[CPEO-BIF] The Critique Is Weak at the CTS Site in Skyland, North Carolina

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

The Critique Is Weak
At the CTS Site in Skyland, North Carolina

Lenny Siegel
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
June 2010

For two decades the neighbors of the CTS Asheville site on Mills Gap 
Road in Skyland, North Carolina have been asking state and federal 
environmental agencies to identify the full extent of trichloroethylene 
(TCE) contamination there and get it cleaned up. Community members 
continue to fight for cleanup, but North Carolina's Department of 
Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has done little, and Region 4 
of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows continuing 
reluctance to list the site on the "Superfund" National Priorities List. 
I was heartened, therefore, to read in late May, 2010, that the EPA 
Office of Inspector General (OIG) had published a report critical of 
agency activities at Mills Gap Road. However, when I read the OIG 
report, I was disappointed to learn that no one from the OIG ever 
interviewed the activists who have devoted an enormous amount of time to 
documenting contamination and possible health impacts at the Skyland 
site and that EPA Region 4 is using an air Removal Action Level  for TCE 
two orders of magnitude less protective than other EPA regions.


To download my critique of the OIG critique, go to 
http://cpeo.org/pubs/CTSCritique.pdf.

Lenny Siegel


--


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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