Site: Lcp Chemicals Georgia
Author: Constance Riggins
Submitted: February 15, 2016
Visits: 2010
Tags: Marsh contamination
The LCP Chemicals Superfund site in Brunswick, Georgia consists of approximately 550 acres, the majority of which is a tidal marsh. Various industries (i.e. oil refinery, electrical power, paint/varnish, and a chloralkali chemical plant) used this site from the 1920s through 1994. These industries contaminated the site with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), mercury, lead, dioxins, and cancer causing hydrocarbons. All of these pollutants are still present as runoff and are impacting the soil, groundwater, tidal marsh sediment, marsh plants and animals, including dolphins and Least Terns.
The Glynn Environmental Coalition, a community non-profit investigating the site for 25 years and its technical advisor say, the EPA’s Record of Decision, released in October 2014, does not do enough to clean up the LCP Chemicals Marsh.
“EPA’s chosen remedy only addresses 24 acres, and does not include any treatment of the contaminated sediment. Their remedy will likely not meet the surface water quality standards for mercury and Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and will keep Georgia from being able to remove fish consumption advisories from St. Simons Sound. The selected remedy also leaves behind elevated levels of mercury and Aroclor 1268 that exceed a set of cleanup levels that protect crabs and other animals living at the surface and within the marsh sediment.”
Many members of the public recommended that the EPA remove more contamination to make cleanup more permanent and certain. Read more here: http://www.glynnenvironmental.org/images/stories/pdf/LCP-ROD-TAR-11-12-15web.pdf