[CPEO-BIF] CTS Asheville (NC)

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

Fail-safe?
Hazardous-waste site falls through regulatory cracks

by Rebecca Bowe
Mountain Xpress (NC)
July 11, 2007


CTS of Asheville shut down more than two decades ago, but for some 
former employees and neighbors of the electroplating facility, the 
memories haven't faded.

"The odors were bad," recalls Mary McGraw, who worked at the Mills Gap 
Road plant until its closure in 1986. "If you're in the plant, you're 
breathing it, and I spent 20 years in there." McGraw says she struggles 
with fatigue and heavy-metal poisoning, and she believes her condition 
may be linked to chemical exposure.

In the summer of 1999, a family living adjacent to the CTS site, who 
asked that they not be named, phoned the state Division of Water Quality 
after noticing a foul-smelling, oily substance in the spring that 
provided their drinking water. Tests conducted by a U.S. Environmental 
Protection Agency emergency-response team revealed 21,000 parts per 
billion of trichloroethylene, a suspected carcinogen. That's 4,200 times 
the allowable limit for drinking water.

...

Meanwhile, Southside Village, a high-end townhouse development, has 
sprung up adjacent to the old plant. Years before, the EPA had 
documented hazardous chemicals running through a stream on that 
property, but construction was approved nonetheless.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.mountainx.com/news/2007/071107waste

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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