Four toxic settling ponds behind Honeywell Plant

BY D.W. NORRIS AND ROB CROW THE SOUTHERN

METROPOLIS - At the Honeywell plant in town, temporary workers convert uranium, a process that deals with some of the most dangerous chemicals of any plant in the nation.
Just outside the plant's boundaries, on U.S. 45, unionized workers stand and protest in shifts. Because of a bargaining dispute between Honeywell and the United Steel Workers union, more than 200 employees have been locked out since the end of June. It's a situation that's bad and only gets worse with each passing day, as bitterness between the company and the union continues to grow.
But the biggest problem at the plant may not be the labor dispute. It may not be those picketing, locked-out employees that draw honks along U.S. 45.
Instead, it may lie in four toxic settling ponds behind the plant.
Honeywell plans to fill those ponds with cement, locking in toxic chemicals for years to come, but that plan does not sit well with some people living near the Honeywell complex. They view the ponds and Honeywell's plans to stabilize and cover them as sus-pect.
The project
Honeywell's in-situ, or "in-place" solidification and stabilization project has multiple steps and is expected to be finished sometime in 2016. Among the chemicals to be encased in cement are calcium fluoride, which may be toxic, and uranium, which is highly toxic.
The process officially began Nov. 29, when the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency received a request to change Honeywell's RCRA hazardous waste permit. Construction is expected to start in 2013.
Before construction begins, Honeywell will perform optimization tests to select the final mix design of the cement and/or addi-tives such as fly ash, lime or other materials and demonstrate its performance. The ponds will then be filled with the final mixture.
Once the ponds are solidified, low-permeability cover systems will be constructed over the materials in each pond. Each cover system will include additional fill soil, a geosynthetic clay liner, a geomembrane or rubber-like barrier, a surface water drainage layer and a protective soil cover.
Honeywell spokesman Peter Dalpe said the company will conduct quality assurance tests during construction to show that the "solidified materials satisfy the design requirements."
Dalpe said solidification and stabilization is not new. It has been used at more than 160 badly contaminated sites since 1982, ac-cording to the EPA. At least two of those sites were polluted by uranium. Most of the sites met government standards after the projects were completed.
Still, at least one question persists for the people who live within miles of Honeywell's four settling ponds.
Is it safe?
The plan has outraged several people in Southern Illinois, as they are concerned about the possibility of the ponds leaking and creating a disaster in the region.
Don Lowery, a retired judge who unsuccessfully ran for the Illinois' Republican U.S. Senate nomination last year, said he be-lieves the plan has major flaws and could put Massac County in the national news for all the wrong reasons.
"We don't need another Love Canal - people died, birth defects were rampant. We don't need another Three-Mile Island," he said, referencing a pair of infamous environmental disasters in the late 1970s. "The materials in those ponds are dangerous."
State Rep. Brandon Phelps, D-Harrisburg, agreed. Last week, Phelps urged agencies to step in and shut down the Honeywell plant while union workers are locked out, saying the current staffing creates unnecessary health risks for those in the community.
But the ponds, he said, could be a bigger risk, as he believes the risk of the ponds starting to liquefy and create massive problems is too great to ignore.
If liquefaction occurs, Phelps said, "it'll leak into the ground and into our water system, and it is going to be a catastrophe. We don't want this to turn into Three-Mile Island."
Honeywell assured all proper steps will be taken to make sure no such leak occurs, and that testing will take place to make sure the solidification happens without a hitch. But during a public meeting earlier this month with engineers and Honeywell executives, Lowery was told there is no contingency plan in place should there be a leak.
"It is a concern; (the waste) is there," said Mike Riley, a former longtime Honeywell employee who is now the USW's health and local safety representative. "I don't see how putting concrete with it is going to get rid of the problem.
"I think people need to be educated on the hazards at that sight - the hydrofluoric acid, the ammonia, sulfuric acid, what those things can do, and the quantities that are out there. We're not talking about a 55-gallon drum; we're talking about thousands of pounds of these chemicals."
Honeywell's past
Several people, Lowery included, said they simply don't trust Honeywell on matters of safety and transparency. And the plant has had issues.
In December, a small leak of hydrofluoric acid occurred at the Metropolis plant, although there were no injuries and NRC offi-cials said it was properly handled within the plant.
In April, Honeywell's quarterly financial report stated that the EPA and Department of Justice were investigating whether sludge produced at the plant had been properly stored, and that a grand jury was convened to investigate the matter.
In 2009, the NRC gave Honeywell a violation for not reporting 37 contamination events at the Metropolis plant. A uranium hexafluoride leak in December 2003 resulted in the plant being shut down for three months.
However, during inspections throughout the end of last year, the NRC said there were no significant safety concerns with the Metropolis plant.
"We take our regulatory responsibilities very seriously and will continue our oversight to ensure the Honeywell facility is operated in a way that protects workers, people living nearby and the environment," said Tony Gody, NRC Region II director of the Division of Fuel Facility Inspection.
The region's future
In 2000, an EPA report on stabilization and solidification projects at badly polluted sites across the country found that concen-trations of toxins at those sites were reduced enough to generally meet government standards.
Unfortunately, the EPA also noted in the same report that the long-term effectiveness of solidification and stabilization is un-known.
The EPA quoted various studies showing that "cement-based stabilized wastes are vulnerable to the same physical and chemical degradation processes as concrete and other cement-based materials," which means they have the "potential to disintegrate over a period of 50 to 100 years."
That timeframe is what concerns Metropolis Mayor Billy McDaniel. But, McDaniel said, there also comes a time when citizens have to rely on "the people you're paying to keep you safe."
"I want it where, 50 years from now in our community, we don't have an issue at Honeywell or at any other plant, that could be taking lives or having babies born with deformities," McDaniel said. "We want things done right, and in the right way, the first time."