A citizen advisory board will be formed to help inform decisions about clean-up efforts of dangerous chemicals on the former Western Electric site on Graham Hopedale Road in Burlington.
The U.S. Army Environmental Command announced the board Thursday during a public open house about clean-up efforts related to trichloroethylene and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or TCE and PFAS, at the Western Electric site, formerly known as the Tarheel Army Missile Plant.
Ethan Dinwiddie, a project geologist for Terracon, a U.S. Army subcontractor, said the full extent of TCE contamination on the Western Electric site remains unknown, but remediation efforts are ongoing, including a soil removal project earlier this year.
“All we can know for sure is that we removed contaminated soil at this point, and the approximate quantity that we removed this past year was around 350 cubic yards. or around 500 tons of soil,” he said.
Nathan Edwards, program manager for the US Army Environmental Command, said the U.S. Army Environmental Command also recently excavated a number of injection wells for a reactant that would break down the TCE contamination as it starts to migrate off the site. The Army and its subcontractors will be taking groundwater samples in August to determine how well that is working, he added.
Dinwiddie said the injection of a remediation compound into the soil focused on the northwest corner of the property “to cut the [TCE] plume off as it’s migrating off of the site.”
Bri Clark, a risk assessor for the Army Environmental Command, said the biggest concern about high levels of TCE is related to groundwater contamination, but the Army’s excavation efforts have helped minimize the risk of exposure to the general public.
The 22-acre plant at 204 Graham-Hopedale Road, also known as the former Western Electric site, has been unused for years, but contamination includes solvents, benzene and two types of PFAS chemicals. Since the mid-1990s, the military has spent upward of $2 million remediating the contamination, but a full cleanup never happened.
Sue Murphy, an engineer with the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality, said since all the residential neighborhoods adjacent to the Western Electric site are on the city’s drinking water system, the exposure to TCE or PFAS is greatly reduced.
“I don’t want to minimize at all what’s going on with this site, because this site, we take it very seriously,” Murphy said. “But the level of exposure or potential exposure is not such that we would be asking for help or other resources.”
Murphy said DEQ will continue to closely monitor TCE and PFAS contamination that could migrate from the site into area waterways.
“As far as actual exposure to local residents, we are concerned and we keep collecting data to reassure that ... there is no unexplored and unquantified pathway,” Murphy said.
Morgan Lassiter, community engagement director for the city of Burlington, said city officials hope the citizen advisory board will allow Burlington residents to have a voice in the clean-up efforts.
“When I’ve been out speaking to people in Burlington and in our community about this event, or the project in general, the fact there’s even an opportunity to sit on on a board that citizens might gain all the knowledge to be able to take it back out to their community and to guide and affect some decisions that are made, that’s really hopeful, so I think folks are excited about that,” Lassiter said.
For more information about the clean-up, go online to burlingtonnc.gov/westernelectric
Hot, dry conditions during most of June pushed Alamance County and most of the rest of the state into drought status this week, though a short period of cooler, damper weather set in Thursday.
The N.C. Drought Management Advisory Council reported Thursday that all but one of the state’s 100 counties — Cherokee County in the western tip of the state — were either listed as abnormally dry or suffering moderate drought. Alamance County and all of its immediate neighbors except Randolph County and most of Chatham County were in moderate drought.
The advisory council reported that 57 counties were in moderate drought while 42 were abnormally dry. A week ago, no counties were categorized as being in any level of drought, and 67 counties were abnormally dry.
“Flash drought is now upon us, with much of northern and eastern N.C. entering moderate drought and abnormally dry conditions expanding westward,” the advisory council reported. “A two-category degradation in just two weeks qualifies as flash drought, and its impacts are now obvious across the landscape: streams reduced to a trickle, small ponds and roadside ditches completely dried up, and crops, lawns and gardens wilting and turning brown.”
The hot, dry streak has affected the state’s agriculture industry, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture reporting that 55% of the state’s corn crop is in poor or very poor condition.
The Piedmont Triad received some respite from dry conditions when rain returned Thursday for the first time in two and a half weeks. Rainfall totals were spotty, ranging from 0.02 inches to 0.3 inches, said Jonathan Blaes, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
Before Thursday, widespread, measurable rainfall had not been seen since early June.
The next decent chance for precipitation will arrive Sunday afternoon and evening, Blaes said.
“We have a front that’s coming in late in the weekend and, with that, we’ll have a better chance of showers and storms,” he said. “That’s the next hope for any meaningful rain. The rain threat for late Sunday could linger into Monday.”
Beyond that, “There’s no obvious weather system to break the (dry) pattern,” Blaes said.
BURLINGTON — A Burlington man walking on the train tracks in the northwest part of the city was hit and killed by a train Thursday evening.
Daniel Cameron Wagoner, 47, apparently was walking east on the tracks west of York Road toward Oak Avenue shortly after 8 p.m. as a train approached, traveling in the opposite direction, the Burlington Police Department said. The train was traveling under track speed and sounded its horn to try to to alert Wagoner, but he did not leave the tracks.
Wagoner was pronounced dead at the scene.
The railway was closed for about three hours.