Water treated again at Halliburton mine
Halliburton has restarted the wastewater-treatment plant at the old, polluting mine site the company owns north of Magnet Cove.
The restart is the beginning of a cleanup at the 77-year-old Magcobar mine ordered by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality for the first time in 2000.
The rest of the cleanup plan has been approved by the department, but the multinational company must go through a rule-making process before implementing the rest of the cleanup plan because changes must be made to the state's water regulations.
The department will hold a public hearing on the proposed cleanup plan at 6 p.m. Sept. 27 at the Magnet Cove High School library in Malvern. The public has until 4:30 p.m. Oct. 11 to submit comments on the plan to the department.
Halliburton, which took over the mine site as a part of a corporate acquisition in the 1990s, has petitioned to temporarily change the water-quality standards for six creeks in Hot Spring County -- a change that officials say reflects only the current pollution in those creeks and not the expectation of any new pollution to be added during the cleanup.
The mine site has a 90-acre, 480-foot-deep pit that has filled with water since the mine's closure. The pit holds about 3.7 billion gallons. The water is acidic because it flows into the pit after running off pyrite-rich spoil piles, a process called "acid rock drainage."
The pit has overflowed into nearby Cove Creek, which drains into the Ouachita River, and into nearby Reyburn Creek, which flows into Francois Creek and then the Saline River.
The restart of the wastewater-treatment plant will improve water quality for the runoff outside the pit, Environmental Quality Department Director Becky Keogh told the Pollution Control and Ecology Commission last month.
The proposed changes to water standards would raise the allowable levels of sulfates and total dissolved solids for Chamberlain, Cove, Lucinda, Reyburn, Rusher and Scull creeks. They also would raise the allowable levels of chlorides for Chamberlain Creek.
Chamberlain Creek would be allowed 2,261 milligrams per liter of total dissolved solids, 1,384 milligrams per liter of sulfates and 68 milligrams per liter of chlorides. Cove, Lucinda, Reyburn, Rusher and Scull creeks would be allowed 500 milligrams per liter of total dissolved solids and 250 milligrams per liter of sulfates.
All of the proposed changes pertain to what the Environmental Protection Agency considers to be "secondary" considerations in drinking-water standards, which affect the taste of the water.
If approved, the cleanup is expected to take about 12 years.
Public hearing set on scrap-tire rules
The Environmental Quality Department will hold a public hearing Sept. 30 on changes to Regulation 11 of the state's scrap-tires laws.
The hearing will be at 10 a.m. at the department's headquarters at 5301 Northshore Drive in North Little Rock.
The proposed change for scrap-tire rules, which is based on Act 1037 of 2015, would allow the state to use a landfill post-closure trust fund to apply to "waste tire processing facilities and waste tire disposal sites owned and operated by districts that lack sufficient funds to complete closure of the permitted waste tire processing or waste tire disposal site."
Rep. Bob Ballinger, R-Hindsville, has said he sponsored the law so the department could use landfill funds to clean up 1 million scrap tires at a dump in Mountain Home.
That dump is owned by Damco, which contracted with the Ozark Mountain Regional Solid Waste District for tire recycling but is under the oversight of the Environmental Quality Department. Department officials have said they plan to seek reimbursement from the district, which has placed at least the Damco site and a landfill under department control because of financial constraints, for the project.
The landfill post-closure trust fund has about $17.4 million in it and is being tapped by C&L Landfill in Fayetteville for a project that started in 2015 and was approved to use up to $3.4 million. The Environmental Quality Department also intends to use that fund to finance the closure of the North Arkansas Board of Regional Sanitation landfill in Mountain Home, which is owned by the Ozark Mountain Regional Solid Waste District. That project could cost several million dollars.
Tire dumps can attract insects and rodents and are particularly hazardous if they catch fire. Tire fires are difficult to put out, and chemicals in the tires can leak and contaminate the ground. Tire dumps also are breeding grounds for mosquitoes, which carry diseases.
The public has until 4:30 p.m. Oct. 14 to submit comments on the proposed rule change.
Metro on 09/04/2016