Reclamation

By Charles Sowell  

NOVEMBER 18, 2010 2:03 p.m. (1)

Federal officials plan to list the Old Union Bleachery as a Superfund site this spring, officials with the Atlanta office of the Environmental Protection agency have confirmed.

“The major pollutants at the site are chromium and heavy metals,” said Jennifer Wendel, National Priority List co-coordinator for Region 4 of EPA, which includes most of the Southeast.

“The site scores out high enough (on EPA’s evaluation listing) to be a Superfund site and we have placed it on the NPL (National Priorities List),” she said. “The size and complexity of this site makes it something we take an interest in.”

The mill site is listed at a total of 226.5 acres, but not all of the disparate plots comprising the property are polluted, said the Rev. Joe Farry, former pastor of Paris View Baptist Church located in the mill community that surrounds the mill site.

Farry is leading a group known as the Jeremiah Project, which would like to purchase the mill site and, after remediation, develop it for the benefit of the community. In that role he has been privy to some EPA information about the site.

“If it is listed on the NPL it will slow us down, but we don’t plan to give up,” he said.

The listing will not be official until published in the Federal Register this spring.

“We list sites twice a year, in the fall and spring,” Wendel said.

She said EPA scientists don’t feel there is an immediate threat to public health.

Chromium and other heavy metals were used in the process of finishing cloth at the site for decades, environmental activists have said. The mill site is located on Old Buncombe Road in Sans Souci and is adjacent to Langston Creek, a tributary of the Reedy River.

State and federal officials have said there appears to be no danger to the Reedy, located about a quarter mile downstream on Langston from the plant.

Thom Berry, a spokesman for the state Department of Health and Environmental Control, said the agency first approached EPA with listing the bleachery as a Superfund site shortly after the old mill burned in 2004 and Cone Mills, a one-time owner responsible for site remediation, stopped maintaining a pumping station at the mill site used to remove the chromium from groundwater.

Cone filed for bankruptcy shortly after the mill burned.

Who will pay for the cleanup is an open question at this point, Wendel said. “We will, of course, pursue claims against anyone who profited from the site over its history,” she said. “But they would have to be solvent for that to mean anything. Ultimately the federal government will pick up the tab.”

Bob Mihalic, a spokesman for Greenville County, said county officials are aware that EPA is considering the site for Superfund status, but would not comment on that until after the site is officially listed.

“The important thing is that it gets cleaned up,” Mihalic said, “And that the health and safety of the public is protected.”

He said county officials plan to continue to pursue grants and other funding sources to help redevelop the area.

Once prosperous, the mill community considered itself fortunate to have Union Bleachery there, Farry said.

“The old-timers said it was like the Michelin or BMW of its day,” he said.

The communities surrounding the old mill site have been in decline for a long time now, Farry said, as the American textile industry faded.

“But the area is ripe for infill development,” he said. Once it is cleaned up.

How long that might take is another question, Wendel said. “We’re still testing there and these things are a long and involved process even after that phase is finished,” she said.

Federal officials will have to come up with a cleanup plan and find the appropriate contractors to carry it out. It will take years to finish, she said.

Once the site has been cleaned up, it will be opened for redevelopment, Wendel said.

“We like to have these sites put to use after the cleanup is done, but there will be certain restrictions,” she said. “For example there can be no activity that might release pollutants still found on the site, or any new pollutants introduced.”