EPA to retest Baltimore chemical site

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The former Chemical Metals Industries site in Baltimore is back under the scrutiny of the Environmental Protection Agency.

At the EPA‘s request, U.S. Magistrate Judge Timothy J. Sullivan granted the agency a warrant to inspect the property at 2001 Annapolis Road for hazardous waste and pollution.

Although the EPA determined the soil was not a “direct threat to human health” in 2009, it believes newer, more sophisticated equipment may produce more accurate results, according to the warrant request granted Thursday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.

The Maryland Department of the Environment asked the EPA to perform more testing on the site on because the state agency believes contaminants from the site may be leaking into the air and soil in nearby homes.

“Given the contaminated soil vapor beneath the adjacent rowhomes, the state of Maryland and I think it makes sense, thinks there must be some source of the contamination itself and the goal of this study is to locate the contamination source,” Mitch Cron, the EPA’s project manager for the site, said Monday.

The Maryland Department of the Environment first inspected the site in 1981, after the company abandoned operations there, and has been working with the EPA to investigate the property.

“MDE is committed to working with the EPA to ensure the health and safety of homeowners near the Chemical Metals Industrial Site,” a spokeswoman for MDE said in an email. “With continued monitoring we can mitigate any issues before they arise.”

The Chemical Metals Industries site is about a half mile south of the planned Horseshoe Baltimore casino property and the governmental investigation is unrelated to litigation filed last month in which private parties accuse the casino of violating the Clean Water Act. Horseshoe Baltimore is being built on the former site of Maryland Chemical Co., where the EPA has also found arsenic, chromium and tetrachloroethylene in the soil.

Chemical Metals Industries Inc. ran a metals recovery operation between 1975 and 1981. The company was dissolved by a court order in August 1981. Its laboratory, manufacturing center and offices were located at 2103 Annapolis Road, which is now owned by the Maryland Department of the Environment. The storage yard was located at 2001 Annapolis Road.

The EPA has been unable to contact Chemical Metals Industries’ former president, Warren M. Stein, who is the trustee of the 2001 parcel — part of the reason the agency sought a warrant for further inspections.

MDE found more than 1,000 rotting drums in the garage and yard at the abandoned storage yard site in 1981. Inside were scrap metal and liquids including solvents and acids.

The EPA, which is authorized under federal law to investigate and clean up hazardous waste sites, declared the properties a Superfund site, conducted an emergency removal of drums and capped a waste-oil underground storage tank with one foot of clay and sod the same year.

MDE sampled the groundwater wells in 2005 and found high levels of trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethylene.

In 2007 and 2008, MDE tested soil below the slab as well as the indoor air quality of four properties between the two Chemical Metals Industries sites. MDE found high levels of the chemicals in the soil and the indoor air of the basement of one of those properties, a home adjacent to the storage facility site where the drums were found.

Based on the contaminant levels found, MDE conducted a risk assessment in September 2008 and determined that the potential cancer risk to residents of that house was 50 times greater than the upper end of the EPA’s “acceptable risk” range.

The EPA then investigated whether contaminated soil was polluting vapor and groundwater in the surrounding homes in 2009, but found it was not. The agency also decided no further cleanup at the property was necessary.

However, MDE installed venting systems at three nearby residences, including the one where it found high levels of contaminants in 2007, to prevent volatile organic compounds from entering the buildings. The system captures compounds below the protective clay cap and releases them through an exhaust stack on the house’s roof.

Working with MDE, the EPA will now go back and retest the site at 2001 Annapolis Road with more sensitive technology. The EPA plans to collect soil from 30 feet below the surface and samples of groundwater to analyze for volatile organic compounds over the course of three weeks.

“This technology is a step forward,” Cron said. “It’s a more sophisticated approach to see if we can identify a sub-surface source of contamination.”

The EPA will be working at the site this week to map underground utilities and will spend the two weeks after that drilling and testing, Cron said.

The test results will then take 60 to 90 days to process, Cron said. This round of testing is the EPA’s last involvement at the site, Cron said. MDE will then decide if additional cleanup is needed.

“Once we provide the data to the state, they will have to take a look and see what they conclude,” Cron said.