How come it's taking so long to clean the Parramore toxic dump site?

Depending on which way the wind is blowing at the corner of West Robinson Street and Terry Avenue, you can smell a chemical aroma.

While it’s impossible to tell what you’re smelling, one thing is certain. That location is on the federal government’s “Superfund alternative  list” because dangerous chemical waste has been accumulating there for 130 years.

Superfund site

Residents in the Parramore neighborhood know that location as the Orlando headquarters of TECO – Peoples Gas.

As reported by the Orlando Weekly in 2011, a federal scientist in 1988 collected soil and ground water samples showing the site is contaminated with a witches brew of toxic, cancer-causing chemicals, including:

·        Arsenic

·        Dibenz(a,h)anthracene

·        Lead

·        Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons

·        Polychlorinated Biphenyls

·        Trimethylbenzene

·        Antimony

·        Benzene

·        Benzo(B)Fluoranthene

·        Benzo(A)pyrene

·        Beryllium

·        Chrysene

·        Rthylbrnzene

·        Naphthalene

·        Nickel

·        Phenanthreyne

·        Styrene

·        Toluene

Back in the day, the corner of Robinson and Terry was home of the Orlando Gasification Plant.

As a federal Department of Health and Human Services report summarized: “The Orlando Gasification Plant site is north and south of 500-600 West Robinson Street. Between 1887 and 1960, the site was an active manufactured gas plant. The owners used coal to make gas for use in lamps and stoves. They also made a number other by-products. Over time, the plant polluted on-site soil and ground water. In 1960, after natural gas came to the city, the owners closed and took down the plant. Since then, groundwater pollution has spread to almost a mile northeast of the site.”

Most of the reports minimize the danger the toxic substances at the site pose to humans. Yet it’s important to note that the area is a crazy quilt of industrial, commercial and residential – both houses and apartments. The popular Callahan Neighborhood Center backs up to the TECO site.

“All risk assessments, to varying degrees, require the use of assumptions, judgments, and incomplete data. These contribute to the uncertainty of the final risk estimates. Some more important sources of uncertainty in this public health assessment include environment sampling and analysis, exposure parameter estimates, use of modeled (average) data, and present toxicological knowledge. We may overestimate or underestimate risk because of these uncertainties,” Heath and Human Services wrote in their report.

In addition, that report noted: “Residents of the neighborhood near the former Orlando Gasification Plant hazardous waste site are concerned about the health risk from the contaminated drinking water; the site’s potential contribution to asthma; and the health risk from dust, vapors and smells as a result of exposed subsurface soil and groundwater that may arise during future EPA remedial actions.

“The Orlando Utilities Commission provides drinking water for properties near the site. The closest well field to the site is approximately 1 mile northeast of the facility. The OUC has sampled these wells on a quarterly basis and has not detected site-specific contaminants of concern. In addition, EPA emphasized that all proposed clean-up plans would include procedures to protect public health during any cleanup.”

The situation in Parramore is not unusual, as a 2016 article in Fortune magazine reported, if you are a person of color and poor, you’re likely to live near a toxic waste site.

Cleanup of the Parramore site, barely a mile from Orlando’s downtown, has been mired in bureaucratic red tape for 29 years -- since scientists first tested soil and groundwater at Robinson and Terry.

Around the country, federal officials have declared dangerous toxic locations as Superfund sites and put them on the National Priority List to get federal funds for the cleanup.

Officials took a different route with the Orlando Gasification Plant site and put it on the Superfund alternative list. Under this scenario, “potentially responsible parties” sign a consent decree to remove the toxic soil and take other steps to clean the site.

In 2015 the “potentially liable parties” – the city of Orlando, Atlanta Gas Light, Duke Energy, Continental Holdings LLC, and an individual landowner — signed a consent decree to clean the Orlando Gasification Plant site.

Responding to questions from www.32805OrlNews.com, Dan Ward, a spokesman for the Orlando Gasification Plant Site Group wrote: “First, I can share that the nature of any current work at the site does not generate odors, so whatever you may have noticed when visiting the area may have been associated with another location or business.

“In answer to your questions, the Group submitted a work plan to the EPA earlier this month for approval, with the goal of beginning surface soil remediation in the first quarter of 2018. That will essentially entail removal and replacement of soil, and restoration of any sidewalks and pavement impacted by that work.

“Contractors will be required to follow odor control procedures to minimize any impact on the surrounding neighborhood. Once a work plan is approved and schedule determined, the Group will make sure that neighboring businesses and residents are informed.

“The Orlando Gasification Plant Site Group is committed to cleaning up the impacted site and engaging the community in the process, and we’ll make sure to include you in our communication going forward. The Group is working in close coordination with the EPA and Florida DEP to appropriately and effectively complete the environmental improvements.”

Click here to see a community activist discuss this toxic dump in Parramore.

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