In the shadow of Lookout Mountain, this locked gate faces Wilson Road near 51st Street in Piney Woods. The former Velsicol property has since been vacated.The federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry is asking Tennessee hazardous waste regulators to extend the Jan. 21 comment deadline on a planned “final remedy” for the idled and contaminated Velsicol chemical manufacturing site.
Carl Blair, regional representative of ATSDR, attended a meeting to hear residents’ concerns Tuesday and said he’ll ask the state for time to let his agency look at the plan.
“You have enough concerns [to be worried],” Blair told the group. “It’s good to see you’re not giving up.”
Milton Jackson, a South Chattanooga resident and longtime member of the grass-roots environmental watchdog group Stop Toxic Pollution, also known as STOP, had invited Blair to the meeting.
“We need your help,” Jackson told Blair.
ATSDR, a public health agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is charged under the Superfund Act of 1980 to assess the presence and nature of health hazards at specific Superfund sites.
The Velsicol site is adjacent to Chattanooga Creek, a mostly cleaned-up Superfund site that STOP helped get designated as a national priority cleanup site nearly two decades ago.
Last week at a state meeting to hear local comments on the final remedy plan, which requires a modification to Velsicol’s state hazardous waste permit with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, Velsicol and state officials said remaining contaminated soil on the site will not be removed.
Instead the plan is to cover the site with 18 inches of clean soil, fence the 36-acre site and write a deed covenant that says the land may only be used for industrial purposes. Any cleanup beyond that would be up to a new owner if Velsicol can sell the land, state officials said.
“It’s not enough – what they’re proposing,” said Barbara Kelly, a counselor at nearby Rossville Elementary. “I drive by Residue Hill [a decades-old, capped pesticide and herbicide dump on the property] every day, and I’ve seen that fence in disrepair. You know kids are going in there. Dogs and cats are going in there.”
Jeremy Tallman-Gazaway told Blair that in 2009 Velsicol officials told residents the site would be cleaned up enough to be used for a park where children could play.
“Isn’t there a way to hold them to their word?” he asked.
Blair made copious notes Tuesday as Jackson said he also is worried about creosote contamination in and alongside Chattanooga Creek at the old Southern Wood Piedmont site, adjacent to Velsicol, as well as deteriorating asbestos in the old and vacant Charles Bell School, which still hasn’t been torn down.
“This wouldn’t be allowed in other communities,” Jackson said. “If we let it go by the wayside now, we will forever be like we are.”