I may come up with more, but these to me appear to be the salient questions that need answering.
1. Is that stuff still in the landfill? I didn’t see anything in the EPA reports I read indicating any major clean-up of the site.
2. If it is in the landfill, is it still a threat to the community? Is it still seeping into the water supplies? Would, for instance, anyone at the city, state, or federal level feel safe letting the Holts or the Sullivans drink out of their wells now? The EPA claims that it’s no longer an issue (as of 2003) because the city now pulls their drinking water out of the Cumberland.
3. And, as of 2003, the city was telling the EPA that they were planning on putting some kind of geocomposite cap on the landfill. Has that happened?
4. How effective is a geocompisite cap when portions of the dump, into which these chemicals, as of 2003, remained unlined?
5. I need to see what kinds of ways people are using the land out there. Because if there are chemicals still sitting in unlined portions of the dump and if those chemicals are still seeping into the water in the area, what does it mean if people are growing gardens that draw on soil in that area and then eating the food? Or if livestock is eating grass growing on that soil? They told the Sullivans do not drink this water, do not cook with it, don’t bathe with it, basically, do not come in contact with it; it’s that dangerous. Can if affect people at a step removed?
6. Are they still using water they know might be contaminated to water the grass growing on the dump? If so, how? If you’re using sprinklers, aren’t you just, in effect, making those chemicals airborne?
7. What do the cancer rates in Dickson county look like in general?
8. Basically, what I want to know is, if this shit is still sitting there in the ground like a gaping, festering wound, dripping into the surrounding environment, don’t the people of Dickson still have cause for concern, even if they are no longer drinking water from this area?
And, again, Jesus Christ people. I invite you to consider long and hard the map on page 51 of this report (pdf, sorry). It marks all the springs the feds and the state were concerned might be contaminated (and rightly so in many cases) from shit from the landfill.
If you draw a little circle, you’ll see that between Tice Spring and Payne Spring sits Dickson Lake–which was supplying water to the city the whole time the dump was being cited repeatedly for being an open cesspool of evil.
And what’s more unbelievable to me is that they kept pulling water from this area to put into the general drinking water, even as the state and the EPA were fretting about its safety.
It hurts my head a little to think about this too much.
I mean, really, what are the long-term effects on the people of that community of having that shit just sitting there?
The Holts are suffering now, terribly, from drinking that crap at its highest doses for thirty years. But it seems obvious to me that the whole town was exposed every once in a while to it. And its still there, seeping along.
I’ve got nothing pithy to wrap this up with. I’m going to try to get over there in the rain this weekend, because I want to see what’s going on and see how the water flows around there.
Filed under: About Town
Vegetables/grass/other plants grow from rainwater and irrigation water. They do not draw any moisture from groundwater. So if the vegetables are being irrigated with groundwater, they will be contaminated. If they are being grown without irrigation, or irrigated with surface water (as seems more likely), they will not be contaminated by whatever is in the groundwater.
The water source for springs is groundwater, so springs will have whatever contamination the groundwater has. By contrast, the water source for most lakes is rainwater. If the groundwater level is lower than the top of the lake, the lake will discharge into the groundwater, and the lakewater is unlikely to be contaminated by the groundwater.
I’m not familiar with the specific geology of Dickson Lake, but if it’s like most lakes, this awful mess may be just an iota less awful than you’re thinking.
I think, judging from what the EPA says, that Dickson Lake is fed by the Piney River (or creek) and stuff has seeped out of the landfill, into the creek, and into the Lake. They have found TCE in the lake in the past.
But I will take a look when I get over there.
4. How effective is a geocompisite cap when portions of the dump, into which these chemicals, as of 2003, remained unlined?
It will help. The idea is to keep rainwater from seeping into the dump and picking up contaminents as it flows through into the ground below. It won’t stop any liquids that are already in there, but the majority of leachate (seepage out of a solid waste dump) is caused by water getting into the dump rather than the actual waste being put into it.
lyrl covered question 5 pretty well. And that was a good point about Dickson Lake. Unless it’s groundwater fed it will probably be more helpful than harmful. If surfacewater collects in the lake then it can seep down into the water table and have a diluting effect on the groundwater. Of course, given the geology out there it’s probably at least partly spring fed, which would mean some of the contaminated water could get in.
Another thing you have to remember about the lake…. Groundwater contamination is glacial. Groundwater moves so slowly that it takes forever to get anywhere. Wells can speed that up because the pumps pull water in from all sides. They alter the normal groundwater movement so that all the water in the area is pulled to the well sort of like a bathtub drain.
Once the contamination gets to a spring though, all bets are off because surfacewater flow is much faster and everything downstream can get pretty contaminated until you get to a body of water large enough to dilute it.
W, ha! I emailed B yesterday to mention the importance of the geology of the area,and that “one of the engineers will probably drop by to comment on this.” You didn’t disappoint. :)