Silenced plant belies toxic danger Experts tally HoltraChem cleanup at $15 million; effort may take years

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For a plant that handled and manufactured a slew of hazardous chemicals for 30 years, the HoltraChem Manufacturing Co. facility looks like something cobbled together in a hurry.

Huge tanks and mazes of pipes, many of them leaking, are shielded from the elements by green corrugated walls and roofs. The only real building on the property houses administrative offices and laboratories.

The rusting, leaking plant contrasts with a modern and gleaming groundwater treatment system, which the company installed after signing a consent decree with and paying a $700,000 fine to the state Department of Environmental Protection in 1997 for violating hazardous waste and environmental laws. The system will have to remain in operation for decades to remove mercury and other impurities from the groundwater that flows under the 238-acre facility in Orrington.

On a recent end-of-winter day, the facility, which stopped production in October, was eerily quiet. The serenity belies the danger buried underground and in the glistening river flowing toward the ocean.

The plant and a landfill full of mercury sludge are only yards from the Penobscot River. When it first began operations, the plant dumped its used mercury-laden water straight into the river.

Under the river lies tons of mercury, a toxic heavy metal known to impair neurological development in children. Tons of mercury sludge were dumped into five landfills, large mounds at the edge of the manufacturing facility. The plant made chemicals like chlorine, mainly for paper companies. The ground where tanks and sheds now stand is likely contaminated with mercury and other chemicals, mainly chloropicrin, a fungicide.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Maine DEP, and a past owner of the facility, Mallinckrodt Inc., must now decide how to clean up the site. HoltraChem, a company that owned plants in Maine and North Carolina, ceased to exist as a corporate entity at the end of March. State officials remain confident that Mallinckrodt, which owned the plant from 1967 to 1982, will agree to undertake and pay for the cleanup.

On Thursday afternoon, the state received a signed agreement of understanding from the company establishing a fund of about $487,000 to be used over the next two months to staff and maintain the site.

The “bridge” agreement “buys us two months time to continue our negotiations with Mallinckrodt,” said Scott Whittier, director for the division of oil and hazardous waste facilities with the Maine DEP.

The temporary agreement between Mallinckrodt, the state and Earth Tech, a contractor hired to help with the cleanup, will make provisions for operating the wastewater treatment plant, staffing maintenance and security, and monitoring the wastewater and groundwater collection systems in place, according to Whittier.

“It’s like pushing a big rock up a big hill,” he said. “It’s a little frustrating at times, but we are making some progress.”

Because of problems at the plant and concerns over contamination of the Penobscot River, the U.S. Department of Justice in 1986 ordered Mallinckrodt to develop a “corrective action” plan under the guidance of the EPA. The order stipulated that the company study the extent of mercury contamination in the river and clean it up. The study phase is ongoing. That plan is still in effect and will in some way guide the cleanup activities that will take place now that the facility is closed.

By virtue of the corrective action plan, Mallinckrodt is the only entity that regulators have on the hook to finance the cleanup effort. Past owners have gone bankrupt and HoltraChem was structured in such a way that its owners, Honeywell International Inc. and Herbert Roskind, do not bear any liability for environmental damage done, according to the EPA.

One thing is certain – the cleanup will cost lots of money. At least $15 million, according to Ernie Waterman of the EPA.

While details of the cleanup and who will pay for it are still to be worked out, officials from the EPA and DEP toured the facility with Bangor Daily News staffers in late March, pointing out what was contaminated and how it would be cleaned up. No formal studies have been done of the contamination that lies beneath the buildings on the site, so some of what EPA officials said is in the ground was based on educated guesses. Before cleanup starts, holes will be drilled in the ground and samples taken.

Both federal and state officials said HoltraChem was tame compared to other contaminated sites they have dealt with. If it weren’t for the mercury, the plant wouldn’t even be on the EPA radar screen, said an agency spokesman, Mark Merchant.

Preliminary cleanup plans will be presented to the public for the first time Thursday, April 12. Staff from the EPA, DEP and Mallinckrodt will be on hand at the Center Drive School from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. to make presentations and answer questions. The purpose of the meeting is to set cleanup goals.

The agencies hope to hold another public meeting in May to present cleanup strategies.

Cleaning the Penobscot

One thing that is certain at this point is that the Penobscot River will be dredged to remove mercury contamination in the sediment. That’s where the bulk of the cleanup money will go. Waterman estimates more than 1,000 pounds of mercury will be found in a small portion of the river adjacent to the plant.

Upstream from HoltraChem, mercury is found in the river at concentrations of about 0.33 parts per million. At the outfall pipe, where HoltraChem dumped wastewater into the river, mercury concentrations of 460 parts per million have been recorded. In an area of the river just downstream from the plant called the Southern Cove, mercury was found in concentrations of 10 parts per million. The measurements came from studies done by contractors hired by the Natural Resources Defense Council as part of a lawsuit, and from another done by a company hired by HoltraChem as part of the corrective action plan. NRDC and the Maine People’s Alliance filed a federal lawsuit in 1999 to compel Mallinckrodt to stop studying the mercury contamination in the river and to clean it up. That suit is now proceeding through the courts.

The EPA has set a limit of 2 parts of mercury per billion parts of drinking water. The Food and Drug Administration has set a maximum permissible mercury level of 1 part per million in seafood that is consumed.

The State Bureau of Health has a standing advisory warning people against eating too much freshwater fish in Maine because of the high levels of mercury contained in their tissue.

At the outfall pipe, the high mercury concentrations extend to a depth of 3 feet, Waterman said. He expects 1 acre of river bottom will be dredged here. In the Southern Cove, the high levels of mercury go only 1 foot deep. Several acres would be dredged here, Waterman said.

While the mercury has settled in the sediment, a major storm could dislodge it, so it needs to be removed from the river bottom, he said.

Mercury levels higher than the background concentration of 0.33 parts per million have been recorded in the 17 miles of river below the plant. Waterman said the environmental damage done in dredging the rest of the river would outweigh the small health benefits gained from removing the mercury-laden soil there.

In addition, he said, the mercury levels down river, which are in the range of 1 part per million, are consistent with those at other facilities that have been cleaned up by the EPA.

In order to dredge the river, EPA needs permits from both the DEP and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, both of which will require a public comment period.

While the worst contamination is on the river bottom, impurities in the groundwater that flows below the plant are also a major concern. After experiencing a series of spills and violations of hazardous waste regulations, the company was fined $700,000 and signed a consent decree with the state in 1997. HoltraChem was required to install a treatment system to remove contaminants from the groundwater before it made its way to the Penobscot River.

That system, which stopped functioning after less than two years of use because it was run on the wrong settings, must be repaired and remain in operation for the foreseeable future, the EPA’s Waterman said during the tour of the facility. Asked what the foreseeable future meant, Waterman responded: “Decades.” Prodded further, he said the system would need to remain in operation for at least the rest of our lifetimes. The youngest person he was talking to is in her mid-30s.

The cost of operating the treatment system had been estimated by Holtrachem to be between $142,000 and $212,000 per month, depending on whether the system is reconfigured to treat the water more efficiently. As part of the just signed two-month agreement between the state, Mallinckrodt and Earth Tech, the latter will provide a plan for modifying the treatment plant to make it more efficient, according to the DEP’s Whittier.

Problems on the ground

While water contamination is the biggest concern, there are problems on land, too. Chief among them are the five landfills where mercury sludge was dumped as late as the 1980s.

While all five landfills are capped, officials are concerned that mercury and other chemicals are leaching out of them and into the groundwater. It is possible that some of the sludge will be dug up and hauled away, probably to a landfill in Canada, said Ed Logue, director of the DEP’s Bangor office.

In addition to mercury sludge, landfill number four contains carbon tetrachloride, which the plant used as a drying agent. When exposed to heat, the chemical emits highly toxic fumes of phosgene, a “nerve gas” used during World War I, and hydrogen chloride. It can be deadly if inhaled, ingested or introduced into the bloodstream through the skin.

Until the mid-1960s, carbon tetrachloride was widely used in fire extinguishers and as a cleaning fluid, both in industry where it served as a degreasing agent and in homes where it was used as a spot remover. Today, it is still used in petroleum refining, pharmaceutical manufacturing and as a solvent. It is believed to cause cancer and may damage developing fetuses.

Carbon tetrachloride has been found in groundwater below the plant at levels higher than those considered safe by the federal government, but not at such high levels to warrant intervention at this point, Waterman said. The groundwater that flows from the landfills is constantly monitored and that will continue. If higher readings are found in the future, better containment will be considered. The groundwater flows through the treatment system where contamination is removed.

Some of the property has been sloped, trenches have been dug, and an underground system of pipes has been installed to funnel the groundwater and runoff from rains through the treatment system.

Other areas of concern are more specific in location. For example, officials expect to find mercury in the ground under the cell building where sodium was split from chloride in salt water. In another area, chloropicrin, a pesticide, was spilled and likely seeped into the ground. Chloropicrin is not a carcinogen, although it can cause short-term health problems if it is inhaled.

Chemicals made at the plant, such as chlorine, bleach and hydrochloric acid, posed hazards while they were being manufactured. Since they are no longer on site, they are no longer a concern.

Although no plan has been developed yet for dealing with ground contamination, Waterman said the soils would likely be removed or cleaned up to the same levels as those established for the river so that the water there would not be recontaminated by chemicals from the dirt.

Brooke Barnes, deputy commissioner of the DEP, said that fabric mats and fill would be put down so that most of the facility could be re-used. But, he said, some areas of the plant, especially the 12 acres where the plant actually sat, could remain off-limits for redevelopment efforts.

Before any detailed study or ground cleanup can begin, the structures that make up the manufacturing part of the plant will have to be torn down. Officials expect few problems with the demolition since the corrugated walls didn’t trap chemicals. Only the office building and walls and roof around the water treatment system are expected to be left standing, they said.

The mercury no one wants

Demolition work will be hampered by the 80 tons of mercury stored in 51 approved 1-ton transport containers and a large homemade tank, dubbed the “Scud,” in the basement of the cell room. It was supposed to be long gone by now, but the company that had agreed to take it in March changed its mind at the last minute because of protests against the heavy metal. The president of Bethlehem Apparatus Co., the world’s largest mercury recycler, said he didn’t want to get involved after activists protested the shipment of 20 tons of HoltraChem mercury to India. That mercury was ultimately recalled to the United States after Indian government officials said they would refuse to accept what was labeled by the state of Maine as hazardous waste.

Since then, members of the Penobscot Alliance for Mercury Elimination have held several demonstrations at the plant gates protesting the resale of the mercury and calling for it to be safely stored away forever instead. A proposal sponsored by U.S. Sen. Susan Collins now before Congress would have federal agencies develop a plan for the permanent retirement of mercury like that from HoltraChem.

Meanwhile, the casks of mercury are simply in the way in Orrington.

Although a contractor has been hired to begin contamination studies and cleanup work, no date for when “the shovel will hit the ground” has been set, Waterman said. The contractor, Earth Tech, is a company owned by Tyco International, which also owns Mallinckrodt.

While it will likely be two to three years before the cleanup work is completed, Waterman said some work could begin by the end of this year.

“It took 30 odd years to get contaminated,” he said. “It will take a long time to clean it up.”