EPA SHOW ATTRACTS FEW PEOPLE, BUT LOTS OF OPINIONS
The Free Press June 26, 2003
Erin Brockovich wasn’t invited. Christie Todd Whitman had already quit in disgust. And the public turnout was surprisingly small, considering that the Environmental Protection Agency road show was in town, holding an open informational meeting about a local Superfund site. In fact, there were almost as many experts as there were citizens at St. John’s Church in Richlandtown to hear how the Feds were going to solve the solvent problem.
The Watson Johnson Landfill operated from 1936 through the early 1970’s in the vicinity of East Pumping Station Road and Richlandtown Pike. This was before the days of public activism. Business was unregulated, and money talked. Corporate political contributions were more important than votes, so unrestricted dumping (translation: pollution) was still legal and virtually ignored. Only after we woke up to what the dumpers certainly knew - that they were poisoning the ground water - was toxic waste disposal controlled. The most dangerous of the existing dumps were placed on the National Priorities List (Superfund cleanup sites).
Watson Johnson had the dubious distinction of being proclaimed one of the worst of the worst in June, 2001, three years after monitoring for suspected contamination first started. Trichloroethylene (TCE), an industrial solvent, was found in varying alarming concentrations in the wells of 35 homes south of the landfill.
Now, two more years later, the EPA has told those 35 homeowners that the problem will be solved by hooking them up to township water. No more wells, no more problems. Hopefully. Oh yeah, the EPA will also be gathering information from 34 monitoring wells, 148 residential wells, and lots of samples of soil, sediments and surface water in the vicinity. Just in case.
With the EPA, as with most federal agencies, any news is old news. Even before the meeting, the proposed solution had already been explained to the homeowners, and reported in the media. But for this public show, the agency rolled out a Project Manager, On-Scene Coordinator, miscellaneous Boss, Community Involvement Coodinator, Geotechnical Engineer, Geologist, Toxicologist, and Toxic Substance and Disease Registration Specialist. They were joined by representatives from the Pennsylvania DEP, State Department of Health, Bucks County Health Department, Richland Township Water Authority, and Milford Water Authority. And a Partridge in a Pear Tree.
Then there were the other “experts”, the ones in the audience, who made speeches thinly veiled as questions, apparently to demonstrate some knowledge superior to the EPA. We might excuse these chip-on-the-shoulder attitudes, since this mess is still going on because the EPA tested the wrong landfill 20 years ago, and ended up incorrectly declaring the Watson Johnson site to be clean. Politely, no one brought that up. But people clearly came to the meeting to vent their own agendas; to air their individual suspicions that danger is imminent from (pick one or more): methane, sulfur, coliform, arsenic, mercury, old batteries, and a mysterious factory with toxic waste and buried drums. No one claimed to have dug up Elvis. Some of these concerns are harder to swallow than the substances themselves, but the EPA is grudgingly taking arsenic under consideration.

There is nothing funny about the plight of the affected families who have been drinking and bathing in this stuff for ??? years. “???” is a direct quote from the EPA, which has no idea how long the wells have been contaminated. But it is almost comical to hear the agency proclaim that it now has it’s “quick response” or “emergency response” team on the scene. The group whose job it is to get the water problem solved, and then move on, leaving toxic cleanup to the grunts. I have a feeling that the men, women, and children with wells full of organic chemistry don’t consider waiting since 1998 to be “quick” or “emergency”.
Which brings us to another group quietly taking notes in the meeting - the attorneys. Two men from a high-powered Philadelphia firm representing local homeowners. Mr. Watson Johnson’s heirs inherited only trouble, so unhappy neighbors are searching to find someone else with money. And this has not been an easy task. W.R. Grace, the company that is presumed to have dumped most of the industrial pollutants, is in bankruptcy. Judd Developers built the adjacent Heather Valley subdivision, and allegedly sold the homes without telling buyers about their not-so-friendly neighbor. But Judd’s insurance company, Legion, is under investigation in Pennsylvania and California to determine if someone ran off with it’s assets. A federal judge has issued a stay on all proceedings involving Legion, so nothing can be done yet against any of the defendants in this matter.
Since TCE is an extremely hazardous substance, and Watson Johnson Landfill is a Superfund site, it is hard to imagine a more threatening situation than we have here. But in the environmental world, things move slowwwwwwly. Monitoring wells. Sampling. Testing. Collecting data. Analyzing. Investigating. Proposing solutions. Implementing them. Bonded bidding. And, the fact is that the EPA gang certainly seemed to understand the issues and answers. They were professional and patient, even in the face of some persistent stupidity. But they will not have the actual study and investigation completed until December, 2004. That’s when they’ll meet with us again, and form a working remediation plan, which will then be subject to review and comment by local citizens. Our children may be alive to see the end of this one. Hopefully that will include the children of those 35 families, too.