Partial PCB cleanup to begin Aug. 28

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and its contractor the Environmental Chemical Corp. met with Gov. Pedro P. Tenorio yesterday to inform the chief executive that removal of polychlorinated biphenyl contaminated soil in Cemetery No. 2 is set to begin on Aug. 28.

Testings will be conducted by ECC to determine the temporary storage area for the excavated soil. Eight staff from ECC will be arriving soon to carryout the cleanup.

According to Frank Ono, Army Corps civil engineer, cleanup of the remaining PCB contaminated sites in the village will be conducted after work on the cemetery has been finished.

“We are focusing our efforts on the cemetery so that we can get it cleaned up before All Soul’s Day,” said Mr. Ono. Treatment of the soil is expected to begin early 2001.

Cleanup level in Cemetery No. 2 is 1 pm and areas with greater than 1 ppm will be excavated until the desired level is obtained. Groundwater sampling and analysis will not be conducted in this scheduled soil removal but such action is being considered in the subsequent phase of the project, the Army Corps said.

However, community leaders under the Tanapag Action Group would like the cleanup level in the Cemetery to be below 1 ppm. “We are very concerned with the areas in the village which have high concentration of PCB so we want them to begin working on the village too,” said Juan Tenorio, representative of TAG.

An Army Corps representative will be on the site to oversee the project which will also be coordinated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 9 and the Division of Environmental Quality.

“We want to make sure that everything will go on smoothly based on the workplan and speed up the cleanup process,” said Ignacio Cabrera, DEQ Director.

EPA has earlier conducted testings on the soil, water and food samples in Tanapag village in June but results have yet to be finalized. This will at least help determine which areas in the village and in the cemetery have high PCB concentrations.

Mr. Tenorio lamented the delay in revealing the results of EPA testing which he said is very important to prepare the members of the community for the PCB removal in the village.
“We believe that many times we were kept in the dark that’s why we cannot trust the federal agencies,” he said.

During Phase I of the project, an estimated 5,000 tons of PCB-contaminated soil will be removed and temporarily stockpiled near the cemetery. The Army Corps has assured the people that the low temperature thermal desorption process, which will be used in the treatment of PCB contaminated soil, is the best technology available so far.

ECC has successfully cleaned up a much larger and more complex USEPA Superfund site in New Jersey where an approximately 95,000 tons of contaminated soil was safely and successfully treated using the same process.