[CPEO-BIF] "Whirlpool settles on most claims related to TCE pollution at Fort Smith (AR) plant"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Whirlpool settles on most claims related to TCE pollution at Fort Smith plant

Fort Smith City Wire (AR)
April 17, 2015

Whirlpool officials said Friday (April 17) they have paid more than $3 million to property owners harmed by pollution around the company’s former manufacturing plant in Fort Smith, and have settled claims with all but two property owners near the plant.

The company closed the refrigerator manufacturing plant in June 2012, and later that year it was made public that trichloroethyclene – a cancer-causing chemical – was found in and around the plant. Whirlpool has been working to monitor and remove the chemicals, with oversight of the work handled by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality. ADEQ issued its first remedial action plan December 2013.

Jeff Noel, Whirlpool’s corporate vice president of communications and public affairs, and Mike Ellis, an engineer with Environ, told the Fort Smith Board of Directors in January that TCE levels have decreased around Whirlpool’s plant in Fort Smith. Environ is consulting Whirlpool in the clean up effort. According to Whirlpool’s annual report to the Board, the company has installed 202 “membrane interface probes,” 62 soil probes, 86 monitoring wells, and five temporary boundary wells.

…

For the entire article, see
http://www.thecitywire.com/node/37256#.VTF-UmafObg

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Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope Street
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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