FORT SMITH - Whirlpool Corp. is offering to pay residents to voluntarily accept a well-drilling ban in a neighborhood with groundwater contaminated by a hazardous chemical, Whirlpool’s spokesman said Monday.
“What we’d like to do is work with the residents through counsel and make that part of what we’re proposing to do to be fair,” Jeffrey Noel said.
Gaining control of well access to the plume of trichloroethylene in the groundwater under the neighborhood just north of the closed Whirlpool refrigerator plant would be one more way to assure residents they will be protected from contact with the chemical, Noel said.
All the homes and businesses in the neighborhood use city water and have no water wells, according to company officials. The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality has said the trichloroethylene would be a hazard only if ingested.
Noel said it was too early to say whether negotiations the company is pursuing with the residents will be successful or whether residents will accept the offer. He did not disclose details of the offer.
Neighborhood residents and property owners have filed lawsuits against Whirlpool in Sebastian County Circuit Court over damage they say was caused to their property by the groundwater contamination. Noel would not comment on the litigation Monday other than to say it would not impede the company’s efforts to clean up the contamination.
The negotiations between the company and the residents would be completed before Whirlpool approached the city directors again to ask for an ordinance banning the drilling of water wells in that neighborhood.
And the company will not take a restriction request to the city directors, Noel said, until after the Environmental Quality Department approves the proposed, revised risk-management plan the company submitted in April as its way to deal with the contamination. Department officials said the department will make a decision on the plan before the end of the year after holding a public hearing.
Fort Smith city directors rejected the well-drilling-ban ordinance proposed by the company last March. They opted, instead, to pass a resolution calling on the company and the Environmental Quality Department to work as expeditiously as possible to arrive at a solution on what the resolution called an “emergency situation.”
Noel was in Fort Smith on Monday with officials from the company’s consultant, Environ International of Little Rock, tomake a report to city directors tonight about progress that has been made in dealing with the chemical contamination. The report will be made at the special city directors’ study session scheduled for 6 p.m. at the Fort Smith Senior Activity Center at 2700 Cavanaugh Road.
Department of Environmental Quality officials also are expected to attend the meeting.
In a summary report the company made available to city directors Monday, Whirlpool continues to claim that the trichloroethylene plume that seeped from the company property into the residential area has not moved for eight years. An Environmental Quality Department official earlier this year disputed the claim, saying evidence showed that the chemical continued to migrate north away from the company property and farther into the neighborhood.
“Is the plume expanding? No. Are the people safe? Absolutely. Is there a plan to attack and destroy the TCE [trichloroethylene]? Yes. Is Whirlpool going to stay in Fort Smith and see this through? Yes,” the report concluded.
Whirlpool discovered in 1989 that a large amount of trichloroethylene, which was used to clean metal refrigerator parts before assembly at the plant, had leaked into the ground under the plant over the years. The company discovered in 2000 that the chemical had migrated north off the plant property and into the groundwater under the neighborhood. Residents of the neighborhood learned of the contamination in January.
The report also said the company is preparing to drill three wells in the neighborhood to test whether vapors from the chemical are percolating up through the soil and posing a health risk to residents. Whirlpool said that it has been testing for vapors in existing monitoring wells but has found that vapors are not able to penetrate the dense clay layer between the surface and the groundwater.
He said the new wells would produce further proof that vapor intrusion of the chemical is not a risk.
Noel said Whirlpool must seek a permit from the city for placement of one of the wells because it is in the city’s right of way. A memorandum from Fort Smith City Administrator Ray Gosack said approval of the permit is tentatively scheduledto go before the city directors at their meeting next Tuesday.
Noel said that once the risk-management plan is approved, Whirlpool will immediately “attack” the trichloroethylene plume. As stated in the plan, the company plans to treat the chemical under the ground on the company’s property by chemically neutralizing it, or what Noel called chemical oxidation. Chemical oxidation also will be used on a narrow strip of the plume on the north side of Ingersoll Avenue on property the company owns. Ingersoll Avenue forms the dividing line between the Whirlpool property and the neighborhood.
The company’s proposed risk-management plan calls for natural decomposition and institutional controls, such as the well-drilling ban, as the remedy for the trichloroethylene under the neighborhood.
Noel said engineers for the company believe that chemical oxidation of the heaviest concentration of the chemicalwould accelerate the decomposition of the remaining plume.
A couple of unnamed parties are interested in buying the 152-acre Whirlpool site, Noel said. He said work was continuing to make a deal but no papers have been signed and no commitments made.
He said the parties interested in the property had the capacity, the experience and the understanding to redevelop a large parcel like the Whirlpool site.
“These are folks that we know they know what they are doing,” he said.
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 10/08/2013