Chesapeake takes steps toward Superfund designation for site

CHESAPEAKE

By asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for a "preliminary site assessment" this week, Chesapeake has taken the first step toward having the Battlefield Golf Club at Centerville considered as a potential Superfund site, an EPA official said Friday.

As a Superfund site, investigated by EPA, the golf course could join a list of the nation's most contaminated properties and could receive federal cleanup dollars. Also Friday, Chesapeake's city attorney raised the possibility of extending public water to nearby homes if contaminants from the water under the golf course have spread into the wells that serve surrounding houses.

"We're going to do the responsible thing, which may have to include putting public water out there," City Attorney Ron Hallman said. "We're going to do what's necessary for public health. That's a lot of money, potentially."

Well tests conducted on the golf course, which is sculpted from 1.5 million tons of fly ash, showed elevated levels of arsenic, lead and other contaminants, city officials revealed at a meeting with residents Thursday. Water samples taken from nearby homes in April did not show signs of contamination.

The city's meeting effectively answered a question about the land that existed since The Virginian-Pilot's first report about it in March, apparently offering the first solid evidence that some environmental contamination has taken place on the golf course property.

The immediate issue now is whether the contaminants have moved into the water that serves the homes around the course - a few of which are immediately adjacent to the property. An environmental testing firm collected samples from more than a dozen homes Friday. The company will be on Whittamore Road and Murray Drive again this morning collecting more samples.

City officials promised results from the latest round of tests within three weeks, according to a letter delivered to residents late Thursday.

Robyn Pierce, who lives on Murray Drive, said she stopped using tap water the minute she read about the contaminants in Friday's newspaper.

"We're talking about a public health crisis," Pierce said. "It's incredibly disturbing."

Ellis O. Sivels, a retired longshoreman who has lived in the same Whittamore Road home for 48 years, looked on as a testing company bottled water from his bathroom sink. "If there's a problem, I'd just like for it to be solved," he said.

City Manager William Harrell's request for an EPA preliminary site assessment could mean a long process that eventually results in the property's being declared a Superfund site.

"That is the trigger to start the Superfund process," said Chris Wagner, an on-scene coordinator in the Richmond office of the EPA, who attended Thursday's meeting between city officials and residents who live near the golf course.

Triggering consideration for Superfund status for the site "isn't what we had in mind when we sent that letter," said Mark Cox, a city spokesman. "We just wanted to get the EPA involved."

Even so, Wagner said, she added the golf course to the EPA's Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Information System, or CERCLIS, which means the EPA's Superfund program is looking at it.

Wagner said she will be meeting next with city officials and representatives of the state Department of Environmental Quality to assess the situation and determine a plan of action.

"We have to find out if it's migrating off the site," Wagner said.

While a second round of water tests is under way at nearly 30 homes close to the golf course, involving samples taken from kitchen taps, more will have to be done, she said.

Until the city gets results from Friday's and to day's testing, it would be "premature" to take more serious action, Harrell said Friday.

If contamination is discovered in homeowners' water, which comes from wells, the city will look for what Hallman called "responsible parties" to foot the bill for any costly public utilties upgrades. Those parties could include Dominion Virginia Power and the original developers of the golf course, CPM Virginia LLC, he said.

Hallman also defended the city's decision in 2001 to approve a permit for the course, saying the "city has done nothing wrong in the process."

When a Dominion Virginia Power representative came in front of the city asking for approval, Hallman said, the company provided officials with a report that gave a "clean bill of health" to fly ash, a residue left from the burning of coal for elecricity.

And Hallman said that it is up to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality to regulate the use of fly ash.

"The city does not have legal authority to regulate fly ash," he said. "We've relied in good faith on Dominion Power, who has assured us it was safe, on DEQ, who has assured us it was safe, and others."

Dominion and the course's original developers long have maintained that the fly ash used on the course was treated to prevent contaminants from leaching. With tests on the golf club's wells showing high levels of arsenic and lead, Hallman said, he now has doubts about the information originally presented by Dominion.

Dominion officials had little to say Friday about the recent test results.

"We are setting up a meeting with the city and the golf course owners to discuss the latest information," said Dan Genest, a Dominion spokesman.

Staff writer Warren Fiske contributed to this report.

Robert McCabe, (757) 222-5217, robert.mccabe@pilotonline.com

Mike Saewitz, (757) 222-5207, mike.saewitz@pilotonline.com