West Virginia regulators on Friday approved a request from Freedom Industries to enter into the states voluntary toxic remediation program, a move that the bankrupt company says could ease the costs of its completing the cleanup of the site of last years Elk River chemical spill.
The state Department of Environmental Protections approval of Freedoms application starts a 31-day clock ticking on Freedom negotiating an agreement with DEPs Voluntary Remediation Program for a plan that will outline timeframes for further water and soil sampling at the site, a formal risk assessment, and development of a workplan for the cleanup, said Dave Long, a project manager at DEPs Office of Environmental Remediation.
This should stop the cash bleed and allow us to finally negotiate a completion of this project, said Mark Welch, Freedoms chief restructuring officer.
Freedom officials have been looking for months to get into the DEP program as a way to avoid a more stringent non-detect cleanup standard that was imposed by the initial enforcement orders state inspectors issued after Freedom spilled thousands of gallons of MCHM and other chemicals into the Elk jut upstream from the regions drinking water intake.
In November, DEP officials agreed to a new deal with Freedom that lifted those previous enforcement orders, paving the way for the company to apply to the voluntary program.
A few weeks after the January 2014 spill, DEP Secretary Randy Huffman had said that the Tomblin administrations plans for the Freedom cleanup were pretty clear.
I can say for certain that the state of West Virginia is not going to abandon that site or abandon the remediation efforts until there is 100-percent certainty that the risk of this stuff getting back in the water has been eliminated not just minimized, Huffman said at the time. I know what my boss is going to say about that, and I think I can make that statement. We just cant have that possibility existing.
Huffman has repeatedly said since then that even if Freedom got into the voluntary program, the company would have to convince his agency that any risk-based cleanup standards would eliminate any risk that MCHM would ever again contaminate the drinking water supply for hundreds of thousands of people in Charleston and surrounding communities.
The voluntary program requires a public notice and the establishment by Freedom of a public repository for information about the site. Strictly speaking, the program does not require a public comment period or other public input procedures. But Long said that DEP had convinced Freedom to hold a public meeting to explain its cleanup plans to the public. That meeting has not yet been scheduled, Long said.
Welch said that his hope is that there is little remediation left to do, other than put a cap over the site and establish some sort of environmental monitoring program.
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