Environmental cleanup at polluted site continues to grow

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Posted 8:22AM on Friday, August 23, 2002

AUGUSTA - A total of 800 tons of discarded tires have been dug up at a south Augusta junkyard during a state-funded cleanup effort. But, that may be less than 2 percent of the garbage, scrap metal and toxic soil to be found there. So far, 15,000 tons of material have been removed from the 10.8 acres once occupied by the Goldberg Brothers. Another 40,000 to 50,000 tons are expected to be exhumed in the next seven months by contractors hired by the state Environmental Protection Division. That is twice the amount originally estimated to be at the bankrupt site. Work began in the fall on what has become one of Georgia's most expensive environmental cleanup projects ever. Final costs are estimated at $7 million to $8 million. ``It's not the most expensive in the state's history, but it's certainly in the top five,'' said Jane Hendricks, unit coordinator of the state EPD's Hazardous Sites Response Program. Besides tires, workers removed 700 pounds of mercury spilled from buckets stored in the junkyard's dilapidated buildings, cancer-causing PCBs from leaking transformers and tons of lead. The most dangerous materials were trucked to hazardous waste landfills as far away as Michigan. Tires were taken to a landfill in South Carolina. ``With this project, we've seen almost the entire realm of experience in environmental remediation,'' said Frank Miller, the site coordinator for American Environmental and Construction Services, the cleanup contractor. ``It's a lot of material,'' he said. ``But you have to keep in mind this place operated, from what we can tell, for 40 years or more.'' The bankruptcy left the cleanup to state regulators. Miller's company is paid from Georgia's Superfund cleanup account funded by hazardous waste generators and environmental fines. Records stored in two rail cars on the property yielded 450 companies that could be asked to pay cleanup costs. Now that most surface debris is gone, workers are stripping one to six feet of contaminated soil from the site's surface. Clean dirt is being brought in to refill the holes. Once AECS completes its work, tests of groundwater will begin. Augusta received a $200,000 Brownfields grant that will be used to finance those studies, which will help determine if more remediation will be needed. Brownfields grants are used in many American cities to reclaim old, polluted industrial sites.