we have to do this project right,” he said.
The amount of time the remedial investigation takes is site specific, MacMillan said. Some sites have very obvious solutions, but it depends on how much information the agency is starting with.
“Groundwater can be one of the most difficult [problems] because the only way to find out is to punch holes in ground or take samples through wells—that’s the only technology we have,” he said. The EPA is in the first round of doing such tests, and they will continue until officials have a good enough picture to come up with remedy for site.
During this time, EPA officials are putting together a snapshot of contaminated groundwater, called a plume, and is trying to track where this plume of contaminated water is, how deep into the ground the water is contaminated, in what direction the contaminated water is moving and how concentrated the contaminants are.
What You Can Do in the Meantime
Johnson, along with members of the Broad Run Farm Civic Association, urged residents interested in providing feedback throughout the cleanup process to join a Community Advisory Group.
The purpose of the group is to be a voice for the community to the agency to make sure that the parties are working together well, Johnson said.
Residents wanting to join the Community Advisory Group should contact Eric DeJonghe, president of the subdivision’s civic association.
Coming Up…
The final installment of the “Hidden Truth on Hidden Lane” series will cover what residents can expect in the near and distant future regarding the cleanup process, will discuss options they may have for their water supply once the contamination is eliminated, and will look into if a similar problem could happen again—in Broad Run Farms, in Loudoun County or across the country.
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