Minutes ALRC Meeting September 7 2001

Present at the meeting were: Jim English, Nan Hammett, Steve MacDonald, May Gerstle, Dennis Saunders, Lyman Houghton, Rita Schenck, and Shaheeda Laura Pierce from ALRC; Jake Jacobovich and Lee Miller from the Community Council; John Moore from Maury Island and a unknown islander; Bonnie Meyer from Seattle-King County Public Health; and Marion Abbett, Steve Alexander, Molly Gibbs and Norm Peck from the Washington State Department of Ecology.

The minutes from August's meeting were read and approved without amendment

Some administrative changes were made: Our monthly meetings will be held at 3:30 on the First Friday of the month in the library in future.

IRPPC will be meeting in the Family Learning center in future, if confirmed by the Family Link Board.

Marion described Ecology's remedial process. They are still in the site hazard investigation stage, but expect to send a letter to Asarco naming them as the potentially liable party (PLP) in early next year or late this year. According to the statute, Norm Peck reminded us, all landowners on the island current and past, may be held responsible for the pollution on their property. However, Ecology has no intention of naming landowners PLP's. No one else is being considered as a PLP.

There was a discussion of the limitation of personnel that Ecology has to allocate to the Tacoma Smelter plume project. Molly and Marion are full time allocated, Norm is 50-60% allocated (in King County) Joyce Mercury is 50-60% allocated (in Pierce County) Steve Alexander is only providing oversight (perhaps 10%). Other personnel are allocated as needed (e.g. Dave Bradley for risk assessment). There was no discussion of the number of FTE's allocated as contractors and consultants.

Marion explained that the entire Tacoma Smelter Plume site was being treated as a single case, and that they prefer that no decisions be made until the entire site was evaluated and analyzed (this is several hundred square miles). Ecology views the plume as separate from the Ruston site, and the entire regulatory process clock has started again. There was at least 10 and as many as 20 years work between the first recognition of the problem in Ruston and the time action was taken, and Ecology intends to take no remedial action until Asarco can be made to pay.

There was a discussion of funding for the Statement of Work (the contract between Ecology and Seattle-King County. These funds are available to county health departments as a grant directly from the state, with Ecology providing contracting oversight. According to Steve Alexander, these state-to-local site hazard assessment funds are the only ones that Ecology has identified to date that can be applied to the contamination problem on the island.

Specifically missing from the statement of work was any work to be done on

Ecology has decided that their scope of work only includes soils contamination. Norm Peck stated that he was the person who made all these decisions for the statement of work.

Molly suggested that the goal of Ecology during the next year was to increase compliance to the health guidelines and to encourage children not to play in wooded areas. Norm said the primary goal was to gather credible evidence for the suit with Asarco.

Rita suggested that the risks posed by eating dirt were much higher than those posed by playing in the woods, and that in any case washing the hands and feet of children and pets was impractical and not a good solution to the contamination on the island.

King County and Ecology have not come to agreement on the statement of work because King County's overhead rate is higher than Ecology is prepared to pay. Bonnie clarified that that their overhead rate is fixed, and the same for all projects, and that in the past King county absorbed the cost differential between the Statement of Work overhead and their true overhead. With the financial slowdown of the past year, King County can no longer absorb this cost.

Steve Alexander mentioned that Ecology had had a "pre meeting" with Jake Jacobovich and Jim English before the ALRC meeting to discuss "larger issues". It was conjectured that those topics included the limited personnel and funding available for Ecology's efforts, the large size of the Tacoma Smelter Plume problem, the length of time it would take to reach a decision point. All participants at the "pre-meeting" agreed that these were the topics of discussion. In August's meeting ALRC had decided that a pre-meeting with Ecology was inappropriate, and this decision was recorded in the minutes. There was a heated discussion of the breach of trust such a meeting appeared to be. Jim Stated that he felt this was a "community council" meeting and that the ALRC agreement did not apply to it. Jake described the meeting as a socialization meeting over coffee, but said he was not aware of any agreement within ALRC.

There was extensive discussion of the need for groundwater sampling. Steve Alexander stated that groundwater protection was not the role of the Toxics program, and that no drinking water samples could be taken using the site hazard assessment funds. It was suggested that the community should pay for its own analyses.

According to Rita Schenck, this information does not agree either with the requirements of MTCA nor with standard practice in remedial investigation, where drinking water is considered to be the most important exposure vector at most sites. ALARC made a clear statement that the community wishes the groundwater to be evaluated under the statement of work.

Molly said that David Pader of Ecology administered water quality grants from the NW regional office, and ALRC should contact him to discover what funds might be available.

There was an extensive discussion about sources of clean soil. Norm stated that we could be looking for large deposits of clean soil that can be barged to the island. Members of the committee pointed out that there are no facilities for barge traffic on the island. Furthermore ALRC has already identified a possible source of certified clean soil that can be trucked to the island.

There was a discussion of developing clean soil through composting on the island. Jake suggested that the land near the landfill would be ideal for this purpose.

Ecology began a briefing on the interim action levels selected by Ecology, and stated that they were equivalent to a one-in-10,000 risk. Rita's estimates of the arsenic risk represented by the interim action levels was actually one percent, 100 times higher than Ecology's estimates. Rita will go over Ecology's calculation to see where there are discrepancies.

Shaheeda wanted to know when the interim action levels were determined vis-à-vis the sampling on the Island. Norm stated that these two tasks were performed simultaneously.

Children with pica behavior (who eat dirt) are at quite high levels of risk.

According to Rita's calculations, the weighted mean states that there is about a 0.1 percent risk of cancer from arsenic exposure for children who spent their first 6 years on the island. This does not include other sources of risk, such as from cadmium, which is also quite high. Nor does it include the risks that accumulate over the entire lifetime of the child. Jake asked why there was no such cancer risk found in the epidemiology studies, and Norm commented that the population of the island was too small to have the statistical power to resolve these levels of risk.

The meeting ran over time, and so closed without other agenda items.

The next regularly scheduled meeting is at the Library at 3:30 on Friday, October 5th

 

AGENDA

ARSENIC-LEAD REMEDIATION COMMITTEE

Friday, September 7, 1130 PM

Vashon Public Library