Coming Clean in Chesapeake Virginia

Typography
Can heavy industry, homes and the environment get along in the same neighborhood? The Elizabeth River Project and University of Virginia representatives think so. The two entities are crafting a plan to revitalize Money Point in Chesapeake, so that this intensely industrialized and neglected community might one day become a healthier, cleaner and greener place to live and do business.

CHESAPEAKE — Can heavy industry, homes and the environment get along in the same neighborhood?


The Elizabeth River Project and University of Virginia representatives think so.


The two entities are crafting a plan to revitalize Money Point in Chesapeake, so that this intensely industrialized and neglected community might one day become a healthier, cleaner and greener place to live and do business.


There is precedence for success, says Phoebe Crisman, an assistant professor of architecture at U.Va., who is helping to recast Money Point through a government grant. Seattle, Crisman said, has melded the needs of migratory salmon and riverfront industry, and in Germany, planners have found ways to balance blast furnaces and quality homes.


The task locally probably will take years to design and implement -- assuming that sponsors can find enough money and political will to complete the job. But as the Rev. Kenneth Woodley, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Money Point, said recently of the initiative, "At least we're talking together about these issues, and that's a first."


!ADVERTISEMENT!

Money Point is the nickname for a 330-acre peninsula shoved up against Interstate 464 on a flat, abused shoreline of the Southern Branch of the Elizabeth River. That stretch of river runs dark brown and contains some of the most contaminated sediments in the world, thick with coal tar and petroleum wastes.


For more than a century, Money Point has hosted some of the heaviest -- some say dirtiest -- industries in Hampton Roads: fertilizer plants, creosote wood-treatment factories, ship-repair yards, petroleum and gasoline storage tanks, junkyards and salvage yards.


As many as 4,000 people used to live there, mostly black laborers of the factories nearby. Only about 100 residents remain today; many left because of plant closings, truck traffic, fumes, noise and a desire for something better.


"It smelled so bad, it sometimes made your eyes burn," said Stanley E. Wilson, who grew up in Money Point in the 1940s and '50s.


His mother, Evelyn, still lives there, next door to a car-crushing business and a vacant lot recently declared a health risk by city inspectors.


Wilson recalled swimming in the river as a boy. He said a brown film often covered the surface. The material would cling to his arms after he paddled through it.


"God knows what that stuff was," he said. "But it wasn't good for you, I can tell you that now." Wilson said he is healthy today, but his mother suffers from asthma and other respiratory problems -- conditions that Wilson blames on neighborhood pollution.


At the center of the anticipated cleanup is a dismantled, waterfront creosote plant formerly owned by Eppinger & Russell Co. of New York. An explosion and fire in 1963 sent more than 130,000 gallons of creosote -- a black, tar like substance slathered on wood pilings and timbers to preserve them -- into the Elizabeth River.


Four years later, another 20,000 gallons of creosote spilled into the river after a storage tank ruptured on a neighboring property owned by Bernuth Lembcke Co. That facility once supplied creosote to Eppinger & Russell through pipes.


Records also show that, in the 1950s, creosote-laden waste water was channeled into the river through ditches cut into the ground. Today, that type of waste system would probably be considered criminal.


The environmental effects from those unregulated days still are felt today. A 30-acre toxic smear remains on the bottom of the Elizabeth River, just off the shoreline. It contains some of the highest concentrations of PAHs -- polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a cancer-causing petroleum byproduct -- in the world.


Fish are known to go blind and contract liver cancer and lesions from exposure to such pollution levels. And almost no life exists on the bottom.


Soils on the two upland sites are contaminated with creosote, as is the groundwater beneath them. Officials worry that rain or storms may carry these wastes into the river, causing more toxic pollution.


"PAH concentrations reported on site may be sufficiently high to cause burning if contacted directly," according to a 1986 property survey for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The study also found elevated levels of antimony, arsenic, cadmium, copper, mercury, lead, zinc and silver in soils.


The EPA decided not to put Eppinger & Russell or Bernuth Lembcke in its Superfund program of toxic-waste sites needing restoration. Instead, the new owner of the main site, Amerada Hess Oil Co., enrolled the property in Virginia's voluntary remediation program, which allows owners to clean up their lands at their own pace, with little government oversight or publicity.


Steve Freeman, an environmental manager with Hess, said his company is planning a major cleanup soon. Crews will install a huge wall of steel plates beneath the shoreline -- "an underground bulkhead," as Freeman described it -- designed to block creosote from escaping the site and further harming the river.


Secondly, Hess workers will plant a large grove of especially absorbent trees to soak up contaminants trapped in the ground, he said. The company is experimenting with several species now to see which trees remove the most contamination and still can survive.


Freeman declined to say how much the system will cost, but a state environmental official described the investment as "immense" and "beyond what they really need to do."


"I think their ideas will work," said Jim Bernard, an administrator of the voluntary cleanup program at the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.


Containing landed pollution is critical to a separate plan to remove the immense toxic scar from the river. The Elizabeth River Project, an environmental group, is earmarking $5 million to either dredge remnant creosote from the water or permanently cap it.


To obtain a government permit for the work, the group will have to prove to regulators that land contaminants will not someday wash into the water and replace the wastes being eradicated. "It would do no good to allow re-contamination," Bernard said.


The money for the removal action comes from APM Terminals of Virginia, a branch of the world's largest shipping company, Maersk Sealand, which is building a cargo port farther up the river on the Portsmouth waterfront. APM is required to compensate for environmental damage that constructing a new port will cause; the company has paid $5.3 million.


Marjorie Mayfield Jackson, executive director of the Elizabeth River Project, has called the Eppinger & Russell cleanup one of the most important efforts in the group's history.


While Hess is securing its property, the fate of the former Bernuth Lembcke site is not so clear; and it represents a challenge to the voluntary, consensus-building approach favored by the environmental group.


The operator of the Bernuth Lembcke site, at the dead-end of Freeman Avenue, is Al Falk, who runs a salvage yard. Several old creosote tanks remain on his land, and they now have holes in them and still contain leftover tars, according to government reports.


Also on the site are accumulated tires, lead batteries, used oil, scrap metal and drums of surplus solvents.


Falk has told Elizabeth River Project officials that he will cooperate with efforts to voluntarily restore Money Point, as part of the U.Va. initiative. But at the same time, state and city environmental officials say they have had little luck in forcing Falk to clean up his property, which they consider an out-of-compliance junk yard containing potential hazardous wastes.


The Chesapeake Fire Marshal's Office has documented 68 fire code violations, department spokesman Capt. Steve Johnson said. Last year, Falk was fined $1,000 in court for violating local rules governing junk yards.


Earlier this month, the department visited the site under an inspection warrant and discovered that "he's apparently still not complying," Johnson said.


In March 2004, the state environment department sent Falk a warning letter, citing concerns that he apparently is violating several hazardous-waste and storage regulations.


A month later, Falk and his attorney, Christopher Falk, a nephew, met with state officials and, in a follow-up letter, pledged to clean up the site by September 2004.


That has not happened, and the state is preparing an enforcement case against Falk, said Milt Johnston, a state waste-compliance manager.


"We've tried to work out a nice way for him to clean up," Johnston said, "but we're apparently going to have to do it the hard way."


Christopher Falk responded that the area "has always been industrial, and for a local fire department to come point a finger at one individual property owner is really off the mark."


The attorney said the federal government has contributed to the river's pollution. St. Juliens Creek Annex, a military installation across from Money Point in Chesapeake, is a Superfund cleanup site and has sold surplus chemicals to salvage operators for years, he said.


Other riverfront industries -- including Elizabeth River Terminals, Kinder Morgan and Southern Concrete -- have pledged to support the community restoration. So far, they have restored wetlands on their sites and committed to pollution-prevention techniques, and said they'll help implement whatever plan U.Va. comes up with next year.


"We have a keen interest in making this work," said Peter Schmidt, president of Southern Aggregates, a branch of Southern Concrete. Schmidt is a board member of the Elizabeth River Project, a former executive director of the DEQ under then-Gov. George F. Allen and now is running for state delegate in Virginia Beach, his home.


"What I like is that this is a collaborative effort," Schmidt said. "It's about trying to find a solution that helps the environment and keeps the businesses thriving on Money Point."


Crisman, the U.Va. professor and professional architect, envisions a green belt around the Money Point peninsula. Restored wetlands would act to filter pollutants before they reach the river as well as enhance wildlife habitat, she said.


Money Point has no storm drainage system, other than a few open ditches that overflow almost every time it rains. Crisman would like the city or state to install ponds or catch basins that would both control runoff and curb localized flooding.


Sam Sawan, senior drainage engineer for the city of Chesapeake, said such improvements have been eyed for the community for years but have never been funded.


"It wouldn't be a huge project," Sawan said, "maybe $500,000 or so. But there are many, many needs."


Woodley, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Money Point, a small sanctuary amid clapboard homes and salvage yards on Freeman Avenue, remains positive about the future.


Woodley said the community would love to see better drainage, sidewalks, buffers from junk yards and more respect for the remaining residents.


"I believe it can be done," he said. "This is the first time our church has been recognized, been consulted about these issues, and I'm grateful for that.


"I just hope to see conditions improve in my lifetime," Woodley added. "I sure hope I get to see that."


To see more of the The Virginian-Pilot, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.pilotonline.com.


Source: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News