FORT SMITH -- The Whirlpool Corp. is having a hard time finding locations to sample for trichloroethyelene vapors in a neighborhood north of its closed Fort Smith plant because residents are not granting the company access to their property.
"To date, access to perform this additional soil vapor monitoring has not been granted by the residents," Whirlpool Vice President for Communications and Public Affairs Jeffrey Noel wrote in a June 19 letter to the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality.
In the letter, Noel asked for an additional 60 days to find residents who will allow the company to set up its monitoring equipment to test for trichloroethylene vapors.
The department gave Noel 30 days to find more locations, according to a Monday letter from Tammie J. Hynum, chief of the department's Hazardous Waste Division.
Hynum wrote that if Whirlpool continued to have difficulty finding residents willing to allow the monitoring, the company is to document its efforts and produce a map showing the locations of existing soil gas monitoring wells and the proposed soil vapor monitoring sites.
Fayetteville attorney Rick Woods said Wednesday that he advised his clients to refuse access to their property by Whirlpool because he believes the testing Whirlpool proposed would be ineffective.
Woods is one of three attorneys representing about 25 clients who own about 40 parcels of land in the neighborhood.
He said he believed Whirlpool would locate its monitoring equipment in a section of the property where vapor intrusion would not occur. Vapors won't come from the thick clay soil in the neighborhood, he said, but from cracks and crevices.
The test results from the ineffectively placed equipment, he said, would be used to bolster the company's claim that vapor intrusion of the chemical was not occurring.
Noel declined Wednesday to respond to Woods' comments because of negotiations on the lawsuit and other matters.
But he said the company is working with the attorneys to identify other property owner clients who will provide access. He said the company was making progress with the attorneys and he was confident other locations would be found.
Whirlpool is trying to clean up the decades-old trichloroethyelene contamination of groundwater under a portion of its plant in south Fort Smith and under homes and businesses in a neighborhood to the north.
The department ordered monitoring for vapors of the hazardous chemical in the Remedial Action Decision Document it issued in December setting out the steps the company must take to clean up the trichloroethylene contamination.
The company and department have said they do not believe vapor intrusion of the chemical poses a health threat to the residents of the neighborhood because the density of the clay soil won't allow the fumes to seep to the surface.
Department spokesman Katherine Benenati, responding Wednesday to an e-mail requesting comment, said using the federal Environmental Protection Agency model, the "current levels of TCE [trichloroethylene] in the groundwater have not shown an unacceptable risk to the vapor intrusion pathway."
The decision was made to order the testing, however, after Fort Smith officials expressed concern at a March 2013 city directors meeting about the possibility of residents being exposed to trichloroethylene vapors.
While the department claimed computer modeling showed chemical vapors were not likely to escape, city officials pointed out that no actual air testing had been conducted. To provide greater assurance to residents of the neighborhood, city officials requested the vapor testing.
In an April 28 letter to the department, Whirlpool consultant Environ International Corp., said it was trying to locate three vapor testing locations on two properties in the neighborhood, two on one property on Jacobs Avenue and a third on a resident's property abutting Ingersoll Avenue, which separates the plant property from the neighborhood.
The owner of the Jacobs Avenue property has refused access, according to the letter. The third site was deemed unacceptable because of standing water and dense clay content of the soil.
The letter stated there already was one vapor monitoring point in the neighborhood at the rear of property also on Jacobs Avenue.
Metro on 06/26/2014