Chesapeake balks at $1M for Wingfield Pointe cleanup

CHESAPEAKE

In 2005, a contractor for the Environmental Protection Agency dug up and removed more than 100 buried drums and 40 yards of contaminated soil at a property in the Wingfield Pointe subdivision. The drums contained elevated levels of two hazardous substances, and the soil had high levels of another, arsenic.

Now, the federal agency has slapped Chesapeake with a bill of nearly $1 million for the cleanup. It says the city operated a dump there for years, failed to safely close it in the late 1960s, and allowed a residential development to be built directly over it.

The city is refusing to pay. Attorneys for the city say some of the EPA's cleanup was unnecessary. One lawyer wrote to the EPA in January that the city should have been given an opportunity to do the removal work itself.

The attorney called it "shameful" that the EPA spent thousands of dollars tracking down evidence of Chesapeake's role in running the landfill, when the "city's historic involvement in the operation of the site has not been denied, and was well known."

She said that the claim has "discouraged, to say the least," the relationship between the city and EPA.

Nevertheless, the city has put more than $965,300 in a reserve account in case it has to pay. Both Chesapeake and EPA officials say negotiations are ongoing.

"We will do what is right," said Chesapeake City Attorney Ron Hallman. "If we owe anything, we will pay it. We think the claim is excessive."

The EPA is declining to comment on details of the case. But the agency has pushed to recover the money from Chesapeake for more than six months, city and federal documents show.

In September, the agency laid out its entire liability case against Chesapeake, which was compiled after several years worth of interviews with witnesses whose names were being protected.

"The city and its predecessor, Norfolk County, operated a municipal dump for decades, freely allowing anything and everything to be dumped there," wrote Cynthia T. Weiss, assistant regional counsel for the EPA. "Years later, the city allowed a residential development to be built directly atop the dump."

According to EPA documents, Norfolk County operated the Wingfield Pointe site as a dump from the early 1940s to the 1960s. Chesapeake took over the operations of the dump after it became a city in 1963, federal documents claim.

The EPA said Chesapeake operated the dump even though it did not own any of the property. The city entered into no written agreements for the property except one six-month lease in 1967, according to the federal documents.

During that time period, the dump at the Wingfield Pointe site was commonly known as the place residents and businesses could drop off all kinds of trash, according to EPA documents. Neighbors and other witnesses recall seeing paint cans, automobile equipment, construction debris and 55-gallon steel drums at the dump. The city operated bulldozers there and also filled ponds with waste, a onetime city employee allegedly told the EPA.

Witnesses said the city stopped using the property as a landfill in the late 1960s, when another dump opened in the Great Bridge area.

The Wingfield Pointe subdivision, a neighborhood of about 70 homes in Deep Creek, was approved in 1988 with the condition that residents be notified that the community was being built over an old dump, officials have said.

Residents say that never happened, and developer William T. Wingfield said no one at City Hall ever told him about the buyer's awareness packages that he was supposed give out.

In January 2005, during the construction of a swimming pool behind a Wingfield Pointe home, a contractor uncovered 20 to 30 rusty, mostly crushed 55-gallon drums.

The EPA's contractor found more drums over the next few months.

The agency claims to have spent about $965,300 on cleanup, removal and investigation activities related to the Wingfield Pointe site. Officials said in 2005 that there is no immediate health threat in the subdivision.

The city had Portsmouth attorney Susan Taylor Hansen respond to the EPA's claim. In her Jan. 5 letter, Hansen said complete sampling results were not provided to the city. She said that the city has acted as a partner in investigating the Wingfield Pointe site. Chesapeake should have been offered an opportunity to perform the risk assessment, she argued. She said the exorbitant cost could have been avoided.

City Attorney Hallman said the EPA has refused to disclose the names of witnesses interviewed to compile the liability case. He also said a big portion of the money spent by EPA was on liability investigation.

"We don't believe you can collect costs for that," he said.

Hansen's letter said the EPA's documentation is "grossly inadequate" and fails to provide the cost detail of the agency's activities.

"On the basis of this careful review of the information available to the city, I have advised the city that it cannot responsibly use the city's scant resources to pay these costs," Hansen wrote.

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