Bogalusa facility could be state’s next Superfund site

20th April 2015   ·   0 Comments

By Susan Buchanan
Contributing Writer

Louisiana has nine of the nation’s more than 1,300 Super­fund sites, including one in New Orleans, and could see the former Colonial Creosoting plant in Bogalusa added this fall. Creosote is a pesticide and fungicide used to treat railroad ties, utility poles and marine pilings. A number of defunct creosote plants in Louisiana, Mississippi and other states are Superfund sites—federally prioritized for cleanup because of their ecological and health threats. The U.S. Environ­mental Protection Agen­cy, host states and the companies responsible pay for their remediation.

Superfund sites are designated under the Comprehensive En­vironmental Response, Com­pen­sation and Liability Act of 1980, aimed at removing hazardous substances and pollutants from abandoned or uncontrolled waste-disposal and industrial spots. The law authorizes federal and state agencies and Native American tribes to recoup damages.

In the last century, lumber and paper drove Bogalusa’s development, and the Washington Parish town once had the world’s biggest sawmill. At its southeast Bogalusa facility, Colonial Creosoting from 1911 to 1953 removed bark, preserved wood and stored products. The company had as many as 75 employees for awhile and treated up to 200,000 feet of timber a day. Bogalusa is 70 miles north of New Orleans, and the surrounding region needed its wood.

But since those go-go years, worries have grown about creosote, which is probably carcinogenic to humans, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer or IARC in France. IARC is a unit of the World Health Organization, and EPA supports its stance on creosote.

Beyond Pesticides, also known as the National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides, in Washington, D.C. has warned that fish exposed to creosote-contaminated water can develop liver lesions.

More than a hundred current and former U.S. sites — on the EPA’s Superfund list and on similar, state-designated lists — were contaminated with coal-tar creosote and related wood preservatives. Creosote’s dangers have been recognized for awhile in Louisiana. Over a decade ago, the Pelican State was granted $1 million by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to track cancer clusters at 32 creosote waste sites.

The Bogalusa spot, though near a railroad spur and mostly undeveloped property, still poses multiple threats. “DEQ referred this site to EPA in 2011 for potential Superfund ranking because of contaminants, related to past wood preserving, in surface and subsurface soils and because of previous on-site structures containing wastes,” Greg Langley, Louisiana Department of Environ­mental Quality spokes­man, said last week. The former structures included above-ground storage tanks and filled-in impoundments, or enclosed bodies of water.

According to EPA, a facility with a Hazard Ranking System score of 28.5 or more from the agency can qualify as a Superfund site. Col­onial received a score of 50, Jennah Durant, EPA spokeswoman in Dallas, said last week. Sub­stances that are being released into surface water and adjacent wetlands contributed to the site’s score.

Langley said factors influencing Colonial’s score include contaminated soils and ditch sediments and on-site waste. Toxins from wood preserving were found in the ground, ditches and filled-in ponds.

Soil, sediment and water at Colonial Creosoting contain polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or PAHs, according to the EPA. Chief among them are acenaphthene, anthracene, ben-zo(a)­an­thracene, benzo(a)py-rene, ben­zo­(b)flu­o­ranthene, chrysene, fluorene, fluoranthene, 2-methylnaphthalene, phenanthrene and pyrene. PAHs and other hazardous substances from wood treatment have migrated into ground water, neighboring wetlands and nearby surface waters. Fisheries are located downstream.

Separately, Bogalusa in August 2011 suffered a substantial Pearl River fish kill, caused by a paper mill that was owned by Temple-Inland at the time.

A 43-day public notice period on listing Colonial, initiated by EPA, ends on May 26. “The soonest the Colonial Creosote site could be finalized on the National Prior­ities List is at the next update sometime this fall,” Durant said. A site qualifies for the NPL or Superfund list when the EPA believes a release or threatened release of hazardous substances could endanger the public’s health and welfare or the environment. The EPA updates the list twice a year, usually once in the spring and once in the fall.

DEQ has taken no remedial actions at the Bogalusa site to date, and if it is Superfund designated, a number of steps are required before any improvements are made. “During the Superfund remedial process, a full delineation of impacts to soils, groundwater and surface water will be done at the site and adjacent areas,” Langley said. The state and feds participate in that process. “Once a full investigation is completed, an assessment will be done to evaluate any current and future risks to human health and ecological receptors,” he said.

Data on the site’s ecological status is incomplete now. “The risk assessment will guide us to a proposed plan, a record of decision and remedial action,” Langley said.

Who’s likely to pay for the Colonial cleanup? “In general, payment depends on whether a responsible party can be identified and agrees to pay,” Durant said. “If the responsible party doesn’t pay, then the state covers ten percent once the site’s remedy is being implemented. The rest comes from EPA’s budget.”

Colonial was owned by Ken­tucky-based American Creo­sote, which sold it to Lakeview Sand and Gravel Co. in 1957. That company later became Bogalusa Concrete, and it operated the site until 2008, three years before DEQ referred it to EPA for evaluation. Last week, Bogalusa Con­crete didn’t respond to inquiries about whether it will contribute to the cleanup.

Owners or those who inherit a Superfund property are considered “potentially responsible parties,” or PRPs. “Sometimes PRPs don’t be­come viable, responsible parties because of, for example, bankruptcy or a legal claim that someone else is responsible,” Durant said. “This is a common scenario with NPL sites, and why our enforcement and negotiation process is so important.”

Orleans has one large Super­fund site, the Ninth Ward’s Agriculture Street landfill — a former dump where housing was built. African Americans lived in those homes. The area was Superfund-listed in 1994 and divided into units or sections. Units 4 and 5, the Robert Moton Elementary School and a groundwater area, respectively, were remediated and removed from the list in 2000. DEQ inspects the area periodically and reports to the city on its conditions.

This article originally published in the April 20, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.