News of Velsicol’s Bankruptcy and Contamination in Memphis
Below is the text of a news story by Ashli Blow in the Tennessee Lookout, March 18, 2024 entitled: “Superfund Site or Waste Management, Community Concerns Surround Velsicol’s Next Move.” The story mentions Velsicol in Michigan!
A chemical company in North Memphis that spent decades dumping toxic materials into waterways is looking to renew a state permit that would allow hazardous waste operations to continue at its defunct facility.
Unlike other Velsicol facilities across the United States that have become Superfund sites — a federal designation that allows the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to fund cleanup of contaminated areas — the Memphis location, 119 Warford St., has worked under a state-sanctioned permit since 2014. Under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) in Tennessee, companies can store, treat, and dispose of hazardous waste. The primary difference between the two is that RCRA addresses the management of hazardous waste and Superfund is geared toward the remediation of abandoned sites with contamination.
Environmental advocates and residents question whether a hazardous waste permit is the appropriate avenue for Velsicol or whether the company is using it as a means to circumvent national Superfund site status.
Velsicol created chemicals so dangerous that it changed environmental policy nationwide: Rachel Carson, author of the groundbreaking 1962 book “Silent Spring” described them as “elixirs of death.”
People will have a rare opportunity to ask during a public meeting on March 21 at 6 p.m. at the Hollywood Community Center, when Velsicol representatives plan to discuss its plans to renew and update its corrective action permit.
The public meeting comes in the wake of the company’s recent bankruptcy filing and their obligation to submit a new work plan to the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) to address contamination at a neighboring property, an affordable housing apartment complex.
“This [RCRA] permit is really supposed to be used for facilities that have hazardous materials on site … it’s not really supposed to be used for a long-term cleanup,” said Sarah Houston, executive director of watchdog group Protect Our Aquifer. “Really that should be something that has more federal oversight like the Superfund program, and we just see that this permitting structure has really made this a very slow cleanup process and isn’t doing the real due diligence of removing the toxins from the soil and the groundwater and really finishing the job.”
Velsicol created chemicals so dangerous that it changed environmental policy nationwide. Their pesticide production with chemicals like dieldrin and endrin became the center of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” published in 1962 and credited with the start of the modern environmental movement. Carson described the chemicals as the “elixirs of death” and warned of its neurological effects on people and wildlife, as well as its nearly irreversible pollution in ecosystems.
As America responded with federal regulation, such as banning chemicals for domestic use, Velsicol continued to make chemicals like chlordane through the early 1990s in Memphis — more than thirty years after the national reckoning. Meanwhile, the Black community around it were left to live with an enduring toxicity.
The Memphis facility closed in 2012, but to this day, as people pass by Velsicol, the 62-acre site appears unchanged from behind the chain-link fence. Many think it is a Superfund site, because of its appearance resembling that of a desolate lot.
The secretive operations of today’s Velsicol
In Southwest Tennessee, Velsicol is known for disposing of their chemicals in two landfills that became Superfund sites: One in the Hollywood community in Memphis and the other in Toone, an hour east of Memphis. Their cleanup at these dumps, and subsequent lawsuits and settlements, were heavily followed by mainstream media and politicians, but little public understanding exists about the facility where the chemicals were originally produced.
In anticipation of its permit renewal, something that only happens once every 10 years, The Lookout conducted a months-long investigation into Velsicol in 2022. We reviewed 125 public records that documented 40 years of its cleanup efforts. Under RCRA, Velsicol is required to submit a yearly Corrective Action Effectiveness Reports (CAER). To accurately understand the technical data in these reports, the Lookout talked to lawyers, policy analysts, and chemists who work with site remediation.
According to those reports, since 1999, Velsicol has been trying to reduce a fluctuating plume of chemicals beneath the facility that’s mass measured around 126 acres, which is roughly the size of Liberty Bowl stadium. The company calls the plume “under control.” It monitors a network of wells to calculate the boundary and weight of the plume, made mostly of carbon tetrachloride – a chemical used as house cleaner that is now also banned for consumer use by the EPA.
Their plume has decreased from over 80,000 pounds to 7,000 pounds of chemicals over 20 years.
“The fact that they have removed 90% doesn’t mean that it’s 90% less toxic. There’s much more in terms of threat and potential injury than just the total,” Christopher Reddy, a marine chemist who analyzes drinking water for pollutants, including pesticides, told The Lookout in 2022.
Velsicol reported to TDEC that it extracted another 2,659 pounds as of 2023, and it is unclear how much of the plume remains.
Scientists such as Reddy and advocates like Houston express concern about lingering chemicals and the groundwater’s flow, as these concentrations of chemicals may move downward into the ground and potentially reach layers of the Memphis Sands Aquifer, the primary drinking water source for over one million residents in the region.
But those are even more concerns about what lies above the surface.
Bankruptcy, residential contamination
Guided by RCRA regulations, the remediation for topical contamination in soil has unfolded gradually, marked by a series of inspections, investigations, action plans, status reports, and investigations.
During their permit tenure, Velsicol incurred minor violations from TDEC for mislabeling materials. However, following The Lookout investigation, Velsicol faced a different array of violations and deficiency notices from TDEC.
Last August, when attempting to file its latest CAER, Velsicol submitted a document that did not include analytical laboratory reports. This January, TDEC gave Velsicol a violation for not having documentation of hazardous waste management training in recent years. According to monitoring reports filed over the last decade, Velsicol employs two people at its Memphis facility.
The fact that they have removed 90% doesn’t mean that it’s 90% less toxic. There’s much more in terms of threat and potential injury than just the total.
TDEC is also now requiring that Velsicol submit an interim measures work plan by the end of April to address contamination at the neighboring Cypress Gardens Apartments on 1215 Springdale Street. The property manager of the affordable housing apartment complex hired an independent environmental consulting agency, Tioga, to collect soil samples. The Lookout reached out to the property manager, but they did not respond to comment.
Tioga took the tests to a lab that found several pesticides including aldrin and endrin with dieldrin exceeding the EPA’s contamination limit for residential properties.
“The findings of this assessment indicate that soil contamination associated with the former Velsicol plant still remains on the property and could potentially post a continued risk,” said the report, signed by Tioga Geologist John Luke Hall.
The report specified that the western building alongside Cypress Creek, where Velsicol disposed of their hazardous waste for years, was most at risk. The environmental consultants recommended the removal of the soil between the apartment building and Cypress Creek.
It would be a part of existing work that Velsicol does to extract patches of contaminated soil on its property, where a baseball diamond-shaped consolidation pile at the northwest corner of its property Each time soil is added to the pile, a tarp-like impermeable liner is put over it and welded into place. Eventually, the pile will be capped and “monitored in perpetuity to ensure the cap is not compromised.
Velsicol has a baseball diamond-shaped pile of contaminated soil sitting on the northwest corner of its property. It is where the company has brought its extracted soil over the years, capping it with an impermeable liner that is welded into place.
The Lookout reached out to Velsicol’s Vice President George Harvell for comment, but he had not responded to our request by the publication of this article.
Velsicol Chemical LLC and its parent corporations filed for bankruptcy in September, and Harvell wrote in a letter to TDEC that the company plans to reorganize. It’s a similar step that the Velsicol plant in Michigan, which operated under a different corporate parent, took, also filing for bankruptcy and relying on the EPA and State of Michigan for funding to clean up its site. It’s now one of the country’s costliest Superfund sites.
Kathy Yancey-Temple lives near the Velsicol facility in Douglass Park, a historic community established by a formerly enslaved individual to provide safe property ownership for Black families during the Reconstruction era. The neighborhood is now surrounded by industry.
Yancey-Temple believes that Velsicol’s toxic practices have been at the expense of her community’s health and livelihoods.
As an organizer for the Center for Transforming Communities, Yancey-Temple has had difficulties in getting clear answers about the company’s actions over the past decade, submitting her own public record requests to the state for information. Despite her efforts, neither she nor other community members have received outreach from the company about health implications of the contaminants that linger.
Years of committed environmental justice advocacy efforts played a crucial role in the company’s closure. Yancey-Temple is confident that continued community organizing can be instrumental in navigating this next phase and advocating for a thorough cleanup to conclude, allowing the property to be redeveloped.
“[The permit] comes around every decade,” she said. “So we’re here again, and we have to fight them off again.”