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The company responsible for the chemical spill in West Virginia moved its chemicals to a nearby plant that has already been cited for safety violations, including a backup containment wall with holes in it.
As a result, state officials may force the company to move the chemicals to a third site.
Inspectors on Monday found five safety violations at Freedom Industries' storage facility in Nitro, about 10 miles from the spill site in Charleston. The spill contaminated the drinking water for 300,000 people, and about half of them were still waiting for officials to lift the ban on tap water.
The West Virginia Bureau for Public Health issued a statement Wednesday evening advising pregnant women not to drink the water "until there are no longer detectable levels" of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, a chemical used in coal processing. The statement said it was making the recommendation "out of an abundance of caution" after consulting with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Department of Environmental Protection on Friday ordered Freedom Industries to move all of its chemicals to the Nitro site.
According to a report from the department, inspectors found that, like the Charleston facility, the Nitro site's last-resort containment wall had holes in it. The report described the site's wall as "deteriorated or nonexistent."
Freedom Industries said the building's walls acted as a secondary containment dike, but state inspectors disagreed. The walls had holes in them near the ground level, and they led out to a stormwater trench surrounding the structure's exterior, the report said.
Department spokesman Tom Aluise said the ditch eventually drains into the Kanawha River. The Nitro facility isn't on a riverbank, like the other facility.
The facility had no documentation of inspections of the Nitro site. Nor did it have proof of employee training in the past 10 years, the report said.
Aluise said the state could force Freedom to move the chemicals to a third site, or build secondary containment structures at the Nitro facility. He said the department would issue an administrative order Thursday morning detailing what corrective action will be required. Asked what possible penalties would be brought against the company, Aluise responded in an email: "Yet to be determined."
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Company in W.Va. chemical spill cited at 2nd site
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FAIRFIELD COUNTY, SC (WIS) -
Fairfield County taxpayers are demanding answers after finding out the county spent more than $300,000 on a football field. Over the weekend, a $40,000 retaining wall at the field crumbled to the ground.
The county finished construction four months ago, but the field still isn't finished.
The people we spoke with say they don't want another dime spent on this project and want those responsible for spending the money on the field to explain why Fairfield County needed it.
"I bet I told 50 people that wall was coming down," said former Fairfield County Councilman William Turner.
"What just ticks me off, I'm a taxpayer in this county and I just see y'all wave your arms and just -- I'm taking a $4,000 check down there today to pay taxes and see it wasted like this? That's what just disturbs me," said Fairfield County citizen Clyde Wade.
Fairfield County Administrator Milton Pope got a dressing down when he showed up to inspect the wall collapse at the county park Monday morning.
A huge section of a cinder block retaining wall fell over and took with it a fence taxpayers spent more than $40,000 to put up.
Pope gave his workers his initial assessment as soon as he walked up:
"Unless they didn't follow the plans right, it's built right," said Pope. "It just didn't give it, the wall, the time to pack before it got all that water in it.
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Collapsed retaining wall leads to questions about $320,000 football field
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Caltrans’ tar tale -
January 17, 2014 by
Mr HomeBuilder
After more than two years of news stories and paying for two cleanups, Caltrans has finally removed the black tar ooze from a pre-modern era concrete retaining wall along Highway 128 just 40 feet from the Navarro River.
This newspaper literally exposed the mess attached to the front of the old concrete structure in our first story printed in summer 2012.
State regulators, responding to California Public Records Act requests for comment from this newspaper, had to use GPS devices to find the wall among dense brush back then. The low, west end of it is just 10 feet from the roadway, about 100 yards east of the intersection of Highway 1 and Highway 128, on the east (mountain) side of the road.
A huge tank dispensed tar for blacktopping from atop the wall from the 1950s to 1970s. This kind of practice was common at the time but became strictly illegal due to emerging environmental regulations and concerns.
This newspaper's investigation printed in a half dozen stories over the past two years, exposed (after initial denial) that Caltrans had originally proposed to remove the entire wall structure as part of a $1.5 million guardrail replacing and enhancing project for a still planned nearby upgrade on Highway 128 but pulled the cleanup out of the project, baffling regulators at the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board. The two projects are now separate.
Phil Frisbie Jr.
"Just to be clear, this cleanup work was never part of, or within the project area, of the guardrail project. The guardrail project is scheduled to go out to bid this spring and to construction this summer," said Frisbie.
Second cleanup seems to be working
A three-day cleanup in November, a year after the first, botched cleanup, filled three 20-cubic-yard disposal bins (about 26 tons of waste). Cleaned up by workers wearing protective and hazmat suits, it was transported under a non-hazardous waste manifest to the Potrero Hill Class II Landfill facility located in Suisun.
"The asphalt emulsion oil (tar) ranging in thickness from 1 to 4 feet was removed from behind the retaining wall using a 60-pound electric jack hammer and hand tools. The asphalt emulsion oil was removed to exposed native soil. The removed asphalt emulsion oil and associated soil and debris was then placed in the Bobcat bucket and transferred to the disposal bins," Geocon Consultants, the company that did both cleanups, wrote to Caltrans.
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Caltrans' tar tale
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In this Monday, Jan. 13, 2014, file photo, workers, left, inspect an area outside a retaining wall around storage tanks where a chemical leaked into the Elk River at Freedom Industries storage facility in Charleston, W.Va. Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Tom Aluise says inspectors found five violations Monday at a Nitro, W.Va., site where Freedom Industries moved its coal-cleaning chemicals after last Thursdays spill. Inspectors found that, like the Charleston facility where the leak originated, the Nitro site lacked appropriate secondary containment. In Charleston, a porous containment wall allowed the chemical to ooze into the Elk River. Steve Helber/The Associated Press
In this Monday, Jan. 13, 2014, file photo, workers inspect an area outside a retaining wall around storage tanks where a chemical leaked into the Elk River at Freedom Industries storage facility in Charleston, W.Va. Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Tom Aluise says inspectors found five violations Monday at a Nitro, W.Va., site where Freedom Industries moved its coal-cleaning chemicals after last Thursdays spill. Inspectors found that, like the Charleston facility where the leak originated, the Nitro site lacked appropriate secondary containment. In Charleston, a porous containment wall allowed the chemical to ooze into the Elk River. Steve Helber/The Associated Press
Posted: Wednesday, January 15, 2014 11:28 am | Updated: 12:12 pm, Wed Jan 15, 2014.
Company in West Virginia spill cited in issues at 2nd site Associated Press |
CHARLESTON, W.Va. State inspectors have cited the company whose spill contaminated the water supply for 300,000 West Virginians for five violations at a second facility where it is storing chemicals, and they say Freedom Industries might have to relocate its materials again because of a lack of a secondary containment plan.
State inspectors found the violations Monday at a Nitro site where Freedom Industries moved its coal-cleaning chemicals after Thursdays spill, according to a state Department of Environmental Protection report. Inspectors found that, like the Charleston facility where the leak originated, the Nitro site lacked appropriate last-resort containment to stop chemical leaks.
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Company in West Virginia spill cited in issues at 2nd site
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ENVISIONS LANDSCAPE DESIGN ASHLAND,OH, 419-557-8386, BARN STONE RETAINING WALL wall project 2013
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ENVISIONS LANDSCAPE DESIGN ASHLAND,OH, 419-557-8386, BARN STONE RETAINING WALL wall project 2013 - Video
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ENVISIONS LANDSCAPE DESIGN ASHLAND, OH, 419-557-8386, RETAINING WALL BARN STONE 2013
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ENVISIONS LANDSCAPE DESIGN ASHLAND, OH, 419-557-8386, RETAINING WALL BARN STONE 2013 - Video
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Updated: 01/15/2014 7:20 AM Created: 01/14/2014 4:54 PM KSTP.com By: Ellen Galles
A crack in a South Minneapolis retaining wall is becoming a pit... a money pit. Homeowner Elizabeth Howell was originally cited for it back in 2008. The cost to fix it would be anywhere from $70,000 to $90,000.
Howell says the retaining wall is the city's property and after five years, dozens of letters to city officials and multiple court cases a Hennepin County judge finally agreed with her in late December.
Now Howell is waiting for the snow to melt and for a public works crew to come and fix it.
"The fact that the city dug its heels in and kept pushing me to fix it when it wasn't my responsibility, I find that outlandish," said Howell.
Minneapolis City attorney Susan Segal says they have to take a hard, careful look at cases like this. She says the dispute lasted so long because they were defending the city's interests and taxpayer dollars.
"We have to look closely and make sure we are doing our due diligence," Segal said.
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Crack in South Minneapolis Retaining Wall Becomes 'Money Pit'
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Tears of sorrow change to tears of joy for displaced Covington residents
construction cost has been approved to provide permanent fix to a collapsed retaining wall.
By: WLWT
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Tears of sorrow change to tears of joy for displaced Covington residents - Video
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NEW LAYOUT UPDATE - RETAINING WALL
Just a quick layout update with some running clips,hope you like.
By: TheZimma
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NEW LAYOUT UPDATE - RETAINING WALL - Video
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Downtown businesses and restaurants began to reopen after water was declared safe to drink in portions of West Virginia's capital, but life has yet to return to normal for most of the 300,000 people who haven't been able to use running water in the five days since a chemical spill.
It could still be days before everyone in the Charleston metropolitan area is cleared to use water, though officials say the water in certain designated areas was safe to drink and wash with as long as people flushed out their systems. They cautioned that the water may still have a slight licorice-type odor, raising the anxieties of some who believed it was still contaminated.
"I wouldn't drink it for a while. I'm skeptical about it," said Wanda Blake, a cashier in the electronics section of a Charleston Kmart who fears she was exposed to the tainted water before she got word of the spill. "I know I've ingested it."
By Tuesday morning, officials had given the green light to about 35 percent of West Virginia American Water's customers. Thursday's spill affected 100,000 customers in a nine-county area, or about 300,000 people in all.
The water crisis shuttered schools, restaurants and day-care centers, and truckloads of water had to be brought in from out of state. People were told to use the water only to flush their toilets. Hospitals were flushing out systems as were schools, which hoped to open again Wednesday.
In downtown Charleston, the first section of the city where water was declared safe, few signs of the crisis were visible late Monday and hotel guests were informed they could use everything but the ice machines.
But many businesses remained shuttered in outlying residential neighborhoods. Charleston attorney Anthony Majestro represents several businesses that lost money while shut down and said he has lost count of the numerous lawsuits filed over the spill.
The Charleston Fire Department was continuing to give away cases of bottled water for free, and late Monday afternoon, a steady stream of vehicles crept through a station about a mile north of downtown.
Fire Capt. Eddie Moore estimated that firefighters, police officers and other volunteers at the station had given away 2,500 cases of water Monday _ more than 80,000 16-ounce bottles, or two tractor-trailers full. Firefighters loaded several cases into every vehicle that drove through.
Inside the station, the firefighters were surviving on frozen dinners, and Moore said the licorice smell from the taps was especially strong Monday morning.
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More in W.Va. cleared to use water after spill
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