EPA showcases Superfund cleanup at Jacksonville site

Cleanup work at a Northwest Jacksonville wood-preserving plant is being touted by the federal government as a model for delivering faster results from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund program.

"We have completed the cleanup," EPA regional administrator Mary S. Walker said Wednesday after a panel talk in Jacksonville about remediating pollution at the former Fairfax Street Wood Treaters plant, 2610 Fairfax St.

Walker and other EPA officials were in town for a conference of the agency's National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, which will continue Thursday at the Omni Jacksonville Hotel.

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Speeding up Superfund cleanups has been an EPA priority under President Donald Trump. The agency said previously that for three years in a row it had increased the number of sites deleted from the National Priorities List, the Superfund program's roll of badly contaminated land where EPA is handling cleanup because parties responsible for the damage haven't acted.

The Fairfax Street plant operated from 1980 to 2010 but was out of business by the time EPA declared the property a Superfund site in 2012.

The Fairfax Street site hasn't been deleted yet from the priorities list, but Walker said work the agency oversaw last year had been "remarkably effective" at getting contamination addressed quickly and completely.

Between March and September, contractors hired by EPA remediated 12.5 acres of land contaminated mostly by chromated copper arsenate, a compound used in wood-preserving fluid that Wood Treaters applied to utility poles, plywood and other wood products.

Crews removed 300,000 gallons of contaminated water and replaced 60,000 tons of arsenic-tainted soil, removing 12 to 18 inches off the top of some homes' yards and replacing it with clean fill that was sodded and watered while the grass in it took root. Remediation work was completed at 51 homes.

Walker said her agency was able to get a lot done because of close coordination and support from Florida's Department of Environmental Protection as well as help from the state Department of Health.

The agency also used the work to launch a job-training effort that trained 13 people living nearby.

Soil testing for the area led to the discovery of a cluster of homes along West 19th and 20th Streets that also had arsenic problems but couldn't be blamed on the plant because they were on the opposite side of a railroad track from the EPA's cleanup area. The state is overseeing cleanup of that area, said Leigh Lattimore, EPA's remedial project manager.

Steve Patterson: (904) 359-4263

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