Oberlin Unmitigated Chemical Hazards
My RSS Feeds
Sustainable Community Associates' Tainted, Titanic Wreck
posted Saturday, 17 November 2007
Oberlin City Council (11/5/2007) & Oberlin Planning Board (11/7/2007) testimony:
In a hyperbolic letter published in last week’s coupon-laden arthritic cipher, Sustainable Community Associates’ environmental consultant John Pardee, an Oberlin News-Tribune columnist, characterized the cogent, lucid opposition to SCA’s unmitigated, eggshell-thin economic Hindenburg as "environmental terrorism." Appropriating a page from Al Jazeera, Mr. Pardee lamented the protracted, costly, fifteen-month regulatory "debacle" that "tarnished their [SCA’s] reputation and nearly killed their project." To ascertain the inconvenient truth, let’s peer under the panglossian hood and conduct a forensic autopsy.
Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) closure, the design of an acceptable Ohio EPA hazardous waste testing protocol, is not synonymous with RCRA clearance. Absent credible amelioration, temporary RCRA mollification is RCRA circumvention: the functional equivalent of rearranging the wicker deck chairs on a tainted, listing Titanic. No reported soil or groundwater remediation has occurred at the highly contaminated former Buick dealership site since December 2004. No accurate, accountable groundwater monitoring timeline -- a critical barometer -- has been exhibited or officially tendered. At the September 17, 2007, Oberlin City Council meeting, SCA spokesman Ben Ezinga touted SCA’s commitment to obtain a coveted Covenant Not to Sue under Ohio EPA’s anemic Voluntary Action Program (VAP). According to recently retained SCA attorney Robert Karl’s revealing October 9, 2007, dispatch to Ohio EPA Hazardous Waste counsel Todd Anderson, obtained under Ohio’s Public Records Act, that vaunted pledge is unlikely to be consummated, inscribed, revived or redeemed:
"The fee associated with NFA letters and requests for Covenants Not to Sue that include Phase I and Phase II assessments could be several tens of thousands of dollars (OAC 3745-300-03.) This fee is one reason that may prevent SCA from requesting a Covenant Not to Sue for the VAP work performed at its property. SCA does desire to obtain a Covenant Not to Sue for the VAP work performed at its property, but SCA’s ability to obtain the Covenant Not to Sue will depend on whether SCA has the available financing."
In a June 26, 1994, Cleveland Plain Dealer article entitled Environmentalists Leery of Possible Loopholes, Chris Trepal, co-director of the Earth Day Coalition in Northeast Ohio, lambasted the enabling VAP legislation as "one of the poorest public policy measures I’ve ever seen," A clairvoyant Richard Sahi, executive director of the Ohio Environmental Council, echoed his sentiment in the May 26,1994, Cincinnati Post, "We do predict there will be a lot of shoddy cleanups under this bill the state will never catch." Testifying before the House Energy & Natural Resources Committee on behalf of the Ohio Academy of Trial Lawyers, Cincinnati environmental lawyer David Altman asserted, "This bill is a definite bait-and-switch. What it is supposed to do and what it does is two different things."
A seminal, 152 page 2001 Gund Foundation funded study by the Green Environmental Council confirmed the critics’ predictions. A dearth of agency resources to provide meaningful regulatory oversight combined with the lack of a credible, established enforcement mechanism has rendered the feckless, industry aligned program toothless. "It’s a broken program - it doesn’t work," declared the council’s Bruce Cornett in an interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Both the Sierra Club and Ohio Citizen Action opposed the 2000 $400 million Clean Ohio state bond issue out of concern the fungible proceeds could be utilized to prop up the lame Voluntary Action Program and create a trojan horse polluters slush fund. "This is the governor's attempt to whitewash his EPA," charged Jane Forrest Redfern, environmental projects director for Ohio Citizen Action in a November 1, 2000, Cleveland Plain Dealer article. Dedicated professionals, veteran Ohio EPA bureaucrats attempted to rectify the problem. According to the October 4, 2000, Cleveland Plain Dealer, "EPA staffers who shared some of the environmentalists’ concerns, at one point launched a quiet but unsuccessful campaign to disband the program."
For six years after the Voluntary Action Program’s 1996 implementation, the U.S. EPA refused to extend program participants federal immunity and threatened to decertify the Ohio EPA due to the VAP’s expansive, inhibiting secrecy provisions and tangible lack of transparency. In a brokered, bifurcated modification to the Ohio VAP that "frankly doesn't make sense at all," according to Ohio Public Interest Research Group director Amy Simpson (Akron Beacon Journal, February 24, 2001), an alternative "memorandum of agreement" VAP track with enhanced public access was crafted. Companies that elect the original, opaque, "classic" option, which conceals under an embargo the extent and nature of contamination, will not be afforded U.S. EPA liability insulation. "Why Ohio would want a two-headed monster is beyond me," quipped the Ohio Environmental Council’s Jack Shaner. In SCA’s case, the jaundiced, green and incompliant wants to hide what you can’t see.
Mark Chesler
Oberlin, Ohio
_____________________________________
Trimethylbenzene Estates
Oberlin City Council (6/4/2007) testimony:
In a sweeping, omnibus evaluation of petrochemical permeated subterranean soil borings extracted from Sustainable Community Associates’ (SCA) unmitigated brownfield, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (Ohio EPA) Hazardous Waste Division determined in a May 18, 2007, directive that monitoring stations installed after an August 16, 2004, negligent, catastrophic solvent spill on the grounds of the former Schubert Buick dealership were improperly constructed at sites designed to minimize contaminant detection. The Ohio EPA report concluded: "None of the temporary ground water monitoring wells were installed in the area directly around the former location of the waste oil tank. In addition, it appears that none of the temporary wells are located down gradient of the location of the waste oil tank."1
The salient discrepancy was documented in my July 5, 2006, Oberlin City Council remarks: "Since the designated canary wells were installed at higher topographical levels, upstream from the perforated tank, the dichotomy is not surprising.2 While SCA’s principals may have shaved a medley of regulatory corners, concentrated petrochemical solvents are unlikely to defy the immutable laws of physics."3
The radically elevated benzene levels -- "at only .0002 ppm below the regulatory limit"4 -- registered by the sub rosa SCA monitoring well closest to Plum Creek, adjacent to the Oberlin Public Library, in the literal shadow of Oberlin College’s Firelands Dormitory, pose an unacceptable, endemic risk to public health. Disclosed to SCA principals in early January 2005, the corroborating minefield of damaging data was revealed to municipal officials on Armistice Day 2005, eleven months after a precipitous, jurisdictionally flawed, Ohio Bureau of Underground Storage Tanks perfunctory filing.
SCA’s compromised B-3 well point registered arsenic concentrations of 9 ug/L, just below the Ohio EPA 10 ug/L contamination ceiling. Significant groundwater infiltration of xylenes, m,p-xylenes, o-xylenes, toluene, ethylbenzene, napthalene, n-propylbenzene, 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene, 1,3,5-trimethylbenzene, barium, lead, mercury and selenium was also recorded. Northcoast Drilling’s delinquent Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) field report -- obtained by ODNR after a protracted two-year delay -- manifests petroleum and pungent petroleum odor encountered in SCA’s peripheral monitoring wells #3 and #4.5
According to Ohio EPA senior environmental hazardous waste supervisor Natalie Oryshkewych, in an October 18, 2006, on-site meeting, SCA rebuffed Ohio EPA’s request for augmented well readings and divulged plans to precipitously seal the apertures. Charging that "the groundwater has not been adequately characterized and the possibility of ground water contamination at the site has not been sufficiently investigated," the May 18, 2007, Ohio EPA SCA edict mandates "quarterly ground water monitoring…for a minimum of four quarters." 6
Instead of a vaunted silver, gold or platinum LEED rating, SCA’s unmitigated, egg-shell thin economic Hindenburg deserves an unalloyed, premium octane rating. ‘Escape the rat race: refined living at SCA’s arsenic-laced Trimethylbenzene Estates.’
Mark Chesler
Oberlin, Ohio
1 Ohio EPA, Comments on Sampling and Analysis Report, Sustainable Community Associates, OHR 000 124 198 (Twinsburg, Ohio: Ohio EPA, 5/18/2007) p. 3.
2 Earth Consulting Ltd., Phase II Environmental Site Assessment, 43 East College St., Oberlin, Ohio (Euclid, Ohio: Earth Consulting, Ltd., 10/26/2002), figure #3.
3 Mark Chesler testimony, Oberlin City Council, 7/5/2006.
4 Oberlin Fire Chief Dennis Kirin e-mail to Oberlin City Manager Rob Dispirito, 11/17/2005.
5 Ohio EPA, Comments on Sampling and Analysis Report, Sustainable Community Associates, p. 3.
6 Ibid.
_____________________________________
Related links:
http://ouch.blog-city.com/sustainable_community_associates_smoking_gunk.htm
http://ouch.blog-city.com/sustainable_community_associates_stone_soup_1.htm
In a hyperbolic letter published in last week’s coupon-laden arthritic cipher, Sustainable Community Associates’ environmental consultant John Pardee, an Oberlin News-Tribune columnist, characterized the cogent, lucid opposition to SCA’s unmitigated, eggshell-thin economic Hindenburg as "environmental terrorism." Appropriating a page from Al Jazeera, Mr. Pardee lamented the protracted, costly, fifteen-month regulatory "debacle" that "tarnished their [SCA’s] reputation and nearly killed their project." To ascertain the inconvenient truth, let’s peer under the panglossian hood and conduct a forensic autopsy.
Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) closure, the design of an acceptable Ohio EPA hazardous waste testing protocol, is not synonymous with RCRA clearance. Absent credible amelioration, temporary RCRA mollification is RCRA circumvention: the functional equivalent of rearranging the wicker deck chairs on a tainted, listing Titanic. No reported soil or groundwater remediation has occurred at the highly contaminated former Buick dealership site since December 2004. No accurate, accountable groundwater monitoring timeline -- a critical barometer -- has been exhibited or officially tendered. At the September 17, 2007, Oberlin City Council meeting, SCA spokesman Ben Ezinga touted SCA’s commitment to obtain a coveted Covenant Not to Sue under Ohio EPA’s anemic Voluntary Action Program (VAP). According to recently retained SCA attorney Robert Karl’s revealing October 9, 2007, dispatch to Ohio EPA Hazardous Waste counsel Todd Anderson, obtained under Ohio’s Public Records Act, that vaunted pledge is unlikely to be consummated, inscribed, revived or redeemed:
"The fee associated with NFA letters and requests for Covenants Not to Sue that include Phase I and Phase II assessments could be several tens of thousands of dollars (OAC 3745-300-03.) This fee is one reason that may prevent SCA from requesting a Covenant Not to Sue for the VAP work performed at its property. SCA does desire to obtain a Covenant Not to Sue for the VAP work performed at its property, but SCA’s ability to obtain the Covenant Not to Sue will depend on whether SCA has the available financing."
In a June 26, 1994, Cleveland Plain Dealer article entitled Environmentalists Leery of Possible Loopholes, Chris Trepal, co-director of the Earth Day Coalition in Northeast Ohio, lambasted the enabling VAP legislation as "one of the poorest public policy measures I’ve ever seen," A clairvoyant Richard Sahi, executive director of the Ohio Environmental Council, echoed his sentiment in the May 26,1994, Cincinnati Post, "We do predict there will be a lot of shoddy cleanups under this bill the state will never catch." Testifying before the House Energy & Natural Resources Committee on behalf of the Ohio Academy of Trial Lawyers, Cincinnati environmental lawyer David Altman asserted, "This bill is a definite bait-and-switch. What it is supposed to do and what it does is two different things."
A seminal, 152 page 2001 Gund Foundation funded study by the Green Environmental Council confirmed the critics’ predictions. A dearth of agency resources to provide meaningful regulatory oversight combined with the lack of a credible, established enforcement mechanism has rendered the feckless, industry aligned program toothless. "It’s a broken program - it doesn’t work," declared the council’s Bruce Cornett in an interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Both the Sierra Club and Ohio Citizen Action opposed the 2000 $400 million Clean Ohio state bond issue out of concern the fungible proceeds could be utilized to prop up the lame Voluntary Action Program and create a trojan horse polluters slush fund. "This is the governor's attempt to whitewash his EPA," charged Jane Forrest Redfern, environmental projects director for Ohio Citizen Action in a November 1, 2000, Cleveland Plain Dealer article. Dedicated professionals, veteran Ohio EPA bureaucrats attempted to rectify the problem. According to the October 4, 2000, Cleveland Plain Dealer, "EPA staffers who shared some of the environmentalists’ concerns, at one point launched a quiet but unsuccessful campaign to disband the program."
For six years after the Voluntary Action Program’s 1996 implementation, the U.S. EPA refused to extend program participants federal immunity and threatened to decertify the Ohio EPA due to the VAP’s expansive, inhibiting secrecy provisions and tangible lack of transparency. In a brokered, bifurcated modification to the Ohio VAP that "frankly doesn't make sense at all," according to Ohio Public Interest Research Group director Amy Simpson (Akron Beacon Journal, February 24, 2001), an alternative "memorandum of agreement" VAP track with enhanced public access was crafted. Companies that elect the original, opaque, "classic" option, which conceals under an embargo the extent and nature of contamination, will not be afforded U.S. EPA liability insulation. "Why Ohio would want a two-headed monster is beyond me," quipped the Ohio Environmental Council’s Jack Shaner. In SCA’s case, the jaundiced, green and incompliant wants to hide what you can’t see.
Mark Chesler
Oberlin, Ohio
_____________________________________
Trimethylbenzene Estates
Oberlin City Council (6/4/2007) testimony:
In a sweeping, omnibus evaluation of petrochemical permeated subterranean soil borings extracted from Sustainable Community Associates’ (SCA) unmitigated brownfield, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (Ohio EPA) Hazardous Waste Division determined in a May 18, 2007, directive that monitoring stations installed after an August 16, 2004, negligent, catastrophic solvent spill on the grounds of the former Schubert Buick dealership were improperly constructed at sites designed to minimize contaminant detection. The Ohio EPA report concluded: "None of the temporary ground water monitoring wells were installed in the area directly around the former location of the waste oil tank. In addition, it appears that none of the temporary wells are located down gradient of the location of the waste oil tank."1
The salient discrepancy was documented in my July 5, 2006, Oberlin City Council remarks: "Since the designated canary wells were installed at higher topographical levels, upstream from the perforated tank, the dichotomy is not surprising.2 While SCA’s principals may have shaved a medley of regulatory corners, concentrated petrochemical solvents are unlikely to defy the immutable laws of physics."3
The radically elevated benzene levels -- "at only .0002 ppm below the regulatory limit"4 -- registered by the sub rosa SCA monitoring well closest to Plum Creek, adjacent to the Oberlin Public Library, in the literal shadow of Oberlin College’s Firelands Dormitory, pose an unacceptable, endemic risk to public health. Disclosed to SCA principals in early January 2005, the corroborating minefield of damaging data was revealed to municipal officials on Armistice Day 2005, eleven months after a precipitous, jurisdictionally flawed, Ohio Bureau of Underground Storage Tanks perfunctory filing.
SCA’s compromised B-3 well point registered arsenic concentrations of 9 ug/L, just below the Ohio EPA 10 ug/L contamination ceiling. Significant groundwater infiltration of xylenes, m,p-xylenes, o-xylenes, toluene, ethylbenzene, napthalene, n-propylbenzene, 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene, 1,3,5-trimethylbenzene, barium, lead, mercury and selenium was also recorded. Northcoast Drilling’s delinquent Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) field report -- obtained by ODNR after a protracted two-year delay -- manifests petroleum and pungent petroleum odor encountered in SCA’s peripheral monitoring wells #3 and #4.5
According to Ohio EPA senior environmental hazardous waste supervisor Natalie Oryshkewych, in an October 18, 2006, on-site meeting, SCA rebuffed Ohio EPA’s request for augmented well readings and divulged plans to precipitously seal the apertures. Charging that "the groundwater has not been adequately characterized and the possibility of ground water contamination at the site has not been sufficiently investigated," the May 18, 2007, Ohio EPA SCA edict mandates "quarterly ground water monitoring…for a minimum of four quarters." 6
Instead of a vaunted silver, gold or platinum LEED rating, SCA’s unmitigated, egg-shell thin economic Hindenburg deserves an unalloyed, premium octane rating. ‘Escape the rat race: refined living at SCA’s arsenic-laced Trimethylbenzene Estates.’
Mark Chesler
Oberlin, Ohio
1 Ohio EPA, Comments on Sampling and Analysis Report, Sustainable Community Associates, OHR 000 124 198 (Twinsburg, Ohio: Ohio EPA, 5/18/2007) p. 3.
2 Earth Consulting Ltd., Phase II Environmental Site Assessment, 43 East College St., Oberlin, Ohio (Euclid, Ohio: Earth Consulting, Ltd., 10/26/2002), figure #3.
3 Mark Chesler testimony, Oberlin City Council, 7/5/2006.
4 Oberlin Fire Chief Dennis Kirin e-mail to Oberlin City Manager Rob Dispirito, 11/17/2005.
5 Ohio EPA, Comments on Sampling and Analysis Report, Sustainable Community Associates, p. 3.
6 Ibid.
_____________________________________
Related links:
http://ouch.blog-city.com/sustainable_community_associates_smoking_gunk.htm
http://ouch.blog-city.com/sustainable_community_associates_stone_soup_1.htm