By Peggy Kenyon
Special to The Leader
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed tough new standards for allowable dioxin levels — 10 times as strict as standards were a decade ago — will neither halt nor delay use of Jacksonville’s police/firefighter training facility, city officials said. The facility will be completed early next year at the old Vertac site, where Agent Orange was once manufactured and where traces of dioxin remain.
“As far as I’m concerned, it will not affect our plans,” said Jacksonville Mayor Gary Fletcher on Friday. “The police and firefighter center is going on as scheduled. Every administration (in Washington) brings in a new agenda, but we’re moving on.
“It’s just about a massive push that we’ve got to save the Earth, but where do you draw the line? Sometimes government regulates so much that you can’t even live. They regulate you to death.”
Fletcher also told The Leader he would be willing to camp out on the old Vertac site and would be more concerned about the carcinogens emitted by his campfire than from the soil, which received a clean bill of health from the EPA a decade ago after a $150 million cleanup.
“There’s nothing here to warrant any review,” said Fletcher, who also wants to build new police headquarters on the Vertac site. “I think the new (Obama) administration is looking at strengthening the limits of the cleanup minimum, but I don’t think there is any need to revisit Vertac.”
It’s not clear if EPA officials could end any current or future operations at the old Vertac site.
rent or future operations at the old Vertac site.
Cecelea Pond-Mayo, a media specialist for the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, explained that this issue is being handled at the federal level, not by the state agency.
“We’re going to have to wait and see what happens,” Pond-Mayo told The Leader. “The EPA is rethinking its dioxin standards.”
Since the cleanup ended in Jacksonville in 1998, the EPA considered dioxin soil concentrations of less than 1,000 parts per trillion as safe for residential areas. It has considered 5,000 parts per trillion to 20,000 parts per trillion safe for commercial and industrial zones.
The proposed new standards would dramatically lower the safe levels to 72 parts per trillion for residential areas and 950 parts per trillion for commercial and industrial sites.
The EPA and the state Depart-ment of Pollution Control and Ecology (now ADEQ) supervised the cleanup, which began late in 1993 and was completed in September 1998.
DPC&E had collected $10.4 million from the bankrupt Vertac firm to pay for the cost of burning less dangerous wastes at the site.
The EPA had sued two other companies that were involved in the plant operations, Hercules and Uniroyal, for the cost of the rest of the cleanup.
A chemical plant had operated at the Marshall Road site for some 40 years, before shutting down in 1987. Herbicides and pesticides were manufactured there, including the defoliant Agent Orange used in Vietnam.
Thousands of barrels of hazardous wastes, such as dioxin, were stored at the site, including 2,700 drums of 2,4,5-T and 28,000 drums of 2,4-D wastes. The 2,4,5-T waste, the most dangerous, was incinerated in Kansas, while the 2,4-D waste was burned on site.
About 6,300 drums of contaminated ash from the incinerator went into a burial mound at the site. Over the decades, thousands of other drums were buried under ground while the plant was operating.
Some 34,000 drums of contaminated salt, a byproduct of incineration, were also moved off site.
Jacksonville saw one of the last major remedial actions in the U.S.
Meanwhile, the finishing touches are being put on the police watchtower along with its state-of-the-art computerized firing range and the burn building for firefighters to train to fight three types of fires — commercial storefronts, apartment complexes and single-family dwellings, which will be near the Jacksonville Recycling Center off Marshall Road, which will take up several acres on the old Vertac site.
Additionally, a concrete pad is in place for all emergency personnel as well as public-works employees to enhance their driving skills.
Initially, the city opted to set aside $4 million for the project that included only the firing range with moving targets hooked up through a computer system inside the police watchtower, the burn/training tower for firefighters and the driving pad.
In the summer of 2009, however, Kullander Construction of Little Rock submitted a bid of $2.5 million — much lower than city officials expected.
That’s when city officials looked at the possibility of building a structure to house emergency-personnel classroom training.
“Instead of remodeling and expanding the 911 communications center at its present location (off Harris Road near North Pulaski High School), we decided to take those funds of $400,000 and build it over there (off Marshall Road),” City Engineer Jay Whisker told The Leader.
The new 911 communications center will be housed inside the proposed multi-purpose structure, according to Whisker. Another idea cropped up to create a safe room in a portion of that structure in case of a tornado. In fact, the training classroom will double as the safe room with reinforced concrete to withstand the force of a tornado, according to city officials.
There is also discussion about relocating the Jacksonville Police Department at the same site.
Jacksonville Police Chief Gary Sipes said Friday he feels somewhat blindsided by this issue and its possible impact.
“Sure, I’m concerned about it, but it’s kind of early to comment until we can find out more about what’s going on,” Sipes said.
Whisker said a new police headquarters could be built on the Vertac site, if funds allow. The police station could be housed in the same structure as the future police/firefighter training classroom and 911 communications center.
The police department wanted to spend $350,000 for an upgrade of its existing structure off Main Street in downtown Jacksonville, according to Whisker. That project could include only the remodeling of the evidence room and part of its Criminal Investigations Division.
Tentative plans also include putting the entire Jacksonville District Court system in the Main Street police station. The court’s administrative office is now in a structure behind the Main Street police station. The courtroom now is inside the existing police station.
Earlier this year, JPD officials voiced concerns over the current structure’s plumbing, climate-control issues of being miserably hot in the summer and cold in the winter in certain offices and even rain pouring into the police chief’s office.
There are numerous water stains on the ceiling.
Garrick Feldman of The Leader contributed to this report.
