News

DuPont cleanup plan may signal 'donut hole' acquisition

Map shows potential site of contaminants at the old X-ray plant site, the privately owned 'donut hole' and at DuPont State Forest.

By Bill Moss, Published: May 22, 2016

Supporters of acquiring the DuPont State Forest “donut hole” for public use are applauding as a significant step forward the filing of detailed cleanup plans by the former operators of the X-ray film manufacturer, E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co.

The DuPont company, the state Department of Agriculture and state environmental regulators have been negotiating for several years a process under which the state would acquire the property for potential joint use by the National Guard and the Forest Service, the Department of Agriculture division that runs DuPont State Forest.
Called the donut hole because it remains a privately owned parcel in the middle of the 10,400-acre state forest, the 400-acre site was home for 43 years to the X-ray plant that at one time employed 1,000 workers. On Saturday, the Friends of DuPont Forest sent a link after a portal from the state Department of Environmental Quality went live. The site describes a cleanup plan of groundwater and surface water contamination over a three- or four-year period.
“It probably means were heading down a process leading to acquisition of the donut hole,” said state Rep. Chuck McGrady, who was active in the effort to preserve the surrounding property 15 years ago and has been tracking the effort of state agencies to reach an agreement. “The Department of Environmental Quality (formerly DENR) and the Department of Agriculture and the National Guard and DuPont have been working together to come up with a sort of comprehensive deal between all those parties,” McGrady said Sunday. “DEQ is the regulator and it has responsibility for the cleanup. DuPont obviously does not want to turn over the property while retaining a lot of liability. DEQ wants to make sure the property doesn’t come with liability that’s going to cost a lot to clean up later.”
The property is expected to be used by the North Carolina National Guard as the headquarters of a training facility for mountain and swift-water rescue; it’s also could be the site of a DuPont State Forest headquarters for the Forest Service.
“I believe there’s going to be an announcement soon that all the parties have come together” on terms of the remediation and the state’s acquisition of the land, McGrady said. “The Council of State has to agree to the acquisition of any land so there’s a series of steps that need to occur here.”
Bill Yarborough, a special assistant to Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler, confirmed Sunday that the state agencies were close to consummating an agreement that would result in state ownership of the site. The state does not plan to buy the land, he added.
“It’s still in negotiation with DuPont and the DEQ,” Yarborough said. “There will be a public meeting at some point probably within the next six weeks on the remediation. Hopefully everything thing works out. It’s been a long time.”
State Rep. Chris Whitmire has been updating constituents on the effort to convert the old plant site to public use.
“The Donut Hole is getting closer and closer to being ‘unlocked’ for the First Responder Training Center and other uses,” Whitmire said in an April 30 newsletter.

Bev Parlier, chair of the Friends of DuPont Forest, said the organization supports the transfer of the property to the state and the proposed National Guard and Forest Service office use.
A summary of the site includes a list of potentially contaminated areas of groundwater or surface water or dirt, locations of storage containers like barrels and numerous letters back and forth from the chemical company’s Charlotte-based engineer and Mark Wilkins, a hydrogeologist in the hazardous waste section of DEQ.
State law makes DuPont the responsible party for assessment and cleanup of contamination under the oversight of the DEQ’s Division of Waste Management and the federal EPA, which classifies the site as a Resource Conservation and Recovery Act facility.
The factory was demolished, leaving behind concrete building pads, foundations and basements and underground utilities.
“Based on sampling data, it appears that there are 20 areas where contaminants have been detected above unrestricted use standards,” the Division of Waste Management said in an evaluation dated Sept. 5, 2014. DuPont at that time was in the process of assessing and remediating the potentially contaminated spots, the division said.

A table of potential contaminants lists 37 separate sites or former uses categorized as either solid waste management units or areas of concern. They include 12 sites classified as clean and closed, with no further action required. Among those uses were 55-gallon drums stored on pallets on concrete pads, outdoor storage of drums containing oil and paint thinner, a former silver recovery drying bed and hydrocarbon waste areas. Twenty-five more sites have cleanup plans that include continued water or ground sampling or closing and capping. A typical entry in the five-page table said a silver recovery transfer running from the research and development building to the “save-all recovery unit” had shown no contamination.
Areas that are not certified as cleaned up and closed are the subject of something called an RFI, or a Resource Conservation and Recovery Act Facility Investigation. An example of that is an unlined landfill containing domestic garbage, film scraps, weak acids, glycol and digester sludge that was “capped with soil of unspecified thickness and permeability.” Surrounding soil and groundwater were contaminated with VOCs (volatile organic compounds), biphenyl and metals. The proposed fix for that is to cap the landfill and leave it in place with land-use restrictions around it, regulators said.