Testing to begin near old factory

Environmental consultants will begin preliminary soil and groundwater testing at and around the former Whirlpool manufacturing facility in Fort Smith later this month, a spokesman for the company said this week.

Whirlpool spokesman Kristine Vernier said in an email that workers from ENVIRON, a global environmental consulting firm with an office in Little Rock, will begin testing as part of efforts to counteract groundwater and soil pollution linked to the plant.

The testing is the first step in a state-ordered remediation effort on the part of Whirlpool to decontaminate groundwater and soil near the plant, which closed in June 2012. It comes more than a decade after Whirlpool first reported possible groundwater contamination from trichloroethylene, a degreasing chemical used at the facility from about 1967 until about 1981.

Although Whirlpool never declared any specific spills of the chemical at the plant, representatives announced in January that trichloroethylene had been detected in the groundwater under several dozen residential properties north of the Fort Smith plant, about six months after the corporation closed the facility.

In February, Whirlpool attorneys lobbied unsuccessfully to get Fort Smith to pass an ordinance banning residents and businesses from drilling wells in the affected area.

In September, the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality issued a draft of a “remedial action decision document,” outlining a course of action for reducing or eliminating the trichloroethylene found in the vicinity of the former manufacturing plant.

According to the U.S Environmental Protection Agency, trichloroethylene is toxic and carcinogenic.

According to the Environmental QualityDepartment’s remedial action document, concentrations of the chemical in the soil and groundwater did not exceed the EPA’s standard for “acceptable cancer risk” for residents outside the plant. Concentrations in the soil were also within that limits for workers on the plant site, although there is an elevated noncarcinogenic risk to workers who have direct contact with the contaminated groundwater at the site.

According to the remedial action document, the “plume” of groundwater contamination “has not shifted substantially” over the past eight years, indicating that it is relatively stable. The plan calls for dealing with affected soil at the plant site by covering it with asphalt and an impermeable coating that will prevent rainwater from carrying trichloroethylene in the soil into area groundwater.

The plan calls for contaminated g roundwaterto be treated in a process known as “in-situ chemical oxidation,” in which unwanted organic compounds are used to speed the decomposition of pollutants. During a public hearing for the draft of the remedial action decision document in November, Department of Environmental Quality Deputy Director Ryan Benefield provided about half a dozen examples from throughout the region where the in-situ process had been used successfully to reduce groundwater contamination.

Although the remedial action decision does not specify any deadlines for Whirlpool to complete the remediation, it does require the corporation to produce quarterly and annual progress reports, as well as a technical review of all remediation efforts two years after they are initiated.

Vernier did not respond directly to requests for comment Tuesday regarding technical aspects of the coming testing. According to the statement issued earlier, workers will be conducting soil and groundwater tests for two weeks in Decemberand one week in January.

“We are gathering additional, targeted data to help us to best plan for the remedial activities set out in the [remedial action decision document],” Vernier said in an email.

In May, the Sebastian County tax assessor lowered the assessed value on about 75 homes in the vicinity of the former manufacturing, triggering a trio of lawsuits against Whirlpool on behalf of 25 plaintiffs whose property values plummeted.

Fort Smith Mayor Sandy Sanders said no one from Whirlpool had been in direct contact with city administrators since the November public hearing. Sanders said that while the city’s dealings with Whirlpool have been frustrating for administrators and constituents, he was pleased that the corporation appeared to be taking preliminary steps toward decontaminating the groundwater and soil pollution.

“The frustration is still there, but at least they’re beginning to take the steps they need to in order to get it resolved,” Sanders said.