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C'Ville Loses a Water Plant -- Drinking Supply Safe; Waste Site Leaks Toxin

Posted on: Tuesday, 19 July 2005, 09:00 CDT

Collierville's newest Superfund site will likely cost the town one of its water plants while complicating a major employer's efforts to clean up its own Superfund mess.

The town may permanently shut down water plant No. 2 because its wells drew toxic chromium leaked by the Smalley-Piper company, near Poplar and U.S. 72.

The EPA added the Smalley-Piper site to its Superfund list in April.

"The town has basically lost our water plant," Town Administrator James Lewellen said of the 1.5 million-gallon-a-day facility.

Despite the loss, the town has four other water plants and plenty of capacity, Lewellen said. He added that the rest of the town's drinking water is fine.

In spots, the groundwater contamination at the Smalley-Piper site is staggering. The EPA's drinking water standard is to allow no more contamination than 100 parts per billion. Last month, environmental engineers assessing the problem found 304,000 parts per billion at one monitoring well.

The tainted plume of groundwater drifted west toward the water plant, which the town built next to Carrier Corp., a giant maker of air-conditioners.

The town had shut down the wells there to ensure no one drinks water tainted by the hexavalent chromium. It would cost the town $1.5 million to replace the water plant.

The contamination has caused yet another negative effect: It's making it harder for Carrier Corp. to clean up its own Superfund site.

Carrier in the past released trichloroethylene (TCE) into the groundwater. Water Plant No. 2 helped contain that plume. The wells there would draw the tainted water through strippers that Carrier installed.

"Carrier was under an EPA order for their TCE spills," Lewellen said. "Their remediation was working fine. Everybody was happy. They were thinking another eight or 12 years away from having all the TCE cleaned out of the groundwater."

The same filtering system that can remove the TCE cannot remove the chromium, however, so the wells had to be shut down.

"That's where it all gets complicated," Lewellen said. "We can't pump water. Carrier can't clean the TCE. Carrier tells the EPA, 'It's not our fault.'"

A spokesman for Carrier could not be reached Friday.

The toxic chromium, consumed in large quantities, can cause cancer, convulsions, and kidney and liver damage.

In the 1960s, what came to be known as the Smalley-Piper site made farm tools. In the 1970s, it cleaned and treated magnesium battery casings.

The town has filed claims against the estate of philanthropist Paul Piper, who died in January 2004, for the loss of the water plant, but has little hope of collecting, Lewellen said.

The Piper estate is spending $1 million to investigate the scope of the problem. Hess Environmental Services is conducting the assessment and is filing monthly reports to the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. The project has cost $360,000 so far.

-Tom Bailey Jr.: 529-2388

Source: Commercial Appeal, The

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