Cleanup set to resume on Ballard Pits
By Tim Olmeda
Work is set to resume on the Ballard Sand Pits, but state officials said the funding they currently have available may not be enough to finish the project.
Officials with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality updated the Nueces County Commissioners Court at a Dec. 17 meeting on the project's status. The project had been suspended in September when it was discovered more funding would be needed to complete the cleanup.
TCEQ officials said about 40 borings had been taken recently at the East Pit site, along with 20 gallons of the sludge-like waste that was similar to the contaminants removed from the West Pit.
Measures are also being taken to try and reduce the cost of the cleanup, including looking at stabilizing the waste material on site before transporting the non-hazardous material to a waste disposal facility.
"The state can't afford the cost that we paid to remediate the West Pit at the moment," Lands said.
A 63,000-square-foor portion of the Ballard Pits, which is located in a rural area off of County Road 73 in Robstown, consisting of 296 acres of property, was found in 2003 to pose "an unacceptable risk to human health," after samples taken by the Railroad Commission during a site assessment showed numerous hydrocarbon compounds, including benzene.
TCEQ officials have said the nearest drinking water intakes serve more than 284,000 people and are located about two miles downstream of the East and West pits.
Since the pits are within a half mile of the Nueces River and flood waters have inundated the impoundments in the past, state officials said "the potential for releases of hazardous substances from the impoundments into the Nueces River is a concern."
Nearly $4 million had been set aside for the project, but it was discovered in May that the amount of contaminated soil in the West Pit was nearly four times greater than previously estimated.
"Initially, we estimated that waste (in the West Pit) was, on average, about four feet thick," Team leader Ken Davis said in May. "When we dug into it, we saw about 15 feet of waste that appeared to have been layered with sediment."
As a result, the project was suspended after the money budgeted by the TCEQ for the project ran out in late August, leaving the East Pit untouched due to a lack of funding, TCEQ officials said.
Project Manager Barry Lands said last week that the West Pit has since been cleaned out and backfilled with clean soil. Nearly 7,000 tons of hazardous and 8,300 tons of non-hazardous waste materials was removed from the West Pit and transported to an approved waste disposal facility.
The investigation on the East Pit is still ongoing, Lands said, and it's still unclear how much it will cost to conduct the cleanup.
"We had decided we had to do a much better evaluation of the East Pit to find out whether or not the East Pit was going to come up with the same sorts of problems that the West Pit came up with, mainly, a lot more material there to be removed than originally suspected," Lands said.
Davis said work is scheduled to begin in the spring of 2009, but the team will be working to better plan for the cleanup by using the knowledge gathered in the cleanup of the West Pit.
"We're trying to get further with less," Davis said.
TCEQ officials also informed county commissioners that preliminary results on groundwater tests conducted in three drinking water wells tested positive for low amounts of a compound used in the creation of plastics. TCEQ officials said the compound is problematic and is often the subject of false positive tests, but added measures are being taken to install carbon filtration units on the water wells.
"We don't know if that compound is really in the groundwater at this point, so we're going to go out and do some resampling," Davis said "We're moving ahead to protect (residents') health, whether it's real or not."
Davis said residents already don't drink the water from the wells, but do use it to shower and bathe. Environmental experts said the water is fine for showering and poses no threat to residents, he added.
Officials with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality updated the Nueces County Commissioners Court at a Dec. 17 meeting on the project's status. The project had been suspended in September when it was discovered more funding would be needed to complete the cleanup.
TCEQ officials said about 40 borings had been taken recently at the East Pit site, along with 20 gallons of the sludge-like waste that was similar to the contaminants removed from the West Pit.
Measures are also being taken to try and reduce the cost of the cleanup, including looking at stabilizing the waste material on site before transporting the non-hazardous material to a waste disposal facility.
"The state can't afford the cost that we paid to remediate the West Pit at the moment," Lands said.
A 63,000-square-foor portion of the Ballard Pits, which is located in a rural area off of County Road 73 in Robstown, consisting of 296 acres of property, was found in 2003 to pose "an unacceptable risk to human health," after samples taken by the Railroad Commission during a site assessment showed numerous hydrocarbon compounds, including benzene.
TCEQ officials have said the nearest drinking water intakes serve more than 284,000 people and are located about two miles downstream of the East and West pits.
Since the pits are within a half mile of the Nueces River and flood waters have inundated the impoundments in the past, state officials said "the potential for releases of hazardous substances from the impoundments into the Nueces River is a concern."
Nearly $4 million had been set aside for the project, but it was discovered in May that the amount of contaminated soil in the West Pit was nearly four times greater than previously estimated.
"Initially, we estimated that waste (in the West Pit) was, on average, about four feet thick," Team leader Ken Davis said in May. "When we dug into it, we saw about 15 feet of waste that appeared to have been layered with sediment."
As a result, the project was suspended after the money budgeted by the TCEQ for the project ran out in late August, leaving the East Pit untouched due to a lack of funding, TCEQ officials said.
Project Manager Barry Lands said last week that the West Pit has since been cleaned out and backfilled with clean soil. Nearly 7,000 tons of hazardous and 8,300 tons of non-hazardous waste materials was removed from the West Pit and transported to an approved waste disposal facility.
The investigation on the East Pit is still ongoing, Lands said, and it's still unclear how much it will cost to conduct the cleanup.
"We had decided we had to do a much better evaluation of the East Pit to find out whether or not the East Pit was going to come up with the same sorts of problems that the West Pit came up with, mainly, a lot more material there to be removed than originally suspected," Lands said.
Davis said work is scheduled to begin in the spring of 2009, but the team will be working to better plan for the cleanup by using the knowledge gathered in the cleanup of the West Pit.
"We're trying to get further with less," Davis said.
TCEQ officials also informed county commissioners that preliminary results on groundwater tests conducted in three drinking water wells tested positive for low amounts of a compound used in the creation of plastics. TCEQ officials said the compound is problematic and is often the subject of false positive tests, but added measures are being taken to install carbon filtration units on the water wells.
"We don't know if that compound is really in the groundwater at this point, so we're going to go out and do some resampling," Davis said "We're moving ahead to protect (residents') health, whether it's real or not."
Davis said residents already don't drink the water from the wells, but do use it to shower and bathe. Environmental experts said the water is fine for showering and poses no threat to residents, he added.
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