Superfund supermess: loaded for bear, EPA hits worms instead - how government bureaucracy is fouling up efforts to rid Burlington, Vermont's Pine Street Barge Canal of hazardous wastes - Cover Story

Insight on the News, May 3, 1993 by Gayle Hanson

Summary: To residents of Burlington, Vt., the Environmental Protection Agency has become the "Creature from the Barge Canal." Brought in to pave the way for a new road, the agency favors a cleanup that will be extremely expensive and probably useless. This is not an isolated case, and with Superfund legislation up for renewal, Congress will hear calls for change.

The otherwise thriving city of Burlington, Vt., has a $50 million worm problem. More precisely, it's suffering from too few worms and too many bureaucrats. But trying to get the two back into balance hasn't been easy; ask residents and they'll tell you that trying to solve the problem has opened a whole new can of -- well, you know.

"If you ask me, I think this is an example of when the government is completely out of control," says Burlington resident Ken Axelson. "This whole thing is haywire."

It's not the worms themselves (which dwell happily, as far as anyone can tell, in the mud of the Pine Street Barge Canal) that have Axelson and others up in arms. It's the Environmental Protection Agency's plan to clean the 80 acres of scrub trees and wetlands that make up the canal site, which sits less than a mile from the heart of the city -- and has been designated one of the country's worst environmental dumping grounds.

At least that's the story according to the EPA, which in 1981 listed the Pine Street Barge Canal among the first of the nation's hazardous waste sites to be targeted by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980 -- or Superfund, as it's commonly known. The sweeping law, which was forged after Love Canal became a symbol of the nation's toxic waste problems in 1978, was designed to force polluters to pay for the cleanup of what was thought then to be a relative handful of toxic caldrons scattered across the country.

Today, 12 years after the barge canal was picked as one of 115 sites for the environmental hit list and a year prior to the law's scheduled reauthorization by Congress, little has been done at the site except for a spot cleanup of a contaminated pond and $5 million of questionable research that not only has left residents of this small city angry and confused, but also has raised serious doubts about the wisdom of the $50 million remedy proposed by the EPA.

At hearings that began in November and are ongoing, hundreds of residents have listened to EPA representatives explain their plan to remove deposits of coal tar left from a coal gasification plant that closed in 1966. EPA officials concede that their testing has shown no present hazard to human life (that is, unless someone were to sink a drinking well on the site or go swimming in the canal for an hour every day for 30 years).

But as agency officials are quick to point out, protection of human life is not their only mandate. Because of the nature of Superfund legislation, the EPA also must take into consideration the ecological health of the site. And there's the problem. Despite the fact that fist tested at the site show no sign of contamination and a variety of wildlife, including beavers and more than 40 kinds of birds, appear to live unaffected by the pollution, researchers have found that the worms and clams that live several feet beneath the surface aren't doing as well as the worms and clams several miles up the shoreline.

On that basis alone, the EPA has decided to dig up 175,000 cubic yards of coal tar sludge and move it to a hazardous waste landfill they intend to construct.

If the cure sounds more extreme than the disease, it particularly rankles the 20 or so parties that will be held financially responsible for the cleanup. Working separately from the EPA but using data provided by the agency, the potential responsible parties (or PRPs, as they're come to be known) have crafted a plan that would deal with the problem with little disturbance at the site.

Instead of digging up the coal tar sludge and moving it into a landfill (a solution that the EPA itself concedes might pose hazards to human health), the PRP plan calls for solidifying the waste in the canal and isolating it, using a combination of concrete barriers and plastic liners of the type used in landfills.

"We don't believe that the solution should pose greater hazards than the problem," says Greg Johnson, whose company is one of the parties that have been targeted to foot the bill for the cleanup.

So how did an 80-acre site that appears to pose no real threat to human health and a questionable threat to the ecological health of the surroundings end up on the EPA Superfund list?

It all began with two things: plans for a new road and a powerful Vermont senator.

The Southern Connector, as the planned road was called, was to be the yellow brick road that would lead commerce and cash into the lakeside city. The road not only would provide easier access from Burlington to Vermont's southern regions, but also would help divert heavy traffic from city neighborhoods. It was an idea that gained popularity during the 1970s when city fathers were looking to revitalize the seemingly moribund community. So strong was support for the road that money was raised, land was purchased and some 20 families, whose homes stood in its planned path, were uprooted.