Whirpool floats treating spill

The Whirlpool Corp. is proposing to treat part of a Fort Smith neighborhood contaminated with trichloroethylene with a chemical neutralizer to reduce the chemical’s concentration, according to an amendment the company’s consultant submitted to the state earlier this month.

The amendment differs from the company’s initial proposal in its Revised Risk Management Plan to the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality. Whirlpool had proposed allowing the chemical in the groundwater under the neighborhood to decompose naturally and restricting access to the groundwater.

An environmental investigator who works with activist Erin Brockovich has said such natural decomposition could take hundreds of years.

The natural-decomposition plan also drew opposition from residents of the neighborhood who complained the contamination ruined their property values and wanted Whirlpool to clean it up.

The amendment submitted by consultant Environ International Corp. to the department June 14 proposed using a chemical oxidation agent at the source of the trichloroethylene spill on Whirlpool property and two areas on the edge of the neighborhood that have the highest concentration of the chemical.

The two areas are on Whirlpool property but on the neighborhood side of Ingersoll Avenue, which separates the closed plant property from the neighborhood to the north.

Ingersoll Avenue also is the dividing line of the underground gradient - the plume of trichloroethylene flows northeast into the neighborhood on the north side and flows to the south on the south side of the street. Treating the tricholoethyleneat the head of the northeastern flow would cut off further migration of the chemical into the neighborhood, the amendment said.

Focusing treatment on the areas of highest concentration “will result in significant [trichloroethylene] mass reduction which will allow the ongoing natural attenuation [decomposition] processes to more efficiently reduce the remaining [trichloroethylene],” the amendment said.

Whirlpool and the Environmental Quality Department came to the solutionjointly during recent discussions, company spokesman Kristine Vernier said.

Department spokesman Katherine Benenati wrote in an e-mail Friday that “We will need to review the plan thoroughly before determining whether the remedies proposed in it are sufficient or whether we will propose alternatives.”

According to the amendment, pipes would be sunk into the ground at various depths in the treatment areas to reach the trichloroethylene at all levels in the impermeable clay soil. The oxidation chemical would be injected at high pressure to ensure it is infused into the soil.

An attempt in 2009 to treat the trichloroethylene in the ground with the neutralizing agent was unsuccessful because the thick soil did not allow the oxidation chemical to circulate, Vernier said. However, the chemical was effective in neutralizing any trichloroethylene it touched.

Whirlpool used trichloroethylene to clean metal refrigerator parts before assembly at its plant from 1967 to 1981. The plant closed last June.

Workers digging up an underground fuel storage tank in 1989 found a large concentration of the chemical had leaked into the ground near the area where the parts were cleaned. The plume ofchemical was found to have migrated in the groundwater into the neighborhood north of the plant in 2001.

Residents of the neighborhood learned of the contamination in January, when representatives of the company held a neighborhood meeting to notify them of an ordinance the company wanted city directors to approve banning drilling of water wells in the neighborhood.

The directors rejected the ordinance but passed a resolution calling on Whirlpool and the Environmental Quality Department to work expeditiously clean up the contamination under the neighborhood.