Cleanup met some opposition
NORTHPORT, Wash. – The challenge was to clean up this hardscrabble town near the U.S.-Canada border where a defunct smelter spewed toxic lead and arsenic on yards and gardens from 1897 to 1922.
Last week, as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency left Northport, population 312, the town remained conflicted over the $2.7 million Superfund project launched this summer.
One in five yards the EPA tested was found to have unsafe levels of lead and arsenic. The old LeRoi Smelter site was cleaned, 29 homes got brand-new yards and thousands of tons of tainted soil were consolidated and capped – greatly reducing exposure hazards.
“The entire town got a facelift,” said Clifford Ward, a Stevens County librarian who runs Northport’s one-room library in a museum that faces the Columbia River.
“I have a new yard. I’m happy and it’s much safer for my kids,” said Fred Fata, whose twin 2-year-olds, Scotty and Kailee, played in front of the wood stove on a chilly winter morning.
“They did an excellent job. It has helped the whole town,” said Mary Jarvis, an accountant. She and her husband, Mike Jarvis, own the local hardware store, Columbia River Feeds, which did $10,000 in business with the EPA cleanup crews, selling them hand tools, seed, fencing and plumbing supplies.
Despite the praise, the cleanup that kicked into high gear from July through October wasn’t easy.
Initially, there was suspicion – even hostility – directed toward the project. It’s a familiar refrain in many former mining-dependent towns when the EPA launches a Superfund cleanup.
“I got threats – for instance, ‘It’s the beginning of hunting season and we really don’t like the EPA,’ ” said project manager Earl Liverman, an EPA cleanup veteran who faced similar warnings from locals in Idaho’s Silver Valley.
“There was a lot of paranoia,” said Red Simpson, who lives two miles north of town on the banks of the Columbia. “People were worried that if they let the EPA test, they’d find other pollution and they’d be billed for it.”
Simpson asked the EPA contractors to test his yard and garden – and found out it was safe. “For us, it was a happy story. We got a form certifying the results,” he said.
Skeptical homeowners
Some Northport homeowners didn’t believe the tainted soil in their town – which tested as much as 300 times above the federal government’s safety threshold for lead – was dangerous.
“We told them lead was a hazard to small children but the results (of exposure) are subtle – like impaired motor coordination and small losses in IQ. They wanted to see the bodies,” Liverman said.
Lead is a potent neurotoxin that is most hazardous to the developing brains and nervous systems of small children, numerous government studies show. But some of Northport’s elected officials weren’t convinced their kids were in danger or the cleanup was necessary.
“A lot of this was a waste of your money,” said Mayor Jerry Matteson, a retired stockbroker who runs a bed and breakfast on Highway 25, the main drag through town.
Matteson and the town council refused to sell city water to the EPA for dust suppression, forgoing up to $70,000 in revenue. That decision forced the EPA to draw water from the Columbia. They also didn’t let the EPA test some city property for heavy metals.
Now, the city leaders are also saying that EPA contractors’ heavy trucks damaged their streets.
“That claim arose as we literally were walking out the door,” Liverman said.
Matteson calls the EPA project “make-work” and says the city didn’t have any water to spare. Acting on the advice of other Superfund critics, he’s been taking photographs all over town to document his claim of damage on the town’s oiled, unpaved roads.
“Those big trucks just tore ‘em up. The price tag will be high – $7 a foot,” Matteson said.
However, the mayor admits that Northport looks better. And he also benefited personally from the EPA cleanup; his bed and breakfast got a $20,000 new front yard after he quietly asked the EPA to test it for heavy metals.
“We didn’t seek people out for yard cleanups. People had to come to us,” said EPA spokesman Mark MacIntyre.
‘I feel safer’
At the same time, the mayor opposed any soil testing at the town library, said Ward, the librarian. He runs a summer reading program for kids, and they often meet outside in an adjacent city lot because the old brick library building lacks air conditioning.
“I told the mayor that the kids’ exposure is a concern during the hot, dusty days. I suggested testing the property, but the mayor said absolutely no,” Ward said.
Matteson said he didn’t think the testing was necessary because a recent federal health study gave Newport a clean bill of health for lead exposure.
Northport’s hostility to the EPA was unwarranted, said Fran Bolt, the mayor of Marcus, another small Stevens County town south of Northport on the shores of Lake Roosevelt.
Bolt said she has friends in Northport who are delighted with the town’s facelift – provided free, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.
“It was a gross misunderstanding. The mayor made it worse. He’s a really good guy, but he didn’t understand why it was necessary to protect the health and safety of the citizenry. It’s really important to protect our environment, but it’s easier to stay in denial,” Bolt said.
The EPA identified Northport and two old Stevens County mines for accelerated cleanup in 2002.
They divided the Northport project into two parts – the old smelter complex and the town. Their initial soil tests found wind-blown smelter contamination everywhere – up to 300,000 parts per million (ppm) lead and 20,000 ppm arsenic, a human carcinogen that can also cause birth defects. That’s far above federal safety limits of 1,000 ppm for lead and 230 ppm for arsenic.
“We tried to convince people we were there to help, but only 13 people initially stepped forward,” Liverman said. They were eventually able to test 191 properties.
In any yard where lead was found over 1,000 parts per million – or 700 ppm if kids were living there – they removed 6 inches of soil and replaced it with clean topsoil and a cover – sod, gravel or hydroseeded grass. Homeowners could choose which ground cover they wanted.
Of the 191 properties tested, 67 were safe, 91 qualified for “risk reduction” strategies such as using gloves for yard work and wiping dust from interiors, and 33 qualified for yard removals.
Four of the 33 worst-contaminated properties couldn’t be cleaned because the owners never removed piles of junk from their yards, Liverman said.
The Fatas’ yard got special attention because of their young twins.
“We had no idea there was lead in the soil until the EPA came here,” said the children’s mother, Jennifer Fata.
Now, their yard is a broad sweep of new green lawn all the way to the back fence. The EPA crews also helped fix the septic tank when it stopped working during the yard project, which cost about $10,000, Fred Fata said.
“I made out better than what I had. I also feel safer, because my kids like to dig and make mud pies. My yard is certified and EPA tested, and that means something,” he added.
The yard cleanups cost $5,000 to $50,000, depending on the size of the property and the problems encountered during the work. There are no sewers in Northport, and some of the properties had drainage problems.
“You don’t know what you’re facing until you start to dig,” Liverman said.
Changing attitudes
One of the costliest yards totaled nearly $50,000 because it had drainage problems. A thousand tons of tainted dirt was replaced with clean topsoil.
On average, 500 to 600 tons of dirt and rubble were excavated from each yard, said Jason Coury, response manager for Environmental Quality Management Inc., the EPA’s cleanup contractor. He’s also working in Libby, Mont., where the EPA is cleaning up asbestos-tainted soil from the W.R. Grace & Co. vermiculite mine – the worst Superfund site in the nation for human health risks.
In July and August, Coury’s crews began to move contaminated soil from the Northport yards to a permanent 11-acre impoundment on the 32-acre LeRoi Smelter site. The U.S. Coast Guard did air monitoring to alleviate concerns about lead in the dust and contractors watered the streets to suppress the dust.
Burlington Northern Santa Fe also hired its own crews to clean up its property, which included the city park and the smelter stack. BNSF paid for its share of the contamination and was very cooperative, Liverman said.
The railroad started work in September and finished in early November, said BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas. The stack had to come down. “The smelter was 30 feet from our operating rail line. It was a safety and operating hazard,” Melonas said.
“We’re getting positive feedback for the work we did in the park. The town is pleased and we are pleased that the property is safe,” he added.
City officials clashed with the EPA over three city wells located on the smelter site. Matteson said they were afraid the cleanup work would kick up lead in the wellhead protection zone, tainting the wells. They were fenced off and EPA didn’t remove any soil within 100 feet of the wells, Liverman said.
When the city denied the use of city water for dust suppression, “we had to scramble at the last minute” to draw water from the river, Liverman said.
Fifteen Northport-area workers were hired for the cleanup.
The crews were paid prevailing union-scale wages required at any Superfund site where there is no existing company to pay the bills and the EPA is in charge. That meant workers were paid from $28 to $32 an hour plus time-and-a half for overtime.
The workers performed well, Liverman said.
“Their level of professionalism was great. We couldn’t have asked for better people,” he said. All the workers got a 40-hour federal health and safety course and are now eligible for other government cleanup jobs.
“They are part of the cadre that we’d call upon to do further Superfund cleanup work,” Liverman said.
As the cleanup project wound down this fall, BNSF donated $1,500 of unused sod to the town. “We gave it away to the community,” Melonas said.
The EPA objected when some of the sod ended up in the mayor’s yard and in other private yards. Matteson says he has proof he paid for the sod and showed a reporter where he put some of it in his side yard.
With so many Northport yards swathed in new green grass, a lot of the animosity toward the EPA has dissipated, Mary Jarvis said.
“At first, half the town was anti-cleanup. But now, with more of a chance to see the results, a lot of the hostility is gone,” she said.