ADEQ memo indicates Whirlpool pollution plume is spreading

The plume of potentially cancer-causing trichloroethylene (TCE) found under the former Whirlpool manufacturing facility and an adjoining neighborhood in South Fort Smith could be spreading in the area near the near a Boys and Girls Club location.

News of the potentially growing plume was disclosed in a Sept. 22 letter from the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality to Robert Karwowski, director of environmental, health and safety at Whirlpool's corporate headquarters in Benton Harbor, Mich.

ADEQ Engineer Mostafa Mehran wrote to Karwowski regarding a report by Whirlpool about additional TCE pollution that was found near a Boys and Girls Club located in South Fort Smith not far from the shuttered factory facility.

The company previously disclosed the discovery on the site of the Boys and Girls Club of trichloroethylene (TCE), a potentially cancer causing chemical used as a degreasing agent at Whirlpool's former Fort Smith manufacturing facility, in an Aug. 4 letter to the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality.

The Whirlpool report written by environmental consultant Michael Ellis of ENVIRON — the firm hired by the company to implement an ADEQ-approved remediation plan — said the TCE discovered at the site of the Boys and Girls Club posed no threat to the general public.

"In summary, following a well-defined scientific process, no trichloroethylene (TCE) was found in any soil samples or in eight of the nine groundwater samples taken at the Boys and Girls Club property," Ellis wrote to the ADEQ. "These results indicate that impacted groundwater only marginally extends beyond the boundaries of the Jenny Lind Road expansion project. The impacted groundwater is only beneath a small corner of the undeveloped piece of the Boys and Girls Club property that will be separated from the rest of the Boys and Girls Club property by the Ingersoll Avenue Expansion project."

But in Mehran's letter to Whirlpool, the ADEQ engineer said the company failed to indicate that the TCE plume could be growing. He cited several detections of the chemical used as a degreasing agent at the factory through the 1980s, noting that the levels are above detection limits and that TCE was also discovered in groundwater samples taken at the site.

"This could be an indication of plume expansion," Mehran wrote, advising the company to make changes to the August report where it wrote indicating that the TCE at the Boys and Girls Club posed no threat. The report, he said, should indicate that the plume could be growing. Mehran also directed Whirlpool to install additional monitoring wells to keep track of the TCE plume.

"Given the apparent shape of the plume, ADEQ requires an additional monitoring well in the northwest corner of City of Fort Smith property (three properties)," he wrote.

The land owned by the city is located at Ingersoll Road and Boys and Girls Club Lane, where a road widening project has already necessitated a land sale between Whirlpool and the city, in addition to resolutions requiring Whirlpool to conduct testing during the road work and cover any costs associated with protecting construction workers at the site.

City Administrator Ray Gosack said during a Sept. 2 Board of Directors meeting that a resolution adopted by the Board would further the city's efforts to protect construction workers at the site from possible exposure to TCE contamination, which has been discovered at 15 feet below the surface in water.

"So we've drafted an agreement with Whirlpool that would give them access to the construction site if they need it. It would also require that if the city has to take extraordinary measures during the construction because of the TCE contamination, that Whirlpool would reimburse the city for the cost of implementing those measures to deal with the TCE contamination," Gosack said at the time.

Whirlpool must submit a response to ADEQ's letter within 10 days of receiving the correspondence, according to Mehran's letter.

Link here for Mehran’s letter to Whirlpool.