Oct 22, 2008 in Contamination, Alaska, Articles
For the
SEWARD – It’s a dusty road ahead for Jim Pruitt’s
Seward Ships Drydock recently earned an Environmental Protection Agency violation for fugitive dust, its third.
Department of Environmental Conservation Air Quality division issued Seward Ships a violation earlier this month in response to contaminated dust that sometimes blows off site when the dry dock sandblasts paint off 100-foot long vessels. Seward Ships gets much of its business from Coast Guard,
“Many, many barges go through there,” said Russ Maddox, of Resurrection Bay Conservation Alliance and Communities for Democracy in
Maddox said the former Navy submarine tent, open at both ends, which Seward Ships uses to shelter its workers and its clients’ ships can not contain the dry dock’s dust.
As long as it is allowed to hit the ground it will continue to wash away,” Maddox said.
“Until containment is created there will continue to be a source of pollution that will continue to migrate off site,” Maddox said.
Maddox said the EPA’s report shed light on an important issue for
“We are hopeful and optimistic that we will be moving forward now that we know contamination is there,” Maddox said.
Seward Ships has contaminated its site with tributyltin, copper and other pollutants.
Senator Loren, R-Anchorage sponsored a successful bill that outlawed TBT in
“TBT-based marine anti-fouling paints are used on the hulls of ships to prevent the attachment of barnacles and algae. Unfortunately, research has shown that TBT paints are very poisonous to certain forms of sealife, especially shellfish. Over time TBT paint leaches off vessels and damages shellfish, even at very low levels of exposure,” said Leman.
TBT has also been found to damage the reproductive and nervous systems, endocrine glands, skeletal structure and gastrointestinal tract of mammals.
A global moratorium outlawing TBT takes effects in six weeks. The
Seward Ships has a $1 million pollution bond in its lease with the city.
The bond can be used for clean up and to assure Seward Ships meets best management practices.
“There’s enough money in bond to do what has to be done,” Corbridge said.
Corbridge said the city and the council would first need to get familiar with the issue.
“Get ourselves to an educated stage, scientifically,” Corbridge said.
Corbridge said the city has an attorney working on a spectrum of options.
“From do nothing, to the shut them down option,” Corbridge said. “Probably pick something in between those two extremes.”
The city will know more in a week, Corbridge said.
The city of
“We lease it to Jim Pruitt,” Corbridge said. “This adds layers of legal.”
Corbridge said the lease has environmental requirements,. But the lease has very general language.
Corbridge said the city will have to feed the EPA report through the city’s contract with Jim Pruitt’s company.
“We don’t want to shut down a business,” Corbridge said.
The city will work with “EPA and ADEC to make sure [Pruitt} is doing what he has promised to do,” Corbridge said.
Only after we have that information in hand can we actually go remediation or whatever is appropriate.
Best Management Practices are “actions required, by law, to keep soil and other pollutants out of streams and lakes,” according to the Idaho Forest Products Commission.
Absent from the EPA report was the agency’s designation of the polluted Seward Ships site as a Superfund site. Seward may have benefited from access to federal cleanup money is the dry dock had qualified.
Demographics and population density kept Seward Ships off the Superfund list, Maddox said.
“3,077 souls within four miles was not enough,” Maddox said.
Though the Environmental Protection Agency did not list the dry dock site as a superfund Maddox said the ADEC and EPA investigate Seward Ships still.
“This report raised many new concerns,” Maddox said.
Alaska Assistant Attorney General Steve Ross and Bob Morgan of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation came to Seward to meet with city officials and concerned locals about the dry dock, Tuesday.
The EPA said it will work with ADEC on Best Management Practices for the dry dock.
Russ Maddox of the Resurrection Bay Conservation Alliance and Communities for Democracy in
All the parts per million of Tributyltin and copper on Pruitt’s ship lift property may not stay all winter.
“The beaches on the site change with each new tide,” Maddox said.
Weather and tides as high as 28 feet disperse the pollutants into
Petroleum, copper and TBT tributyltin are main pollutant concerns in Seward.
This is a perfect example of corporate privilege usurping citizens’ rights,” Maddox said. “Resulting in environmental degradation and unnecessary risks to human health.”
DJ Whitman, Seward Ships Drydock manager said he was nonplused by EPA’s report.
“There is no future action required, there is nothing there,” Whitman said.
WhitmanFound elevated levels of some items above the base line.
However, Whitman said, he does have to adapt to the regulatory environment.
“Compliance is an ongoing thing,” Whitman said. “Regulation changes regularly.”
Whitman said EPA compliance is a black and white issue.
“You either have complied or you haven’t. I’ve complied with what they asked me,” Whitman said.
Test results indicate the grit was spread in an even layer around the 6-acre site as a type of fill.
Clean-up of the dry dock site could cost well over $1 million.