Slow-moving plan to rid river of toxic goo gains momentum

PORTSMOUTH

It's simply known as "the wall," a steel-and-concrete structure costing about $22 million that will be pounded deep into the floor of the Elizabeth River near one of the worst toxic-waste sites in Hampton Roads.

As designed, the structure will extend 1,200 feet in a straight line, about 250 feet from shore, rising 11 feet above the surface of the water.

Its purpose: to hold back thousands of tons of highly contaminated goo, or sediments, that will be scooped from the river bottom and dumped behind the wall.

The wall, which will be next to the Jordan Bridge and the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, also is expected to block any tainted soil and groundwater from flowing off the site and further damaging the river. About 6 acres of waterfront land will be created from the stored goo. A construction contract is expected to be awarded in the fall for the project, which is finally moving forward after years of delay.

State environmental officials initially objected to the wall for numerous reasons, and even threatened to fight its construction. When it was first proposed in 2007, Bob Grabb, director of habitat protection for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, said: "If you've got contaminated stuff as bad as this, you remove it. You get it out of the river. You don't just shift it around and leave it in the river."

But Grabb has retired. And the attorney general's office ruled last month that the state lacks the authority to contest the project, which is part of a national Superfund cleanup of the Atlantic Wood site, led by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"This is a nasty spot, and has been nasty for a long, long time," John Bull, a spokesman for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, said last week. "In the best of all world s, we'd like to see the site cleaned up differently. But money is tight and it's not getting any better."

The property, owned by Atlantic Wood Industries, was placed on the national Superfund list of contaminated sites in 1990. The land served for 60 years as a wood treatment yard, where poles and pilings were slathered with a tar-like preservative known as creosote.

Most of the wastes, some of which can cause cancer, were either buried in pits or piped directly into the river - actions that today would be illegal. Before environmental regulations were put in place, however, such dumping was common..

The EPA chose a cleanup strategy in 2007 that included the wall. It was expected to cost $45 million to refurbish the entire 48-acre site as well as about 36 acres of contaminated river bottom.

Now, though, the project has grown, and the costs have too. Randy Sturgeon, the EPA's project manager, said recent tests showed that to truly cleanse the river and get rid of the black toxic goo, more dredging will be needed.

That means the wall has to be bigger, which in turn means the cleanup will be more expensive. The project now is estimated to cost about $100 million, Sturgeon said.

Atlantic Wood Industries, based in Georgia, cannot afford the cleanup on its own. The EPA, the state and the Navy, which dumped wastes on the site during World War II, are expected to share the financial burden, though an exact formula has not been agreed to, Sturgeon said.

The project received $5 million in federal stimulus money last year, which allowed the EPA to hire crews to start removing contaminated soil and building an earthen berm that, like the wall, will hold back river goo.

Sturgeon said he has enough money in hand to construct the wall, expected to cost $22 million. An engineering firm is completing its design, he said, and a construction company should be awarded a contract this fall.

Local environmentalists are pleased the long-delayed project is finally under way, but they remain concerned that the wall will cut off a prized cove and ruin wetlands along the shoreline.

Led by the Elizabeth River Project, a Portsmouth-based environmental group, advocates also are concerned about the integrity of the wall and the maintenance plan.

The EPA and Atlantic Wood want to maintain the wall for 10 years, then turn it over to the state. State officials are not sure they want that responsibility.

"Obviously you can't have a failure" in which the wall would crack or fall down and allow toxic goo to slide back into the river, said Joe Rieger, a senior scientist for the Elizabeth River Project. "That part of the project has to be nailed down - who's going to take care of this in the long run?"

The environmental group has long said that the Elizabeth cannot recover unless its most notorious toxic hot spots are purged. And one of the worst sites is the Atlantic Wood property.

Sturgeon said that contaminated sediments are piled up 30 feet deep in some places. That area also hosts fish with cancerous lesions. And state health officials warn people against eating the yellow "mustard," which is part of the digestive system, inside crabs caught in those waters.

Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com