29 Aug EPA to Revise Richmond Heckathorn Superfund Site Cleanup, Adapt It for Sea Level Rise

A map identifies the June 2024 location of the United Heckathorn Co. Superfund Site in the Richmond Inner Harbor. The Lauritzen Channel is contaminated with dieldrin and DDT, chemical remnants from a pesticides produced at the site from 1947 to 1966. (U.S. EPA via Bay City News)

By Ruth Dusseault
Bay City News

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is returning to Richmond Harbor for a second attempt in a second century to remove toxic mud at the bottom of the Lauritzen Channel.

The channel was first contaminated from 1947 to 1966 by the United Heckathorn Company. According to the U.S. Department of the Interior, no chemicals were manufactured on site. Heckathorn received raw pesticides from manufacturers, ground them in open-air mills, mixed them with solvents and packaged them for use in liquid or powder form.

In 1990, the Heckathorn site was placed on a list of Superfund national priorities, which ranks sites on their threat of releasing hazardous substances and pollutants. The EPA was brought in to oversee the cleanup and hold the responsible parties accountable for funding the work.

The first cleanup in 1994 started with the removal of marine sediment and surface soil and ended with the placement of a concrete cap around the ground area to prevent erosion. This time, they will have the added challenge of protecting human health and the environment from contaminants as rising sea levels saturate groundwater, potentially leaching pollutants into the bay.

In a virtual public information session Wednesday, EPA representatives answered questions and laid out the steps toward a new plan of action. The site is now used as an industrial shipping port. It viers off the main shipping channel, which is also used by private boat owners.

In a 1994 evaluative report, called a Record of Decision, the EPA described the harm: “United Heckathorn employees apparently routinely washed out equipment containing pesticide residues. The wash water was permitted to either run through drains that discharged to the Lauritzen Channel or to seep into the ground adjacent to the site.”

The company tried to use tanks to capture pesticide residues from wash water, but the tanks frequently overflowed, leaked and spilled, the report said.

The chemicals of concern that are still present are dieldrin and DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane). Both are no longer used in U.S. pesticides, and both were classified by the EPA as probable human carcinogens.

The 1994 remedy also included a deed restriction that limited the property to nonresidential use and a commitment from EPA to conduct five-year reviews as long as contamination remains at the site.

According to the EPA’s Heckathorn Superfund site, the most recent review in 2021 concluded that the cleanup of the upland area was sufficient for the protection of human health and the environment, but the marine area of the site was not “because concentrations of total DDT and dieldrin in sediment, surface water, and tissue samples of marine organisms in the Lauritzen Channel exceed remediation goals.”

That brought the whole process back to step one, said EPA community involvement coordinator Hiruni Jayasekera in Wednesday’s meeting.

Following an investigation and feasibility study, the EPA will recommend a cleanup plan in a document called the Proposed Plan, she said. Then the EPA provides the public with an opportunity to comment on the plan in writing or in person. The agency will share the Proposed Plan with the public this winter.

In preparation for the public comment period, the agency has been hosting monthly meetings, which will be followed by several in-person meetings and an informal open house.

Who will pay for this new clean-up effort? United Heckathorn went bankrupt in 1966, and the facility buildings had been cleared from the site by 1970, according to the U.S. Department of the Interior.

EPA remedial project manager Karen Jurist shared a list of 14 companies that were held financially responsible for the 1994 cleanup. Several of them have ceased to exist. Those still operating in Richmond include Levin Richmond Terminal Inc., which runs a deep-water terminal, and Parr-Richmond Terminal Company, an industrial railroad operator.

Also on the list is Stauffer Chemical Company, which was liable for the cleanup of another contaminated site in Richmond and was later owned by the Zeneca company.

EPA Superfund section supervisor Omer Shalev said they cannot speculate on any settlements that EPA will have with any parties for this next cleanup.

“That’s what this Superfund was designated for,” he said. “There is a federal tax on chemical and petroleum products that helps to pay for cleanup where there is no viable responsible party.”

The concrete slab meant to contain the tainted soil on the Heckathorn site is not fully enclosed on all sides. Cheryl Patel, field investigator for San Francisco Baykeeper, an environmental advocacy nonprofit, asked about the dependability of the concrete cap.

“Could water still move through the upland soil and become a leach material that releases into the bay?” Patel said.

“There’s a pretty robust stormwater collection system in place that wasn’t part of the original cleanup,” said Jurist with the EPA.

“It does happen to treat DDT and dieldrin from the stormwater collection system. There are also seeps and other outfalls that we’ve identified in our source identification studies that would need to be addressed and managed as part of our cleanup.”

Community member Katie Rodriguez expressed concern that as sea levels rise with climate change, the ground becomes permanently saturated, increasing the potential for contaminated soil to mix with seawater and enter the Bay.

Jurist said that the EPA completed a climate vulnerability assessment in 2023 that looks at the long-term effectiveness of remedies and their resilience to climate change, including the rise of groundwater tables with sea level rise and how any proposed cleanup technology should address that.

The Climate Vulnerability Assessment will be the topic of the next public meeting on Sept. 24. The public can register at https://usepa.zoomgov.com/meeting/register/G-XAq38nSv2yRZKIC53KPg#/registration.

A Fact Sheet can be found at https://semspub.epa.gov/work/09/100036999.pdf.

The 2021 EPA five-year-review report can be found at: https://semspub.epa.gov/work/09/100025429.pdf.

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