Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 19, 1990 TAG: 9004190286
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: By PAUL DELLINGER SOUTHWEST BUREAU
DATELINE: IVANHOE LENGTH: Medium
The oil-like PCBs oozing from old capacitors left behind when the National Carbide plant closed in 1966 have been placed in drums and hauled away for disposal, said Peter Kho, EPA project enforcement officer. Cleanup work will continue until PCB concentrations are reduced to 10 parts per million, he said.
"There's not a ground water problem," he said. "There's no way that PCBs could have gotten from the basement of the manufacturing building to the wells. . . . PCBs are not water-soluble."
But Ivanhoe Civic League President Maxine Waller raised a new concern - the possibility that Carbide could have dumped other capacitors into an area of Ivanhoe known as P.I. Hollow where more PCBs might exist.
The name comes from Pulaski Iron, the company from which Carbide bought the property when it began operations in 1918. They ended in 1966.
Waller said someone told her recently that the hollow might have had capacitors dumped there. At one time, there were plans in the community to smooth over the hollow and use it for a ball park, but the project was never completed.
When it left, Carbide turned its property over to Wythe and Carroll counties for use as an industrial park. The counties were unsuccessful in attracting industry and, three years ago, considered selling the property. Opposition to the sell-off was the focal point leading to the organization of the Ivanhoe Civic League, which now is a community improvement organization.
The league has helped organize an off-campus Wytheville Community College classroom site. Its members published a pictorial and oral history of Ivanhoe last month, "Remembering Our Past, Building Our Future," and three more books are in the works.
The second volume, consisting mainly of oral histories from interviews of Ivanhoe people, will be titled "Telling Our Stories, Sharing Our Lives," and should be available in several weeks, Waller said.
Waller is collaborating with sociologist Helen Lewis and a third author on "Struggling for Survival, Walking in Faith," which is scheduled to be printed in June. It will be a kind of handbook for agencies working with small communities like Ivanhoe on the best ways of working with the people involved. Still another book in 1991 will update the Ivanhoe story, using hundreds of photographs people provided after publication of the first book, which already is in its second printing.
Another league project will bring the U.S. Army Reserve 424th Transportation Company from Galax to Ivanhoe on Saturday to help renovate a two-story, 150-year-old house, the oldest in Ivanhoe.
The league also managed to secure an industry for the park, but the industry eventually went bankrupt, partly because of an inability to get loan funds once the PCBs were discovered on the property.
Kho said 130 soil samples were taken outside the main plant building in the park and PCBs turned up in only two. "Basically, we didn't find anything outside of the building that would be hazardous," he said.
EPA toxicologist Dawn Iovan said a skin rash would probably be the first sign of exposure to PCBs. They also can cause liver damage, she said. While they have caused cancer in some laboratory animals, she said, it is still uncertain that they do so in humans.
Kho said the PCB cleanup work is scheduled for completion by July. "You can just hang out and go to Jubilee," Waller said, referring to the July 1-7 community celebration held at the park each year.
by CNB