People are still getting sick and dying in Waycross after Chemical company Seven Out closed and left a toxic waste site. It’s now a Superfund site, which doesn’t mean anything has been cleaned up. 10 out of 30 City Hall employees have cancer and 8 have already died. Many living around the site are sick, and teachers and school children. What will Georgia Reps. Jason Spencer and Ellis Black who attended do after that 29 August 2013 meeting? Will action wait until more people die? And to which landfill were those precipitated solids taken?

State representative Jason Spencer District 180 said the state health report should be finished in October, and was quick to point to Rep. Ellis Black District 174 as representing the specific area. Rep. Black said they’d just heard about this and would be looking into it, and:

I’m a farmer from Clyattville…. I spent some time in the farm-supply business and I have messed with agricultural chemicals all my life and I’ve got a lot of experience there. And I can tell you that I know firsthand something about the danger and the challenges of dealing with these really sensitive products and how minute amount can cause problems. And it’s something that’s complicated. There ain’t going to be no quick or easy answers to this because some things just get complicated.

I lost my father back here a number of years ago to cancer. And we’ve been studying cancer for eons and we still, we’ve made a lot of progress, but we haven’t got all the answers to cancer yet. There’s still a lot of work to be done. And the only thing to be done is to persevere.

He wants to find good solid scientific evidence, but it won’t be easy, or quick, or inexpensive. That’s a good idea. Maybe we should also do a study of cancer in south Lowndes County.

Joan McNeal said some of her neighbors found toxic sludge oozing from their sidewalk, and:

They grow organic food.
They thought they were eating organic food.

There’s a facebook group, South Georgia’s Secret Killer, and the contact slide said Joan McNeal 912-281-6897. Text below is from the Silent Disaster website, Information Regarding Operational History and Violations of the Seven Out Superfund Site, with stills from the meeting video. The meeting slides are also in a separate YouTube video.

The Seven Out facility was an industrial waste water treatment plant in Waycross, Ware County, Georgia, that operated from 2002 to 2004. The Site consists of a tank farm, an abandoned office building, and a small warehouse. The tank farm has 37 tanks ranging in volume of 8,000 gallons to 44,000 gallons, and a combined capacity of approximately 400,000 gallons. It is approximately one-half acre and is made of a concrete floor with a short concrete containment berm.

South of the containment area is an office building of about 3,000 square feet. Around the south and east sides of the office building is a fenced lot that contains the warehouse of about 4,500 square feet. The warehouse contains several drums, totes, and dry bags of material.

When the facility operated, treated waste water was discharged to the City of Waycross publicly owned treatment works (POTW) using the City’s collection system. Precipitated solids were treated in a filter press, and then transported off-Site for disposal at a landfill. The treatment process was generally unsuccessful and effluents regularly exceeded requirements of the company’s pre-treatment discharge permit. The Seven Out facility received several Notices of Violation and an Administrative Order from the City of Waycross. On March 1, 2004, the City of Waycross disconnected the facility’s connection to the POTW. The facility discontinued processing waste waters, although it still received shipments. Incoming waste waters were stored in tanks on-Site as well as four rented portable tanks that were placed on an adjoining property. Shortly thereafter and since that time, the facility ceased all operations without discharging the remaining waste in storage. Georgia EPD determined the facility to be incorrectly storing hazardous wastes and out of compliance with State of Georgia regulations.

An emergency action was initiated by EPA on January 27, 2005 while inspecting the Site during a Removal Site Evaluation. Under the emergency response action, pumpable liquids in the tanks and standing water in the secondary containment area were removed to mitigate the threat of release.

Following the 2005 emergency action, several tanks still contained a significant volume of unpumpable sludges; also, rainwater began collecting again in the secondary containment area, causing deterioration of the tanks still holding material. An administrative order was signed on July 30, 2008, between EPA and Respondents, consisting of several generators that sent waste to the facility, to conduct a time-critical removal action to remove all remaining waste materials from the Site.

We don’t have any problems like that around Valdosta or Lowndes County, do we? Not at flaming Perma-Fix, or the PCB and coal ash-infested landfill in the aquifer recharge zone? Are we sure? Remember:

Precipitated solids were treated in a filter press, and then transported off-Site for disposal at a landfill.

Which landfill was that? One which we already know has taken PCBs and coal ash from Tennessee? As in was it the Pecan Row Landfill in Lowndes County?

And a big source of the problem in Waycross was the hazardous waste tanks were uncovered for some time, so rainwater made them overflow. Sort of like runoff from a landfill.

Maybe we’d better check.

Meanwhile, how can we help our neighbors in Waycross?

PS: And do we want a natural gas pipeline coming here from Anniston, Alabama, one of the most contaminated Superfund sites in the country?

Here’s the video:

Seven Out Superfund site in Waycross –Joan McNeal for Channel 22

-jsq

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