[CPEO-BIF] "Toxic legacy: CTS site breeds heartache for residents, " Buncombe County, North Carolina

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Toxic legacy: CTS site breeds heartache for residents

by Max Hunt
Mountain XPress (NC)
June 1, 2016 

Larry and Dot Rice thought they’d found their “haven” when they bought a wooded property on Mills Gap Road in 1974. “This was supposed to be something we could leave to our family,” says Dot. “We’d be able to do whatever we wanted to with it.”

But their hopes were shattered in 1999 as evidence came to light that their well water was contaminated with high concentrations of trichloroethylene, an industrial solvent. Worse still, the Rices learned that state and federal environmental agencies had been alerted a decade before about contamination leaching from the former CTS of Asheville electroplating plant next door (see “Fail-Safe?” July 11, 2007 Xpress).

As early as 1990, Environmental Protection Agency officials received reports of possible contamination at the site. The following year, an EPA contractor found “high levels of 1,2-dichloroethene, trichloroethylene, vinyl chloride, and several unidentified organic compounds,” yet no action was taken for almost a decade, and attempts at remediation didn’t start till 2006 (see “CTS Timeline”).

…

For the entire article, see
https://mountainx.com/news/toxic-legacy-cts-site-breeds-heartache-for-residents/

--

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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