GREENVILLE — The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has scheduled another community meeting, to update the public about plans to clean up the contaminated soil in and around the former ESCO manufacturing plant in the Ardis Heights area.
“Most of it will be focused on where we’re going now,” said Gary Moore, the on-site coordinator for the EPA’s remediation effort at the Superfund site.
The meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, March 24, between 6 and 8 p.m. in the Fletcher Warren Civic Center, 5501 Highway 69 South in Greenville.
“We will be having site walks with our two prime cleanup contractors in the near future and will request proposals from them by around July 3,” Moore said. “I am anticipating that we will be able to begin work by the end of July to mid August. At the same time, we are working on our plans for additional sampling in the area.”
It was one year ago that the EPA announced it was considering adding the ESCO facility — at the intersection of 500 Forrester and Farm-To-Market Road 499 — as well as dozens of nearby locations in and near Ardis Heights to the Superfund list. That decision was finalized in September of last year.
ESCO manufactured electrical transformers and related equipment at the site between 1946 and 1970.
Tests conducted in 2005 by the City of Greenville and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) resulted in the city and state contacting the EPA for additional analysis to determine the extent of the problem.
Thousands of samples have been obtained from hundreds of locations, both on-site and in the residential areas. The tests on the soil at the old plant location discovered the ground is contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB), at concentrations between 33 and 740 parts per million, at depths up to 15 feet.
The EPA had also confirmed PCB contamination in the soil of 35 properties in the areas nearest the building. The contamination levels among the residential properties were reported to be far lower than what was at the ESCO site, with much of the contamination likely carried in soil washed from the factory to the other locations.
Additional sampling was conducted last summer at homes in the Ardis Heights community.
“Those we knew about,” Moore said, adding the meeting will also discuss the results of those samples.
The EPA has big plans for the eventual complete remediation of the ESCO site, including the removal of the former plant itself, which are expected to take several years and be very expensive.
“Of course, we are still begging and pleading for additional dollars for everything else,” Moore said.
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EPA schedules new meeting about ESCO cleanup
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