PCBs in the Water: What U.S. Fish and Wildlife, the EPA and Solutia are doing to rehab area waterways

By Michael Mee

Agencies charged with helping area rivers and lakes recover from nearly 70 years of PCB contamination are asking for the public’s input on what measures they would like to see put in place for habitat rehabilitation.

Last week the Logan Martin Lake Protection Association hosted a special meeting where representatives from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) outlined what has been going on to rehabilitate area waterways.

Representatives from the USFWS were invited to speak to members of the Logan Martin Lake Protection Association, whose members asked questions concerning the impact of the assessment on the environmental damage the PCBs might have caused to area waterways.

The USFWS is working side-by-side with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to draft an outline to what needs to be done to help fix problems that might be associated with PCB contamination. Currently the USFWS is working on the third of six steps that will determine injuries to plant and animal life in and around Choccolocco Creek, one of the tributaries of Lake Logan Martin.

That creek is the main area where the original PCBs were released into the environment through rain washing the chemicals into waterways when PCBs were still being allowed to be disposed of without environmental regulation.

From the 1930s until 1979, Monsanto pumped PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and other hazardous chemicals into the ground at an Anniston industrial site near Choccolocco Creek.

PCBs are industrial lubricants that were initially hailed for their non-decaying nature and were used as industrial lubricants in electrical equipment among other things. The chemicals were banned in 1979 by the Environmental Protection Agency.

It is now up to the USFWS, the EPA and Solutia (formerly Monsanto) to make sure that the public is compensated for damages sustained from the PCB runoff.

One of the major issues the three agencies are dealing with is the area affected by the contamination. The Logan Martin Dam wasn’t built until 1964, so any soil that PCBs ended up in, which might have washed along the path of waterways Choccolocco Creek all the way to Lay Lake may possibly be affected.

Though there is a six-step process involved, each step is not dealt with before another can begin. For instance, there might be assessments going on in numerous areas around waterways while some rehabilitation, such as putting fresh water mussels back into a natural habitat near the Neely Henry Dam, have already begun to take shape and are doing well.

Scientists working on the six-step Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Rehabilitation (NRDAR) plan are working closely with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The EPA is conducting its own studies and all agencies involved are sharing data. The EPA is looking at the PCB impact on humans. The NRDAR study is looking at the impact on natural resources.

“Sometimes these studies only take a couple of years,” said Karen Marlow, Senior Biologist and Case Manager for the Anniston PCB study for the USFWS. But she said with the very large area that might be affected by the Monsanto PCB runoff, that the large geographic region might cause the study to take many more years.

That is why the public’s help is being sought in determining what type of compensation may be needed to help rehabilitate area waterways. Those who live and fish along the banks of area rivers and in the depths of St. Clair, Talladega and Shelby County lakes are welcome to contact the USFWS to submit comments.

One of the main emphasizes that have been looked at for years and are currently being studied, is the ecological risk assessment, where scientists are studying the level of pollution that took place at the Anniston release site and what is going to be done to clean it up.

According to a USFW report:

“The six-acre West End Landfill, located on the southeast side of the Monsanto plant received wastes from the mid-1930’s until 1961. Disposal of production wastes in the South End Landfill, located southeast of the plant across U.S. Highway 202, began in 1961 and continued until 1988. Approximately 10 percent of total [PCB] production was discharged to these landfills. Air emissions were estimated to include 60,000 pounds of PCBs, wastewater discharges were estimated to include about 1.8 million pounds of PCBs, and solid wste was estimated to total at least 87 million pounds of PCB-containing waste. In one of the legal proceedings, evidence was submitted reflecting overall losses of PCBs to the environment estimated for the Anniston plant during 1953-1969, including 39,959 pounds to the air, 1,232,952 to water, and 54,943,434 to dumps, or abut 12 percent of all [PCBs] produced. From 1970-1972, approximately 9,400,000 pounds of PCBs were sent to the landfills.

“After negotiations with the Alabama Attorney General, Monsanto dredged 1,000 tons of heavily contaminated PCB wastes from the 11th Street ditch and from 100 feet of Snow Creek immediately downstream of Monsanto’s waste and storm run-off points. During the mid-1990s, Alabama became aware that PCB contamination at the Facility was continuing to be a source of significant levels of PCB migration via various pathways into the Anniston environment. The State required Solutia to undertake a massive engineering program to address the fact that PCBs were continuing to migrate from the Facility into the City and the environment.”

So for he last 10 years the USFWS and the EPA have been assessing damages. But the process isn’t as simple as dipping a beaker into the water and testing for PCBs. It will take several more years to get a full picture of the damages.

“Because we are still in the beginning stages, we don’t know where this will lead us,” Marlow told those gathered at last week’s meeting.

She said that injuries to marine animals and wildlife have to be determined and even though many generations of those species have born and died that some of the genetic effects may not show up for several generations.

Marlow said that the public’s compensation will take place through restoration, rehabilitation and replacement of injured resources, one those resources are determined. “If you don’t get there more quickly, then populations continue to decline.”

Some ideas that have been looked at for rehabbing lakes and rivers in the area include planting trees, creating buffer zones around lakes and rivers, putting small educational areas near waterways and/ or continuing to rehabilitate wildlife.

There has been a no-eat clause in effect for fish in Lake Logan Martin for many years. No direct connection has been made if chemicals found in area waterways caused fish to be ruled inedible. However, according to the USFW study “Low concentrations of PCBs in water have been associated with harmful effects to fish and wildlife… Internal Monsanto memoranda document the presence of high PCB concentrations in aquatic sediment collected from streams affected by Facility discharges… More recent sampling efforts indicate that elevated PCB concentrations persist in aquatic systems downstream of the Facility.”

Also, according to the study: “The concentrations of PCBs that are associated with adverse effects on sediment-dwelling organisms have been established based on the results of spiked-sediment toxicity tests and evaluations of the results of field studies Whole-sediment chemistry data collected downstream of the Facility demonstrate that sediment-dwelling organisms have been exposed to elevated levels of PCBs.”

The question was raised at the Logan Martin Lake Protection Association meeting of how groundwater or well water might be affected by PCBs evident in area lakes waterways.



Peter Tuttle, USFWS resource contaminant specialist said that there is no direct evidence that PCBs could leach into well water, since the chemicals attach to soil and that soil, most likely, remains on the bottom of area waterways. “PCBs typically don’t move into ground water systems because they bind to sediments,” Tuttle noted.

But how far sediments from Choccolocco Creek have traveled in 75 years remains to be determined. “Solutia has collected a number of samples of lower Choccolocco Creek and some of Lake Logan Martin,” Tuttle said. He said once those have been analyzed, then it will be determined if the continuous studies will justify going further into Lake Logan Martin or, possible further into the Coosa River.

“One of the things we’re looking for is damage to the Coosa River,” Tuttle noted. “In terms of injuries to natural resources, anything from death to decrease of reproduction is already known from consumption.”

He continued, “This is a legal process and the natural resource trustees are going through the steps.”

He said that by 2013 the USFWS and the EPA hope to have a recorded decision from Choccolocco Creek to present to Solutia in order to get reparations. Solutia has already discussed settling portions of their claim before that point.

“The reason we’re all starting now is because that doesn’t happened overnight,” Tuttle explained. “We’re looking at a 2010 to 2013 timeframe. That’s now a long time, especially with a case like this where a heck of a lot of restoration needs to be done.”



[Note: Though public comments are requested by this Sunday, officials with the USFWS said that a few extra days may be warranted, since it might take a bit for the information to be available to the public. Requests for copies of the Draft Plan may be sent to Karen Marlowe of USFWS at Propst Hall, Room 229, 800 Lakeshore Drive, Birmingham, Alabama 35229-2234. Written comments on rehabilitation ideas may be submitted either by mail to the address listed, by fax to (205) 726-2479, or, preferably, by email to karen_marlowe@fws.gov. The Anniston PCB Site I Assessment Plan is available for public review at www.fws.gov/daphne.]

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