COLLEGE TOWNSHIP — A portion of the contaminated chemical manufacturing site in Centre County has recently been declared safe for reuse and redevelopment after decades-long cleanup efforts.
In 1958, the chemical waste at the 32-acre site off of Route 26 in College Township was stored in earthen and concrete lagoons, as well as a spray irrigation site and in metal drums.
That waste was supposed to harden in the lagoons, but didn’t, and leached into the ground.
As early as 1960, the state was investigating the site after complaints of a chemical odor coming from Thornton Spring. The leaching also affected Spring Creek, which in 1982 had to be designated as a catch-and-release area due to the high amount of pesticides found in the fish.
The area was eventually selected as a priority under the federal government’s Superfund initiative, begun in 1980 as an avenue for states and Native American tribes to reclaim land and natural resources from hazardous sites such as the Centre County Kepone site.
Kepone, also known as chlordecone, is a now-banned insecticide similar to Mirex and DDT. Kepone was often used in household products such as ant traps. It was also widely used in warmer climates to keep bugs from attacking bananas, citrus trees and tobacco. It was banned in the U.S. by 1978.
Concerns about Kepone became big news in the 1970s, with exposés on chemical plant workers and their families reporting serious health problems their doctors linked to Kepone exposure.
Peer-reviewed studies from the National Library of Medicine report effects ranging from damage to the central nervous system to liver and kidney damage. The central nervous system symptoms reported include ataxia, muscle spasms, hormone issues and liver lesions.
Some workers who worked in the manufacturing facilities also showed severe neurological diseases.
Though workers reported cancer diagnoses, verbiage relating to Mirex, Kepone and DDT list them as “probable carcinogens” in all official documents and reports.
Companies manufactured Kepone and Mirex at the site in the College Township for years, according to EPA investigations.
All chemical manufacturing at the plant ceased in 2004.
Most of the cleanup process is over, with groundwater, riparian and on-site soil units at the site having been finished for years, save for some of the long-term response plans.
By 1999, some of the cleanup activities were already finished, including a groundwater treatment system, upgraded surface water management controls, and removal and disposal of contaminated soil, sediment and waste materials, according to the EPA’s reports.
The groundwater unit remedial action finished in 2001, the riparian soils remedial action in 2011 and the on-site soils in 2004.
All that remains to be done at the site are the long-term response action and operation and maintenance.
In September 2016, the EPA declared the site ready for reuse and redevelopment.
According to an EPA spokesman, this came after the final institutional controls were put into place. These are non-engineering instruments that minimize human exposure to contamination and protect the remedies put into place.
Though the EPA said there appears to be a low risk of groundwater contamination near the site, they did recommend the prevention of public or private well drilling in the area west, or downgradient, of the commercial site.
The EPA reported that 19 acres were sold off to a local developer. Quality Roofing Supply makes use of some of the nearby buildings, a shopping center has gone up to the west and J&J Realty owns another parcel at the site, according to online county records.
Most cleanup sites are paid for through taxes on the industry or directly from the companies associated with the Superfund sites. At the Kepone site, Rutgers Organics Corporation has been funding and overseeing cleanup efforts.
It’s not Rutgers’ only project. Just last year, the company agreed to pay $18.75 million for the cleanup at a Superfund site in Salem, Ohio, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice. The responsibility fell to Rutgers after the Nease Chemical Company produced Mirex there between 1961 and 1973. Nease is the same company that originally operated the site in College Township. Nease and Rutgers merged in 1978.
The Superfund site cleanup process is marked by five-year reviews. The most recent one at the College Township site was in 2014. The administration buildings that housed Rutgers offices were taken off the project and the site received partial deletion from the National Priority List in 2004.
The EPA said in its preliminary close-out report from September 2016 the site is expected to remain on the National Priorities List until 2046.
