EPA Minden Superfund 'permanent solution' slated to cost $22.6M with years to complete

At a projected cost of $22.6 million, far exceeding an original March 2023 estimate of $15.5 million, the EPA plans to remove soil contaminated by polychlorinated biphenyls, known as PCBs, which have been known to cause cancer and have been linked to low birth weight and immune system effects.

Funding isn’t secured for the project, with the state lacking the 10% cost share money that it will eventually need to move the project forward.

The EPA’s 204-page Record of Decision released last week detailing its plan consists of four main components:

• Removing a 1-acre impervious cap and barrier contaminated by PCBs
• Excavating PCB-contaminated soil
• Disposing of excavated PCB-contaminated soil and the impervious cap and barrier at an approved offsite disposal facility
• Backfill with clean fill as needed

The closest residential property is roughly 730 feet west from the center of the cap, according to EPA spokesperson Kelly Offner.

“This is very big for this site, where we’re cleaning up the soil to remove the potential future risk,� EPA remedial project manager Aaron Mroz said in a phone interview last week. “This is very good for the community to get this out of here.�

But community comments that are part of the EPA’s Record of Decision underscore a lack of community trust in the agency. Minden residents have been outspoken critics of the EPA’s oversight amid decades-old concerns that the contamination has driven up cancer rates.

Longtime Minden resident Susie Worley-Jenkins, 69, is one of many who have lived with long-festering health concerns in the shadow of the site. Worley-Jenkins’ husband died from kidney cancer; her mother, lung cancer; and two neighbors, brain tumors. Worley-Jenkins has fought cervical, breast and skin cancer.

“There’s no dollar amount for people’s lives, and to let this go for that long and not do anything about it, that makes me angry,� Worley-Jenkins said in a phone interview in response to the EPA plan release.

Flooding impact fears

The Shaffer Equipment Co. built electrical substations for the coal mining industry from approximately 1970 to 1983, according to the EPA. The EPA said the company’s mismanagement of electrical transformers resulted in oils containing PCBs being released into the environment.

The Record of Decision notes the former Shaffer Equipment Co. property is within Arbuckle Creek’s floodplain and that flooding events have hit Minden in June 2016, June 2017, June 2020 and July 2022, in addition to a July 2001 flood that engulfed the town in several feet of water.

The document notes the EPA and West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection are concerned about the location of the former Shaffer property in a flood hazard area and the likelihood of potential releases of PCBs to downstream wetlands and residential properties during future flood events.

Where the contaminated soil could be headed

Per the EPA’s plan, remediation waste with PCB concentrations greater than 50 milligrams per kilogram would be disposed of under guidelines detailed in the federal Toxic Substances Control Act.

Mroz said there are no disposal sites in West Virginia for waste with PCB concentrations greater than 50 mg/kg, meaning that waste would be transported elsewhere. However, Mroz said he believes there are West Virginia facilities designated to accept waste with the lower PCB concentrations of 1 and 50 mg/kg, and that transport destination decisions would be made during remedial action following completion of the design phase.

The EPA estimates roughly 57% of excavated material would have PCB concentrations greater than that threshold, based on prior removal actions within the former Shaffer property and known concentrations of PCBs left under the impervious cap.

Remediation waste with concentrations between 1 and 50 mg/kg would have to be disposed of — at a minimum — in a RCRA landfill approved under Subtitle D of the law, which focuses on nonhazardous solid waste.

The EPA says in its Record of Decision that precautions to avoid a release of PCB-contaminated soil under its chosen plan include:

• Continuous weather monitoring and working during months when flooding is less likely
• Engineering controls for the excavation area
• Excavating in small areas at a time
• Having a mobile laboratory onsite so backfilling can be completed as soon as possible to minimize open excavations
• Proper temporary storage of contaminated materials

The EPA says in the decision document it observed an increase in disposal costs for PCB-contaminated soil that increased the cost of its chosen plan nearly 50% since March 2023.

The EPA already has spent roughly $23.7 million on cleanups and investigations associated with contamination caused by the Shaffer Equipment Company, the agency said in the Record of Decision.

Decades of soil removal projects

The site within the Arbuckle Creek floodplain was added in May 2019 to the EPA’s National Priorities List, a list under the agency’s Superfund program of sites of national priority among known or threatened releases of hazardous substances throughout the country.

The EPA carried out past soil removal projects between December 1984 and December 1987, November 1990 and January 1991, from 2000 to 2001 and from October 2019 to February 2020.

The impervious cap and barrier were installed from 2000 to 2001 because of high PCB levels in soil at the site after a fire at the Shaffer Equipment Co. building. The impervious cap is an 18-inch compacted, low-permeability clay layer overlaid with 40-millimeter thick, high-density polyethylene liner, per the EPA. On top of the impervious layer is 12 inches of clean soil, then 6 inches of topsoil.

Worley-Jenkins has said the EPA shouldn’t have waited years to try to address lingering resident environmental concerns after the 2001 soil removal project ended.

State funding not secured

Mroz had said in March 2023 he hoped the EPA would announce its selected remedy by the end of September 2023.

Mroz said the 10-month delay was driven by a review of increasing project costs and working with the DEP toward concurrence with the plan from the latter agency. Mroz said the DEP indicated it couldn’t concur until it secured its expected cost share for cleanup.

That funding wasn’t appropriated by the West Virginia Legislature as hoped for during subsequent legislative sessions, Mroz said, resulting in the EPA finalizing its decision anyway and moving on to the design phase. But the EPA can’t move forward with construction until the DEP concurs, Mroz said, citing federal statute requiring states to share 10% of the cost of remedial action.

The state still has time to get its funding together, though, since Mroz said the design phase could take two years to complete, with the remediation itself projected to take a year.

The Record of Decision notes the DEP doesn’t object to the EPA’s plan.

DEP spokesperson Terry Fletcher said the agency is exploring possible funding options.

Long history of health risks

An August 2022 human health risk assessment for the former Shaffer property conducted by Nobis Group, a New Hampshire-based engineering and environmental consulting firm, is cause for cancer-related concern.

The EPA’s March 2023 proposal noted the assessment found cancer risk double the regulatory threshold for potential future resident exposure to chemicals of concern in total soil (ingestion, skin contact and inhalation). The assessment found a noncarcinogenic hazard double the regulatory threshold for potential future child resident exposure to chemicals of concern in surface soil (ingestion and skin contact).

Contaminants of potential concern, partly defined by the EPA as chemicals with detections that exceed selection criteria, identified in the human health risk assessment for the former Shaffer property include:

• PCBs
• Dioxins, a highly toxic carcinogen that can cause developmental and reproductive issues
• Benzo(a)pyrene, a carcinogen that can cause skin rashes, a burning feeling, warts and bronchitis
• Arsenic, a carcinogen naturally present at high levels in groundwater

But PCBs were the only group the EPA identified as warranting a response action.

Minden’s cancer death rate per 100,000 people from 1979 to 2016 more than doubled that of the rest of Fayette County, according to a 2017 finding by the state Department of Health and Human Resources’ Health Statistics Center. The Minden cancer death rate more than quadrupled the rest of Fayette County’s rate from 1990 through 1999.

In an August 2017 email, Daniel Christy, then director of the Health Statistics Center, cautioned Dr. Hassan Amjad — a Fayette County physician researching PCB exposure impacts on cancer rates in Minden who died later that month — that the finding hadn’t been vetted by a senior epidemiologist and wasn’t prepared for release.

But Christy added the cancer death rate based on U.S. Census Bureau population estimates and Health Statistics Center data was still “concerning.�

Last year, then-Department of Health and Human Resources spokeswoman Jessica Holstein said the Health Statistics Center’s 2017 finding and other Cancer Registry data weren’t sufficient to support a cancer cluster occurring in Minden.

‘The EPA wants to play God’

The EPA’s Record of Decision comes nearly 14 months after a March 2023 meeting at the New Beginning Apostolic Church in Minden, where EPA officials indicated they wouldn’t pay to relocate residents of the once flourishing mining town despite impassioned calls to action from longtime members of the tiny community.

The EPA said in its decision document that permanent relocation is considered only when contamination poses an immediate threat that cannot be mitigated or remediated, indicating that’s not the case in Minden.

“They’ve been putting us off for 40 years, and they want to fuss about the money,� Worley-Jenkins said.

In response to comments stating the contamination can’t be removed, and questioning how many times the EPA will have to come back to clean up contamination at the former Shaffer site, the EPA said its plan is a “permanent solution� for onsite soil that won’t require the EPA to return.

Asked by a community member if community members could have a say in how to spend money being allotted for the EPA’s plan, the agency replied in its Record of Decision that money used for the cleanup can’t be provided to the community for other purposes.

“The problem with the EPA and Minden is that the EPA wants to play God. They want to treat us like we are children,� lifelong Minden resident Darrell “Butter� Thomas said Monday.

Looking beyond the former Shaffer property

The EPA’s Record of Decision lists other areas of concern at the Superfund site beyond the former Shaffer property:

• Residential properties along Arbuckle Creek
• A possible transformer storage area east of the former Shaffer property
• Britt Bath House area
• Berwind Green Hill Mine dump area
• Rocklick Road
• NR&P Supply House
• Arbuckle Creek floodplain
• Arbuckle Creek and associated wetland areas within former Shaffer property limits and to its confluence with the New River
• New River
• Mines

Mroz said the EPA will consult with community property owners as it crafts its next remediation plan for the Minden Superfund site.

Worley-Jenkins still worries about what she says was Shaffer dumping contaminated materials into area mine shafts. She wants the EPA’s latest plan to work for the community — and for it to be the permanent solution the EPA has pledged it will be.

“They’ve got enough money that they can do this job right,� Worley-Jenkins said.