The Ott/Story/Cordova Chemical Co. is a 20-acre superfund site that is located in Dalton township in the US State of Michigan. [1] [2]
The Ott/Story/Cordova Chemical Co. is a 20-acre superfund site that is located in Dalton township in the US State of Michigan. [1] [2]
The Ott/Story/Cordova Chemical Co. was founded in 1957 and ran until 1985 under 4 separate owners, from 1957 to 1965, the plant was owned by the "Ott Chemical Company" then "CPC International" bought the plant in 1965 and created a subsidiary to run it. And in 1976 "Story Chemical" bought the plant and ran it into bankruptcy. Then after that In 1977, "Aerojet-General" purchased it through its California subsidiary "Cordova", which set up "Cordova-Michigan." [3] [4]
The Ott/Story/Cordova site was contaminated by pharmaceutical, pesticide, and herbicide chemical production under a series of owners from 1957 to 1985. Waste was stored in drums and sludge lagoons. Soil and groundwater was contaminated with over 90 organic chemicals, including benzene, toluene, vinyl chloride, dichloroethane and tetrachloroethene. [1] There was also contamination of groundwater, soils, and nearby Little Bear Creek [5] and its unnamed tributary. Approximately 10,000 drums of waste material, some of which contained phosgene gas, were also stockpiled onsite. and had approximately 300 to 500 residents in a one-mile radius of the site. [6]
There is a lot of controversy on who should be held responsible for the damages the site caused, as 2 of the 4 companies that owned it had gone out of business. [3] And it was difficult to put the blame on 1 of the 4 companies, as the damage was done during decades of neglect between the 1950s and 1970s. Eventually, Cleanup for the Ott/Story/Cordova Site was assumed by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). [7] [4]
Water extracted from the ground is put into ‘diffused air stripping tanks’ and treated with phosphoric acid, powdered activated carbon, ferric chloride, sand filtration, and liquid phase Granular Activated Carbon. [8] Air from the diffused air stripping units and the aeration tanks is treated in a thermal oxidation unit before being discharged to the atmosphere. Treated water is transported through piping to a stationary aerator prior to discharge to the Muskegon River. Sludge generated from the biological systems is conditioned and then transported to filter presses before being disposed of as non-hazardous waste.”. [9] [10]
The Ott/Story/Cordova Chemical Co. currently has a “Hazardous ranking” score of 53.41. [11] And the status of the site is “Completed” which means that All the facilities necessary for cleanup have been built. [12]
A part of the site has been re-purposed and turned into the "Muskegon County Business and Industrial Park" [13] [14] [15] as apart of an economic development plan in Muskegon to raise the employment rate. [16]
Hazardous waste is waste that must be handled properly to avoid damaging human health or the environment. Waste can be hazardous because it is toxic, reacts violently with other chemicals, or is corrosive, among other traits. As of 2022, humanity produces 300-500 metric tons of hazardous waste annually. Some common examples are electronics, batteries, and paints. An important aspect of managing hazardous waste is safe disposal. Hazardous waste can be stored in hazardous waste landfills, burned, or recycled into something new. Managing hazardous waste is important to achieve worldwide sustainability. Hazardous waste is regulated on national scale by national governments as well as on an international scale by the United Nations (UN) and international treaties.
Industrial waste is the waste produced by industrial activity which includes any material that is rendered useless during a manufacturing process such as that of factories, mills, and mining operations. Types of industrial waste include dirt and gravel, masonry and concrete, scrap metal, oil, solvents, chemicals, scrap lumber, even vegetable matter from restaurants. Industrial waste may be solid, semi-solid or liquid in form. It may be hazardous waste or non-hazardous waste. Industrial waste may pollute the nearby soil or adjacent water bodies, and can contaminate groundwater, lakes, streams, rivers or coastal waters. Industrial waste is often mixed into municipal waste, making accurate assessments difficult. An estimate for the US goes as high as 7.6 billion tons of industrial waste produced annually, as of 2017. Most countries have enacted legislation to deal with the problem of industrial waste, but strictness and compliance regimes vary. Enforcement is always an issue.
Superfund is a United States federal environmental remediation program established by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA). The program is administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The program is designed to investigate and clean up sites contaminated with hazardous substances. Sites managed under this program are referred to as Superfund sites. Of all the sites selected for possible action under this program, 1178 remain on the National Priorities List (NPL) that makes them eligible for cleanup under the Superfund program. Sites on the NPL are considered the most highly contaminated and undergo longer-term remedial investigation and remedial action (cleanups). The state of New Jersey, the fifth smallest state in the U.S., is the location of about ten percent of the priority Superfund sites, a disproportionate amount.
Environmental remediation is the cleanup of hazardous substances dealing with the removal, treatment and containment of pollution or contaminants from environmental media such as soil, groundwater, sediment. Remediation may be required by regulations before development of land revitalization projects. Developers who agree to voluntary cleanup may be offered incentives under state or municipal programs like New York State's Brownfield Cleanup Program. If remediation is done by removal the waste materials are simply transported off-site for disposal at another location. The waste material can also be contained by physical barriers like slurry walls. The use of slurry walls is well-established in the construction industry. The application of (low) pressure grouting, used to mitigate soil liquefaction risks in San Francisco and other earthquake zones, has achieved mixed results in field tests to create barriers, and site-specific results depend upon many variable conditions that can greatly impact outcomes.
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