NEWS

AG Hood sues over Grenada, Water Valley contamination

Anna Wolfe

The Clarion-Ledger

Helen McKinney only learned recently that the Grenada auto manufacturing plant where she worked nearly 30 years had been using and allegedly dumping a cancer-causing toxin.

"I feel that we should be compensated for working in that type of environment and conditions and them not letting us know what type of risk we were at," McKinney said.

After outcry from residents and a U.S. congressman, the state attorney general's office has sued companies in Grenada and Water Valley that allegedly dumped toxic chemicals, including Trichloroethylene (TCE), polluting the groundwater and air. The office filed both lawsuits Friday.

"Knowing that it is out there, it makes me scared," said Johnnie Williams, a resident of the Eastern Heights subdivision right next to the Grenada Manufacturing facility.

The suit alleges the Grenada facility operators, which manufactured hubcaps, dumped TCE directly onto the land on which the subdivision was built.

"These types of cases are unusual," Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood said in a statement Tuesday morning. "Only over the course of the past year have the State and this Office come to fully appreciate the true breadth and depth of the problems in Grenada and Water Valley, and the threat posed to our resources and our citizens. The companies responsible for polluting our environment have taken no effective steps to stem the tide of the toxic plumes they have created and have shown no willingness to finally put a stop to the migration of these plumes away from their dumping grounds into our state’s resources."

In Grenada County Chancery Court, the state is suing Meritor, the company that acquired the liability for the contamination, and companies that previously operated at the facility, Rockwell Automation and Textron. The state is also suing The Boeing Co., which never operated the plant, a statement from the company said, but merged with Rockwell years ago. The Environmental Protection Agency began overseeing cleanup over 25 years ago after it discovered the contamination.

In an emailed statement, Textron offered that it owned the plant for a short time decades ago and it is "working to understand the historic operations of the site."

Meritor and Rockwell did not respond to requests for comment by 5 p.m. Monday.

In a letter to EPA headquarters last year, 2nd District U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson criticized the EPA's actions, or lack thereof, in cleanup efforts.

The state's suit alleges the companies released toxic sludge into the ground and "thousands of tons of hazardous chemicals into the air," polluting not only its own land, but surrounding property.

"They had water that was well water at the time. I'm sure I drank that water for 28 years and most of the people that worked there and worked there before me, they drank it, and most of those people are dead," McKinney said. "Out of a group of us women, there's only two of us that are living ... all the rest of them died with some type of cancer."

As recently as January, the EPA announced the cancer-causing chemical currently exists as a vapor inside the Grenada facility at rates exceeding the federal action level, the highest threshold designated by the agency.

TCE, particularly after long-term exposure, can cause toxic effects to the liver, kidneys, central nervous system, immune system, male reproductive system and developing fetuses and is linked to many cancers, most strongly liver cancer.

TCE contamination also lingers in Water Valley stemming from the old Holley carburetor plant. In February, the EPA released test results showing the chemical exists at high levels inside the facility.

In Yalobusha County Circuit Court, the state is suing EnPro Industries, the company that acquired the liability for the contamination in Water Valley, Oldco LLC and Goodrich Corp. The suit alleges Holley, a division of Colt Industries, leaked, spilled, or intentionally discharged TCE from its storage tanks outside the plant, "such that it leeched into the soil and migrated into the groundwater underneath the plant premises."

EnPro did not respond to requests for comment by 5 p.m. Monday.

The suit alleges a recent groundwater sampling from the vicinity tested for TCE at 297,000 parts per billion, 59,400 times the EPA's contaminant level.

The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality is still conducting cleanup at the Water Valley site that began nearly 30 years ago. DEQ was also responsible for remediation at a dump site associated with the Grenada Manufacturing facility. The former director of the state agency, attorney Trudy Fisher, is now representing Meritor in a suit brought by Eastern Heights residents.

Both of the attorney general's lawsuits ask the companies to pay for the state's cleanup costs associated with the dumping and punitive damages for their "intentional, reckless, and/or grossly negligent conduct."

The Grenada suit explains the companies' methods of disposing the TCE, which would accumulate at the bottom of tanks where the hubcaps were dipped in chemicals. The workers would haul the sludge and dump it in off-site landfills, the suit alleges. The suit also alleges the company disposed of TCE through a wastewater lagoon that lacked a liner to prevent the chemicals from seeping into the groundwater and ultimately entering the Riverdale Creek and the Yalobusha River.

Even when EPA began requiring Meritor to correct the problem, the efforts were lackluster and did nothing to protect the nearby residents, the suit alleges. The suit claims Meritor constructed a permeable reactive barrier to prevent contaminants from entering the creek and river.

"The PRB was ineffective and failed, but even if it had worked as intended, the PRB would have only restricted the groundwater flow of contaminants to the west of the plant premises. Other than the PRB, the defendants have not undertaken any measure to prohibit or restrict the flow of contaminated groundwater off of the plant property in any other direction, including but not limited to, toward the Eastern Heights residential neighborhood," the suit alleges.

In Water Valley, the groundwater contamination has spread to properties on which sit the Yalobusha County Hospital, a nursing home, health clinics, North Mississippi Mental Health Foundation and offices of the city, county and U.S. Corp of Engineers. All of these properties are impacted by TCE vapor that rises from the soil. The contamination has even spread to Otoucalofa Creek.

"Defendants fraudulently concealed the continuing presence of pollution in the soil and groundwater on their plant premises and intentionally misrepresented the status of remediation efforts," the Water Valley suit alleges.

EPA would not comment on the litigation, and DEQ released the following statement: "We are not a named party in the lawsuit; however, we are aware of it. We don't think the lawsuit will have an impact on us doing our job. We continue to focus on what we are doing from a regulatory standpoint in our mission to protect the citizens and the environment in the area."

Contact Anna Wolfe at 601-961-7326 or awolfe@gannett.com . Follow her on Twitter.