Troy Keith of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, left, and Jasmin Jeffries of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency present an update of cleanup efforts at the Southside Chattanooga Lead Site on Monday
photo by Hannah Campbell
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation continue to clean up lead waste left by area foundries in eight residential neighborhoods in Chattanooga’s Southside. The EPA has cleaned up 285 home sites to date since efforts began in 2011.
EPA Remedial Project Manager Jasmin Jeffries and Troy Keith, environmental consultant at the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, presented a cleanup update to the Regional Health Council Monday.
Ms. Jeffries estimated that 40 to 50 percent of the 5,500 home sites identified for testing will qualify for cleanup. The estimated cost of $113.5 million is up from the $25 million original estimate. Ms. Jeffries said $22 million will be spent in 2023 alone.
She said the designated Superfund site has access to $3.5 billion from the Infrastructure and Investment and Jobs Law of 2021.
Residents continue to queue up for testing, and the post-cleanup outlook is bright, it was stated.
“These sites are being successfully redeveloped all the time,” said Mr. Keith. Though the 60 foundries have disappeared, and liability with them, cleanup is working and testing shows that groundwater is not affected at all, he said.
The EPA Southside Chattanooga Lead Site includes the neighborhoods of Alton Park, Cowart Place, East Lake, Highland Park, Jefferson Heights, Oak Grove, Southside Gardens and Richmond. The EPA began to investigate the sites after a Fort Negley man suffered lead poisoning in 2011 and tests of his yard revealed 2,000 parts per million, up from the standard danger level of 400 ppm. The Superfund site was added to the National Priorities List in 2018.
For more than 100 years, from the mid-1800s to the passing of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act in 1976, residents could request a delivery of the spent foundry sand, which looks like coffee grounds, as nourishing topsoil.
“We’ll never find it all,” said Mr. Keith, but that most of it is concentrated in neighborhoods around the foundries. It sits up to two feet deep on top of native Chattanooga clay.
“It is a veneer,” Mr. Keith said.
EPA uses a composite sampling method to sample a home’s soil, which takes about 15 minutes to collect. Residents get test results within a month. Testing is voluntary and this program does not test commercial or industrial property.
Properties with greater than 1,200 ppm are prioritized, then properties with greater than 360 ppm.
Cleanup involves shaving the contaminated topsoil away, to the property’s borders. If an X-ray fluorescence screening reveals more lead, another layer is excavated, up to two feet deep. Then orange snow fence is spread flat as a signal to other diggers, then clean topsoil and sod grass.
The dirty soil goes to the project’s new 36-acre staging site on East 38th Street, recently donated by the city of Chattanooga, and then to its permanent home in the Bradley County Landfill.
Families who get their yards tested are also encouraged to test their children.