FAYETTEVILLE — Cleanup is complete on land in southern Fayetteville that had been contaminated with industrial waste for more than a decade.
City staff members now hope the property will be used to extend parkland and a trail in the area.
From 1974-97, the nearly 6-acre property was owned by R&P Electroplating, a chromium metal-plating facility, before it was abandoned and eventually taken over by the state.
Vandals broke into a warehouse there in 1998, prompting the discovery by police of more than 90 containers of hazardous materials left unprotected.
At that time - and as the result of an emergency order from the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality - the worst of the toxic waste was removed. But some materials continued to leech into the soil and groundwater on the property.
Earlier this year, Environmental Quality Department spent approximately $2.4 million to finish the cleanup.
Clyde Rhodes, chief of the department’s hazardous materials division, said more than 1,100 cubic yards of contaminated soil, 21 tons of concrete and debris and 6,200 gallons of liquid waste were disposed of by the contractor for the cleanup. The contractor was Baton Rouge-based Southern Environmental Management & Specialties.
Materials found included copper and silver cyanide; chromic, hydrochloric and sulfuric acid; caustic soda; industrial solvents; and cleaning solutions.
Mike Hebert, project manager for Southern Environmental Management, said nonhazardous materials were taken to the Waste Management landfill in Tontitown, while hazardous materials were disposed of at a secure site in Baton Rouge.
Hebert said, aside from planting grass on the property, his work was complete in September.
The Department of Environmental Quality will continue to monitor contamination levels in the groundwater using three monitoring wells.
“We expect that the groundwater will go back to where it should be in a short period of time,” Rhodes said.
The former R&P site, at 2000 E. Pump Station Road, lies along the West Fork of the White River, between the city’s White River baseball complex to the north and Combs Park to the south.
Don Marr, Fayetteville Mayor Lioneld Jordan’s chief of staff, said the city recently began negotiations with the Arkansas commissioner of state lands to acquire the property in an effort to connect a trail from Walker Park to Combs Park and to turn the former R&P site into a multiuse ballfield.
“Connecting those two parks would be awesome,” Parks and Recreation Director Connie Edmonston said Friday.
As far as concerns about contamination in the area, Rhodes said, “I would say it’s very safe.”
He added that the Department of Environmental Quality did not intend to seek compensation for the cleanup from R&P’s former owners.
“We believe that if the property can go back to the city of Fayetteville and be of productive use to the citizens there, that was worth the costs of cleaning it up,” Rhodes said.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 11/22/2010