Photo: Kipp PCB raingarden, June 5, 2018
Are the Kipp raingarden PCB investigations and excavations finally over, six years after PCBs were first found there? Is the adjacent bikepath area fully cleaned up and safe for people and pets who walk and play on it? Unfortunately, no.
Bottom line? PCBs at unsafe levels remain in the Kipp raingarden in the fenced off area, as well as in the unfenced areas to the east and west. More excavations are planned within the fenced area, contingent on soil PCB tests that should have been done in the spring. Were these tests done? What were the results?
Last week we asked city and state officials about this testing, and today we received this answer from a city engineer: “Kipp’s environmental consultant, TRC, is planning to excavate PCBs from the MKC raingarden per the attached work plan next week (~June 20, 2018). In addition, TRC is to submit to DNR a report summarizing the additional winter/spring sampling results from the stormwater system. Mike Schmoller from DNR hoped to have the summary report yet this week, and it will be uploaded the BRRTS website. Regarding annual sampling, the City will continue to sample the rain garden annually. We did not sample last year because of the ongoing investigation, but will sample fall 2018. We want to wait until after the remediation to confirm if anything new is deposited between now and then.”
For a brief history of the situation, read the rest…
Brief background on PCBs and the Kipp raingarden saga…
About 75 years ago, some time in 1940s (perhaps even earlier), Madison-Kipp began using polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) to lubricate their die-casting machines.
After many decades of scientific research had piled up on their serious health effects, the production of PCBs was banned in 1977 by the U.S. Congress. Unfortunately, PCBs are very persistent—they take a very long time to break down in the environment. An estimated 2.5 billion pounds of PCBs were produced between 1929 and 1977, and a significant proportion of them are still out there—and people are still exposed to them.[1] According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) currently “the major source of exposure to ambient PCBs is environmental cycling of PCBs previously released into the environment” (ATSDR, 2014) which “can easily cycle between air, water, and soil.” (ATSDR, 2011, p. 2-3).
In 2000, the ATSDR wrote that “health effects that have been associated with exposure to PCBs in humans and/or animals include liver, thyroid, dermal and ocular changes, immunological alterations, neurodevelopmental changes, reduced birth weight, reproductive toxicity, and cancer” (ATSDR, 2000, p. 16). ATSDR’s 2011 updated toxicological profile for PCBs, and other recent studies, show that PCB exposures in animals and/or humans are associated with several types of cancer, sexual development in children, gingival (dental) effects, Type 2 diabetes, immune function, weight gain/obesity, cardiovascular problems, allergies/asthma, impaired cochlear (ear) function, and inflammatory processes such as arthritis (ATSDR, 2011). In February 2013, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified PCBs as carcinogenic to humans (Group 1).
After release into the environment, PCBs often make their way into the sediments of waterways, where they concentrate and then over time build up in aquatic organisms, including fish people eat; fish consumption is one of the main pathways of human exposure to PCBs to this day.
Some types of PCBs can also volatilize from contaminated soils, water, and building materials and then be inhaled by people nearby or in the contaminated buildings (e.g., see here and here and here and more).
How did PCBs get under the Kipp factory? How did they get into the raingarden?
Though many tons of PCB-contaminated soils have been removed from the Kipp site since 2012, soils with PCB levels of up to 20,000 parts-per-million (ppm) remain beneath the Kipp factory. These levels are 4000 times over the 50 ppm that EPA allows to remain in place with a “cap” over it (such as the Kipp factory) and over 90,000 times the levels (.22 ppm) allowed to remain in soils in residential and public areas where people might contact them. PCB levels of up to 50 ppm also still remain beneath Kipp’s northern parking lot.
Given these levels of PCBs onsite, Kipp would easily qualify as a Superfund site.[2]
Kipp has argued that these PCBs can remain indefinitely, posing no risks to human or environmental health because the PCBs will not move and therefore nobody is exposed. This argument is laughable at this point, given that we know Kipp’s PCBs have been moving offsite for a long time, seeping far beneath the plant—and also laterally into heavily-used public areas, spewing from air stacks, and flowing down storm drains that discharge runoff offsite and into nearby waterways.[3]
Kipp was built on a wetland area, and a system of storm drains was built under the factory to drain excess stormwater away from the site. Over decades, some PCBs leaked from the trenches beneath the die casting machines into soils beneath the plant, and these contaminated soils slowly oozed through the storm drainage system into city storm drains and then into Starkweather Creek and Lake Monona, where people catch and eat fish. Fish from Lake Monona are on advisory for PCBs–and some of these PCBs very likely came from Kipp’s releases over the last 75 years and through the present.
One of Kipp’s main storm drains also discharges onto city-owned public land along the bike path north of the factory. In 2006, Whitehorse Middle School children and community volunteers created a raingarden next to the city bike path, right where this pipe discharges [4] PCB-laced oils were also spread on Kipp’s parking lots and washed off onto the raingarden area. PCBs in soils beneath Kipp’s northern parking lot, where the groundwater is very shallow, are likely directly hydrologically connected to the raingarden, where the water table is often right at the surface.
In 2012, prompted by the RCRA class action lawsuit, testing was finally done in the raingarden and, not surprisingly, PCBs well over the “residual contaminant levels” (RCLs)[5] were discovered. This information wasn’t released to the public till over a year later, and the first PCB excavation in the raingarden occurred in April 2014.
In the years after this, repeated excavations were done in the raingarden as more and more PCBs were found. At several points after rounds of excavations, Kipp and government officials told the public that the PCBs had all been cleaned up—though it was clear to anyone paying attention to the situation, and actually observing the raingarden excavations, that this was not the case.
See some of the long history of the Kipp Raingarden PCB Saga here, here, and here...
Raingarden officially “closed” by DNR in summer 2016, but “re-opened” in summer 2017
In summer 2016, after what seemed to be an endless series of PCB investigations and excavations, the raingarden was officially “closed” by DNR (meaning that the department would require no further action).
In fall 2016, we asked about the PCB testing required in Kipp’s City of Madison lease for the raingarden area, which should have been done by then but wasn’t. The required samples were eventually gathered, and one near the opening of the storm pipe into the raingarden had levels about thirty times the residential RCL (about ten times the industrial RCL).[6] These PCBs were excavated in December 2016 (about the eleventh excavation since 2014). But follow-up testing again found high PCB levels near the raingarden storm drain.
In late 2016, public officials finally agreed that perhaps the PCBs being found repeatedly in the raingarden were draining from the storm drainage system under the factory. (Two years before this, we (MEJO) obtained Kipp’s storm drain maps,[7] shared them with public officials, and asked if PCBs and other contaminants might be draining from under the factory through this storm system. At that time, public officials dismissed this possibility.)
So, nearly five years after PCBs were first discovered in the raingarden, DNR finally asked Kipp to test for PCBs in the storm drainage system under the factory. In February 2017, Kipp’s consultants found up to 120 ppm PCBs in sediments in the storm drain system under the factory. In testing in the next few months, yet more PCBs above the RCLs were found in the raingarden near the storm drainage pipe opening; these spots were excavated or capped, and the storm drainage system was cleaned out. But PCBs well over the RCLs were found yet again after the system was cleaned.[8]
On July 25, 2017 the DNR re-opened the raingarden site—un-doing the closure a year before.
In fall 2017, five years after PCBs were first found there, and after years of citizens asking for signs and a fence, two small PCB warning signs and a fence were finally placed around a small part of the PCB contaminated raingarden.
Zoom to the present
In November 2017, the Wisconsin Department of Justice (DOJ) finally settled the lawsuit it filed against Kipp in 2012.[9]
One of the items in the DOJ settlement was that “Madison-Kipp will implement the environmental response activities required by this Stipulation and Order for Judgment,” including “The investigation and remediation to case closure of BRRTS No. 02-13-562649 regarding the parcel of land commonly called the ‘rain garden.'”
The same month, November 2017, the “Raingarden—Interim Investigative Report and Proposed Excavation Plan,” written by Kipp’s consultants, speculated that the PCBs continuing to enter the raingarden were from the stormdrain network under the factory and parking lot. The report said: “Based on the investigation results through June, the most likely sources were identified as (1) historical buildup of sediment in the storm sewer system from former site activities and (2) impacted material migrating from a breach/breaches in the storm sewer network.”
The report also said that some PCBs over the RCLs remained in the raingarden area, but “MKC requests that the excavation work of the PCB‐impacted soil currently in the garden continue to be postponed until further monitoring events through spring of 2018 are completed.” Based on Kipp’s request, the consultants recommended that “monitoring be continued at manhole MH‐1A and at the outfall area through spring of 2018” and “additional monitoring of the sewer should be completed after large rain events similar to spring 2017 (i.e., greater than 1 inch).”
The report stated that if PCB levels found were below the industrial direct contact RCL, the raingarden would be excavated and restored. But “[i]n the event that concentrations of PCBs in exceedance of the WDNR industrial direct contact RCL are detected passing through the storm sewer, MKC and TRC will discuss the results with WDNR prior to proceeding with the excavation work plan.” A report summarizing all the testing data, confirmation sampling results, and remedial work would be provided to DNR “following completion of all work.”
What about the PCBs outside of the fenced area?
As we learned today, PCBs in the fenced area will be excavated next week. But what about the PCBs remaining outside of the fenced area? Photos taken during winter/spring 2018 show clearly that water and sediments washed over the runoff control “socks” the area east of the raingarden, outside of the fenced area, where people walk and children and pets play. We found PCBs well over the RCLs in this area in February 2017—they are still there.
Photo below: stormwater flowing over stormwater sock from contaminated raingarden area, May 4, 2018
What levels are to the east of the fenced area now, after all the sediment runoff flowing rapidly out of the small, fenced raingarden area this past winter and spring?
Countless tons of soils with high levels of PCBs are still under the Kipp factory and parking lot, and these PCBs will continuously ooze out the northern end of the site (via stormdrains, contaminated shallow soils/groundwater, etc) onto the public bikepath area. As long as these high levels of PCBs remain, will the Kipp raingarden PCB saga ever end?
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[1] This did not magically solve the worldwide PCB problem. After 1977, PCB uses in the U.S. were phased out over the next several years, and some other countries continued to produce them. The huge challenge of what to do with all the PCB wastes continues to this day. Kipp’s PCB wastes contributed to several Superfund sites in Dane Co in the past, but they are now hauled to a landfill west of Detroit. Kipp’s liquid wastes, very likely contaminated with PCBs, are hauled to Milwaukee, and then burned in waste-to-energy plants elsewhere in the country.
[2] In the 1980s when Kipp was being considered for the Superfund “National Priority List” (NPL), Kipp didn’t share information about its use and releases of PCBs, or toxic solvents PCE, TCE, etc, so it was not added to the NPL list.
[3] Based on current understanding of PCB fate and transport, PCBs have also likely been emitted from Kipp’s stacks and volatilized from contaminated soils and the raingarden.
[4] Apparently none of the sponsors and supporters of the raingarden, including Kipp, the DNR, the City of Madison, and several local environmental groups, considered what contaminants might have been traveling down this pipe for decades. Nobody tested the soil there before these children were allowed to stand shin-deep with bare hands in it.
[5]“Residual contaminant levels” are the contaminant levels that can remain in place without capping according to DNR policy. Responsible government officials typically decide whether to use lower, more protective “residential” or higher, less protective “industrial” RCLs based on the zoning of the land and how the land is used. According to DNR guidance, heavily publicly used land such as this area, next to residences and a community center, should use residential RCLs.
[6] The city lease says any “new” PCB contamination in the raingarden, which this was, would be cleaned up to residential standards. The DNR closure, however, approved industrial standards for the area. We had pointed this out to officials many times previously.
[7] These maps were in Kipp’s stormwater documents in the DNR files. Apparently none of the agencies involved so far in the Kipp investigations had thought it important to look at them until we obtained and publicized them.
[8] PCBs over the RCLs also remain in areas far from the stormdrain outfalls. On February 22, 2017, we gathered four soil samples in surface soils next to the bike path and had them analyzed at a DNR-approved lab for PCBs. Two of our samples—one upstream of the raingarden (as far as stormwater flow) and another far downstream—had levels well over the industrial RCLs. See here. Neither area had ever been excavated or remediated, because Madison Gas & Electric utility lines ran through the area and the company refused to allow disruption. These PCBs are still there.
[9] Citizens saw the drawn-out lawsuit process as a way to get Kipp off easy for breaking numerous environmental regulations (see here).
