Contaminated retention pond ordered closed at Clean Harbors Colfax

The retention pond at Clean Harbors Colfax in Grant Parish will be closed following tests that showed it had levels of toxins that exceeded standards.

Water from the contaminated pond is released into tributaries that ultimately carry it to the Red River.

State Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Chuck Carr Brown said Clean Harbors Colfax has been directed to get rid of the pond and replace it with a system “that will provide greater protections to human health and the environment.”

The pond, which holds rainwater with residue from chemicals on the facility’s burn pads, will be replaced by a storage tank/treatment system.

“We’re talking about a maximum of six to nine months” to replace the pond, Phillip Retallick told The Town Talk on Thursday. He is a senior vice president of Clean Harbors, the parent company of the Colfax-area facility.

“We’re still designing the replacement system. It is going to have a containment system. It’s just deciding what type of containment system to use,” he said

Brenda Vallee, one of the leaders of the Central Louisiana Coalition for A Safe and Healthy Environment, said the contaminated pond should be shut down quickly.

“We want it, like, yesterday,” Vallee said of closing the pond. “We don’t want to drag it out. We want it closed now.”

Vallee lives about 2 miles from Clean Harbors Colfax.

The ordered closure of the pond was noted in two letters from Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality obtained by The Town Talk, including one from DEQ Secretary Brown.

“… the LDEQ directed Clean Harbors to: close the Pond (as soon as practicable) in accordance with applicable regulatory standards and to replace the Pond with alternate wastewater treatment system that will provide greater protections to human health and the environment …,” Secretary Brown wrote in a Sept. 16 letter to state Rep. Terry Brown.

Terry Brown, I-Colfax, had expressed concerns about the pond and the burn pad in a letter to DEQ earlier in September.

That came after tests conducted in June and reported to DEQ in August found higher-than-allowable amounts of arsenic, lead, perchlorate and explosive compound RDX in the pond, documents show.

Clean Harbors Colfax conducts open burning of more than 500,000 pounds of munitions, explosives and other waste annually at its facility located about 5 miles from the town of Colfax.

Central Louisiana Coalition for A Safe and Healthy Environment, a citizens group, was formed to oppose open burning at Clean Harbors Colfax.

Vallee and other CLHCC members have said they are not looking to close the facility down, but they would like to see a closed-container system used instead of open burning.

The company says the open burning is not a threat to public health, but it is researching alternative methods of disposal.

Wilma Subra, a New Iberia chemist who provides technical assistance to Louisiana Environmental Action Network, said closed-container burning could be used for most of the waste stream at Clean Harbors Colfax.

But some of the materials there should be disposed of through methods other than open burning or closed- container burning, she said.

“Not all of the material that they are able to accept would be appropriate for the contained-burn category …,” Subra told The Town Talk. “But there are other methods of dealing with the other components that you could not do in some type of contained burn.”

Subra was at Vallee’s house on Wednesday and took photos of a large, black smoke plume coming from the Clean Harbors Colfax site.

DEQ Secretary Brown, in his letter, said measures are underway to mitigate the pond contamination.

“… As directed by DEQ, Clean Harbors has begun implementing and is continuing to evaluate interim measures that will reduce the volume and/or concentration of contaminated storm water entering the Pond prior to the Pond’s closure,” Brown said in the letter.

He said measures being implemented or under consideration “include, but are not limited to, use of explosion-proof vacuum(s) to collect ash residues from the burn pans and the Pad, the immediate removal of all sludges/sediments currently located in the Pond, daily inspection of storm water filters, and frequent power washing of the Pad (with muriatic acid).”

The pad is where open burning takes place on burn pans. Among the materials openly burned at Clean Harbors Colfax are high explosives, warheads, fireworks, rocket motors, munitions, propellants, shaped charges, detonating cord, nitro-related compounds and undeployed airbags.

In addition to Secretary Brown’s letter to Rep. Brown, Vallee received a letter dated Sept. 23 from DEQ’s Elliott Vega, assistant secretary, Office of Environmental Services.

The letter assured Vallee that DEQ is “working to address the issues associated with exceedances of Risk Evaluation/Corrective Action Program (RECAP) screening standards in the recently sampled groundwater wells at the facility. In addition to directing Clean Harbors to close the Retention Pond as soon as is practicable, the Department is weighing its options to address the collections of groundwater samples surrounding the Retention Pond.”

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Subra said samples were taken from the pond and the sediment in the pond, which is “primarily the debris” from the burn pad and burn pans.

Although the pond showed higher-than-allowed levels of certain toxins, the water from the pond can be discharged, she said.

“There were allowed, when the pond got to a certain level, to discharge it into the surface streams. The discharge only required them to monitor for oil and grease, and chemical oxygen demand and pH. …

“So even if they had those things in it, they could discharge because there wasn’t a limit that it had to be below,” Subra said.

The pond is a “source of surface contamination and a source of groundwater contamination,” which she believes led to DEQ’s directive to close the pond.

When the facility replaces the pond with a storage tank, Subra hopes that water, even if treated, won’t be released into streams. She would like to see Clean Harbors “haul it off to some other location.”

However, Retallick said the replacement system is expected to be a “combination of the containment system and a treatment system, which would have a discharge.”

The company will meet all criteria set by DEQ, Retallick said, adding, “We’re committed to making the change.”

Vallee said burning at Clean Harbors Colfax had stopped for a while a couple of weeks ago, and now it appears the burning is somewhat reduced from the norm.

Retallick said the company halted burning at times during the past 30 days while it performed “some maintenance and upgrades to our burn pad,” including pouring new cement slabs.

Regular burning operations at the site have resumed.