Traces of a hazardous chemical that has contaminated Whirlpool Corp. property also has been found under property owned by the Fort Smith Boys and Girls Club.
A letter dated Thursday to the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality from a Whirlpool consultant said groundwater in one of nine testing wells showed the presence of trichloroethylene. The well with the trichloroethylene was on unused land the Boys and Girls Club owns next to the northeast corner of the Whirlpool property. The plant closed in June 2012.
The letter from Environ International Corp. said the spot where the chemical was detected will be separated from the rest of the club property by an extension of Ingersoll Avenue from the corner of the Whirlpool property east to U.S. 71.
The letter said the trichloroethylene detected in the single soil sample did not have a pathway to come in contact with humans and posed no health risk to anyone using the Boys and Girls Club facilities or undeveloped fields.
"Additionally, no TCE [trichloroethylene] was detected in a surface water sample collected from the Whirlpool property surface water discharge to the drainage ditch that flows from Jenny Lind Road along the south side of the Boys and Girls Club parking lot," the letter states. "Further, no TCE was detected in sediment samples collected from the drainage ditch."
In an email Thursday, Boys and Girls Club Executive Director Jerry Glidewell said he was pleased the results found no health risk at the club facilities.
Club officials will work with Whirlpool on the company's request to install permanent monitoring wells to provide ongoing information about the contents of the groundwater, the email states.
"We will work with the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality to ensure the Fort Smith community can continue to enjoy our facilities," Glidewell's email concludes.
A statement from Whirlpool spokesman Jeff Noelon Thursday said the company wants to install four permanent wells on the Boys and Girls Club property to continue to collect data on soils and groundwater in that area.
Testing at the Boys and Girls Club grew out of investigations Environ was conducting at the northeast corner of the Whirlpool property to see if the trichloroethylene contamination had spread to that portion of the property.
The heaviest concentration of the chemical is found at the northwest corner of the former plant where Whirlpool used trichloroethylene from 1967 to 1981 to clean metal refrigerator parts before assembly.
Large amounts of the chemical were found in the groundwater under and around the northwest corner of the plant in 1989 and under the adjacent neighborhood in 2000.
In a remediation plan approved by the environmental quality department, Whirlpool is attempting to chemically neutralize the pool of trichloroethylene under company property and to rely on natural decomposition under the neighborhood.
Metro on 08/30/2014