(The following story by Corydon Ireland appeared on the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle website on October 30.)
CHARLOTTE, N.Y. — Nearly three years after a scorching train wreck spilled thousands of gallons of solvents, the final step of the cleanup could come as early as next week.
In the past month, contractors for CSX Transportation have used a massive crane to scoop 2,000 tons of contaminated sediment from the Genesee River.
“It went faster than we planned,” said project manager Timothy P. Ahrens, a CSX consultant. State estimates for the project, released last month, said dredging could go on through December.
After the dredging, workers will be on the site about another month, he said. They’ll ship equipment and break up a temporary asphalt pad at the staging area, where sediment is now stored, tested and shipped.
The dry-land phase of the cleanup was finished two years ago and made a hole in the ground 2 feet to 10 feet deep and the size of a football field. About 28,000 tons of contaminated soil were trucked away, along with 1.4 million gallons of tainted water.
The contamination occurred Dec. 23, 2001, when a 43-car CSX train — without brakes or an engineer — hurtled at 55 mph into a rail curve on River Street. Typical speed in that section of the track is 2 to 5 mph.
Just 150 feet from the Genesee River, 23 rail cars toppled over, including three chemical tankers loaded with solvents that are toxic to breathe in or touch. Thousands of gallons soaked into soil or flowed into the river.
Mark Gregor, who has tracked the spill and its aftermath for Rochester’s Division of Environmental Quality, called it the largest spill of solvents in city history.
A clean cleanup
This year, Paul Naintre has gotten an up-close view of the cleanup’s last phase. He and his dog, Elvis, live aboard a 52-foot trawler moored on the Genesee south of the dredging site. They walk past it every day. Contractors at work “seem very competent at what they’re doing — very proficient and knowledgeable,” said Naintre, a software expert who works at home. Where the dredged sediment is stored, he added, seems very clean, and construction noise is minimal.
“It’s no noisier than any construction site,” said Ahrens, of Schenectady, who has overseen both the soil and the sediment cleanups. His crews work weekdays, from about 7 a.m. until 5 p.m.
Using a Global Positioning System to guide each massive scoop, workers load the spoils onto a scow, or barge; mix in 10 to 15 percent Portland cement to dry up the load; and trundle the results one-quarter mile down river to the staging area.
Two scows working in succession pass under the new Col. Patrick O’Rorke Bridge and pull up to a deck barge squeezed carefully between two small wetlands on the river bank.
“We’re taking every precaution possible to protect the environment and the community,” wetlands included, said Ahrens.
The dredging project design calls for an “environmental bucket,” which seals in dredged material; silt curtains to prevent spoils from drifting into currents; and five air-monitoring stations, including one in the vicinity of Holy Cross School on nearby Lake Avenue.
Serious work
The dredging is serious work. Chemicals in high amounts made it into the river, either pouring in within seconds of the derailment or migrating through soils and groundwater. To measure the damage, experts took sediment samples eight times between March 2002 and December 2003.
About 16,000 gallons of methylene chloride escaped the raging fire, which engulfed rail cars stacked up like toys and sent acres of roiling smoke billowing north toward Lake Ontario. An additional 14,100 gallons of acetone soaked into the ground or flowed into the river.
The impact to soil and water was measured by CSX, the city and by the state Department of Environmental Conservation. The impact, everyone agrees, was significant. “We were concerned about another Superfund site,” said Gregor — one on riverfront property that lay at the heart of a plan to revitalize Charlotte.
One soil sample of methylene chloride at the riverbank, for example, was more than 5 million times higher than the state’s soil cleanup standard.
In the river, experts used sediment samples to map a contaminated area that averaged 4 feet deep, stretched over one-third of an acre and included 110 feet of shoreline.
‘Really nifty approach’
Gregor, part of a city administration that often butted heads with CSX over the timing and scale of the whole cleanup, called the river dredging phase “a really nifty approach.” But he added: “It’s taken (CSX) a long time to get to this point.”
Ahrens met with city and state officials at the dredging site this week. Once the last scoop is dredged, he said, final samples will be tested for solvent levels.
If levels are still high, the digging will continue, according to DEC regional officials. If they’re low — that is, at or below state standards — dredging will stop.
If solvent levels in the dredged portion of the river are somewhere in between, said DEC Regional Director Sean T. Hanna in an e-mail to the Democrat and Chronicle, “continued monitoring may be required.”
On land, groundwater monitoring wells are still on-site and could be used for long-term monitoring, if required. A report is due soon, wrote Hanna, and will “determine future actions.”
In the meantime, Ahrens is taking the sunny view.
By Thanksgiving, there will be more than turkey and TV football to celebrate.
The one-acre staging area will be broken up and graded and will look, he said, “as if we were never there.”