About 30 more people gathered at Navassa City Hall last week, and another 18 practically tuned in to hear representatives from the Greenfield Environmental Multistate Trust make a long-awaited announcement: the city’s Superfund site cleanup underway.
The remediation task is focused on a 100-acre area, the former location of the Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp. facility. From 1936 to 1974, the company kept wood containing creosote, a probable carcinogen, in unlined pits on the property.
In 2010, the EPA designated the former Kerr-McGee site as a Superfund site, a domain contaminated with dangerous fabrics where the federal government is pushing for the culprits to clean up the mess. The Kerr-McGee site is one of 38 hazardous waste sites in North Carolina, and the disposal is a collaborative effort involving acceptance as true with other organizations, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
An EPA assessment found that near-pure creosote was seeping more than 30 feet below the surface of the property’s ancient ponds.
The remediation procedure will be carried out in stages. Ongoing paints are taking place on approximately 15. 6 acres, which once housed treated and untreated wood garage areas, known as Operable Unit 2. Officials estimate it will take 3 to 4 months to remove infected surface soil. The one accepted as true is also guilty of managing the sale or move of approximately 154 acres formerly owned by Kerr-McGee.
After a presentation detailing the cleanup of the site, Claire Woods, the trust’s director of environmental justice policy and programs, announced that 27 acres of land would be donated to the community. The land will be a task of recovery and the creation of the Moze Heritage Center and Natural Park, adding access to water.
“[The land] will be turned over to the city, subject to a conservation easement that will be carried out, most likely through the North Carolina Coastal Land Trust, and will allow the land to be preserved for public use in the future. “Woods said.
The mayor of Navassa, Eulis Willis, his vision for the creation of a heritage centre on the donated land.
“We’re in the Gullah Geechee room and we’re building a repository where other people of Gullah Geechee descent can bring artifacts,” he said. “This will not only help us maintain history and culture, but also provide opportunities for economic development. “
The mayor hopes the proposed center and water will include some other destination for others who hire boat tours in nearby Wilmington. If the advancement plans are completed, Navassa, where 17% of the nearly 1,800 citizens live below the poverty line, according to 2021 data, can gain financial advantages from tourism and new economic investments in housing and other businesses.
In addition, the agreement stated on its website that it “has been proposed to invest the remediation budget in the local economy by providing education and employment opportunities for Americans and local businesses. “Since 2016, it has hired and trained some citizens to “perform painting jobs at a hazardous waste site” and two local corporations were contracted to complete the painting at Unit 2.
About an hour and a half northwest of Navassa is the city of Roseboro, which, like Navassa, has struggled with environmental issues for decades. Black citizens living nearby see the GFL Sampson County landfill as the main contributor to soil and water pollution. and poor air quality.
The fates of the two communities are intertwined as the landfill adjacent to Roseboro is the destination for some of Kerr-McGee’s waste. Since the landfill receives waste from municipalities across the state, citizens are involved in having environmental issues from other communities sent to their backyard.
In 2022, N. C. Health News reported that citizens of Sampson County were involved in the GFL Sampson County landfill being the destination of creosote-contaminated soils from the Kerr-McGee site, but eventually, EPA officials abandoned that plan. and levels of ecological cleanliness” will be located in Navassa, according to a fact sheet provided through the trust.
Woods said that because of the considerations raised on behalf of Sampson County residents, “we looked at all the waste streams we expected from the paintings and did everything we could to minimize” what was going from the site to the area’s landfills.
According to a fact sheet on transportation and disposal, the agreement provides for no more than one truckload of railroad ties, 10 cubic yards of stormwater and a single 55-gallon container of gloves and other personal protective appliances. at the Sampson County landfill.
The news that hazardous waste may not be shipped from the Kerr-Mcgee site detracts somewhat from the growing list of environmental disruptions that Sampson County citizens have with the landfill, especially those living in the Roseboro community of Snowhill, where some can see the landfill from their homes.
Woods said accepting as true has shared data with the Environmental Justice Community Action Network and the citizens of Navassa about the types of waste he plans to dispose of from the Kerr-McGee site and the landfills that will get it.
“We’ve done everything we can to minimize fabrics destined for the Sampson County GFL,” Woods said.
As the remediation effort progresses, time will determine if the citizens of Sampson County agree with Woods.
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Will Atwater has spent the last decade working with educators, artists, and networked organizations as a producer of short documentaries and promotional videos. Originally from North Carolina, Will grew up in Chapel Hill and now splits his time between North Carolina and New Jersey, where he lives with his wife and two children. Contact him at watwater@northcarolinahealthnews. org
Republish this story
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.