State to Exxon: Clean spill’s pathways better

Letter also slams view inaction is an option

Multiple booms remain Wednesday in Dawson Cove along Arkansas 89 in Mayflower. Across the road lies the main body of Lake Conway, connected to the cove by culverts under the highway.

Multiple booms remain Wednesday in Dawson Cove along Arkansas 89 in Mayflower. Across the road lies the main body of Lake Conway, connected to the cove by culverts under the highway.

Thursday, February 27, 2014

Arkansas’ environmental agency has told Exxon Mobil that it must do more to correct oil-related contamination in a Lake Conway cove and three drainage ditches leading to it.

The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, sometimes referred to as ADEQ , has given Exxon Mobil until March 11 to revise its recommendations for cleaning up the areas in Mayflower where the company’s Pegasus pipeline cracked open March 29 and spilled an estimated 210,000 gallons of heavy crude oil into a neighborhood.

Exxon Mobil spokesman Aaron Stryk said Wednesday, “We are in the process of reviewing the comments and incorporating suggested edits as appropriate.”

In a Feb. 19 email to Exxon Mobil officials and others, Tammie Hynum, chief of the department’s Hazardous Waste Division, said the oil giant’s January report on cleanup recommendations appeared to contain contradictory information, should be expanded to include more cleanup areas and conflicted with a state environmental regulation in one area.

Hynum also scolded Exxon Mobil for saying that if it had decided to take no further action, there would be “no regulations” that “apply to this alternative.”

“ADEQ disagrees with this statement,” Hynum wrote.

She said an Arkansas regulation states, “‘Oil, grease or petrochemical substances shall not be present in receiving waters to the extent that they produce globules or other residue or any visible, colored film on the surface or coat the banks and/or bottoms of the water body or adversely affect any of the associated biota.’”

Biota refers to a region’s flora and fauna - its animals, plants and other organisms.

“Performing no actions in these areas would be viewed by ADEQ to be a continuing violation” of that regulation, she wrote.

In the January report to the department, a Colorado company hired by Exxon Mobil cited alternatives to address the cleanup. One alternative was to do nothing. The Colorado company said it listed the do-nothing concept “for comparison purposes only” to the other alternatives it listed, though the report also included the part saying no regulations applied to the do-nothing alternative.

That report proposed that Exxon Mobil reduce oil sheening in Lake Conway’s Dawson Cove by excavating up to 1 foot of affected soil and sediment from a channel leading into the cove and by capping sheens in the open-water area with a mixture of sand and an absorbent clay.

Arcadis U.S. Inc., a testing company Exxon Mobil hired after the Mayflower spill last spring, prepared the January report, which totaled hundreds of pages and was divided into 18 parts, including 15 appendixes.

The channel recommended for excavation runs between Interstate 40 and the cove’s open-water area.

Another roadway, Arkansas 89, separates the cove from the main part of the lake. Water flows through two culverts beneath the highway. Emergency workers barricaded those culverts shortly after the spill, but workers have since removed the barriers. Exxon Mobil and state authorities have said there is no evidence oil reached the main part of the popular fishing lake.

Hynum told Exxon Mobil that the state needs more information before it can accept the report. For one thing, she said, Exxon Mobil should monitor sheen on the waterways weekly at this time.

Further, she said, “Sheen Monitoring should occur after each [quarter-inch] rainfall event.”

Hynum also said the area that Exxon Mobil had proposed for sheen mitigation “should be expanded” to include certain areas of heavy vegetation, “since it is highly probable the heavy vegetative area contains oil residuals from the pipeline release.”

In a Dec. 13 letter to Jeff Bunce, project developer for Exxon Mobil Environmental Services Co., Hynum said samples taken in the cove and other drainage sites showed that some chemicals were higher than established ecological screening values for “benthic receptors.”

Those receptors are organisms such as bloodworms and insect larvae that live on the water’s bottom or within it and are a major food source for small fish.

But in the January report, Arcadis contended, “The results from the screening data evaluation and the subsequent refined risk evaluation indicate that there are no unacceptable ecological risks in the drainage ways, Dawson Cove, and Lake Conway. Therefore, no action is necessary to mitigate constituent levels in the soil and sediment” in those areas.

Hynum, however, responded in the Feb. 19 email that another part of Exxon Mobil’s report said “sheens with oil spots” had been observed in three locations in the drainage ways in November and December.

“These appendices appear to contradict each other,” she wrote. “In addition, these drainage ways continue to show sheen observations in the sheen reports since December 2013.”

She told the company to include all three drainage ditches into its remedial alternative evaluation in its report’s final revision.

Exxon Mobil’s Pegasus pipeline ruptured on the afternoon of Good Friday, forcing residents to flee their homes. Twenty-two houses were evacuated for months, and many residents have never moved back. Exxon Mobil has since demolished three of those houses because of oil beneath the foundations.

The pipeline, which runs about 850 miles from Illinois to the Texas Gulf Coast, was shut down shortly after the spill and has not restarted.

Numerous lawsuits, including one by the state and federal governments, are pending, and the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has proposed fining Exxon Mobil more than $2.6 million for nine “probable” safety violations. Exxon Mobil has called the safety administration’s analysis “flawed” and has appealed.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/27/2014