New push to make river fish safe to eat

From a rooftop parking spot near the Christina River and Walnut Street, state hydrologist Todd A. Keyser can point in just about any direction toward signs of hope in dealing with one of Delaware's biggest toxic headaches.

The goal is to put fish from the Christina and Delaware and other waterways safely back on public menus, and put Delaware back in compliance with federal requirements to meet "fishable" and "swimmable" standards for public waterway pollution levels.

Earlier this month, the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control sent a new round of letters notifying businesses and landowners that their properties were potential sources of probable cancer-causing PCB releases into state waters.

Some 29 sites were singled out, with severity ranging from the relatively huge 2,800 grams-per-year flow of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyl) from the former Evraz Claymont Steel site to a few grams per year or less from the former Newport city landfill.

"With PCBs, even a small amount, because they are persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic, does make a difference," Keyser said. "If we can make a positive change at one of these sites, we're going to have incremental improvements in the rivers."

Identification of the 29 sites, and 32 in an earlier round, marked a start toward an eventual goal of either removing or containing pollutants, or setting them aside to focus on bigger prospects. The eventual goal in every case is to reduce the amount of PCBs – banned in 1977 – that are still going into state waters.

Centuries of industrial activity in and near Wilmington have made the edges of the river a ground zero for PCB contamination. The now-banned chemical builds up over time in sediments, plants and living tissues, posing a particular hazard to people who eat fish or other wildlife from affected environments.

In some spots, Delaware's PCB levels rank among the biggest contributors in the entire multi-state Delaware River watershed. In Delaware's section of the watershed, fish tissue concentrations of PCBs rank as the single most-common cause for warnings to never eat fish from the waterway, or sharply limit consumption.

"Clearly, it's going to put increased burdens and costs not only on DNREC, but the private sector," said Jeff Bross, president of Duffield Associates, a regional engineering firm with a major environmental practice.

The latest round of notifications was a second wave in a groundbreaking, multi-year effort to track down and identify PCB-contaminated sites that are both a barrier to development and a long-time health hazard.

Sites included the former Gov. Bacon Health Center near Delaware City, the former DuPont Louviers/MBNA property near Newark, and Fitzgerald's Auto Salvage south of Milford.

Parts of the former Chrysler Assembly plant in Newark, the Dover power plant and a former substation in Dagsboro also made the latest list of 29, which followed an earlier assessment of 32 sites, confined to New Castle County.

"There are several communities in the state that rely on fish consumption to stay alive, subsistence fishing," Keyser said. "They are here. We put signs up letting people know 'You may be doing harm to yourself,' but there's a lot of people who have no choice."

"We've done our part in terms of making people aware. We have to, and we are, taking steps to accelerate remediation, so we never have to put those signs up" in the future, Keyser said.

In most cases, businesses, landowners or the original responsible parties will bear the expense of evaluating sites and removing or containing pollutants.

In Southbridge, the Rev. Christopher T. Curry, pastor of Ezion Fair Baptist Church, said he supported DNREC's goals.

"Whenever you're dealing with human life and we can make human life better, it's worthwhile," Curry said. "People are hungry and these are desperate times. You may say don't do it, but if I'm desperate, I'm going to do what I've got to do to survive."

Until the 1970s, PCBs had a variety of uses, most notoriously as part of the liquids used in electrical transformer insulators for lines and systems. They also form unintentionally, particularly in high-temperature processes that include chlorine or chlorine compounds.

Delaware had plenty of examples of both.

PCB-laced oils bled or spilled from electric motors used in trains that passed through what is now Amtrak's heavy locomotive repair complex in Wilmington, contaminating the rail complex itself as well as nearby areas of south Wilmington. In 2003, a Delaware River Basin Commission report ranked the site as the 13,000 square mile watershed's largest single source of PCB pollution.

Construction of the Kenny Family ShopRite at the Christina Crossing Shopping Center was complicated by wrangling over and costly cleanup of PCBs spilled during transformer recycling at the former Penn Del Recycling Co. scrap yard.

DNREC and the EPA worked for months to develop a compromise cleanup plan that removed the worst of the tainted soils, while securely capping the remainder.

To the south, the Environmental Protection Agency is presiding over cleanups at another top Delaware River PCB source – the former Standard Chlorine/Metachem Products federal Superfund site.

Metachem, abandoned to taxpayers in 2002 by way of bankruptcy, was among the world's largest sources of chlorinated benzene ingredients used in pesticides and insecticides.

At one point while operating as Standard Chlorine, the plant provided materials used in making Agent Orange, the military defoliant used in Vietnam, and blamed for health problems among thousands of veterans.

Delaware's legacy and outsized problem also led to its emergence as a regional leader in PCB research and cleanup efforts.

Work by DNREC scientist Richard Greene led to a finding that conventional testing methods were underestimating the PCB problem in the region. The agency later adopted a watershed-wide approach to toxic pollution cleanup that caught the attention of the Environmental Protection Agency's regional office.

In 2009, a DNREC consultant summed up an assessment of Christina River PCB burdens and 32 leading pollution sources with a note that "it would be prudent' to look more deeply, setting cleanup priorities while expanding the study.

The recommendations came at a time when DNREC was developing a new focus for PCB cleanups that included use of more-costly, high-level lab tests that make it easier to link PCB molecules with their original sources.

DNREC also began fielding new cleanup technologies that include use of activated carbon, in one form or another, to capture and stop the movement of pollutants as they move through runoff, waterways or groundwater.

"I think I'm confident in saying this is a new thing nationally," Keyser said.

A pilot test of the effort in a St. Jones River pond in Dover already has shown signs of rapidly reducing free PCB levels, raising hopes that fish consumption warnings can be removed sooner there.

"Representatives from DNREC have been really effective in trying to push the ball further along," during meetings of the regional DRBC [Delaware River Basin Commission], said Maya van Rossum, who directs the multi-state Delaware Riverkeeper conservation organization.

"PCBs are dangerous and they have been banned for a long time, and they shouldn't be continuing to enter the Delaware River system," van Rossum said.

Contact Jeff Montgomery at (302) 463-3344 or jmontgomery@delawareonline.com