The EPA recently finished testing ditches on the west side of Anniston for PCBs. The agency expects to let residents know the results of those tests shortly.
Over the past decade, Anniston lawns and parks were tested and cleared of PCBs deposited over decades of heavy industry in the city. But until now, no one had checked the ditches that border the lawns where contaminated soil has been removed.
In previous years, the Calhoun County Highway Department has insisted that it was unable to maintain the ditches because it did not want to church contaminants that might have settled there. Leaving the ditches crowded with vegetation caused the west side of Anniston to become prone to flooding, according to a memo written by David Pirritano, Calhoun County environmental enforcement officer. “If the right-of-way storm water ditches are
contaminated and flooding takes place there is the possibility that
sites … could be recontaminated as well as clean properties that didn’t
contain pollutions to begin with,” the December 8, 2011 memo states.
That is unlikely, according to Yucheng Feng, a professor of environmental soil microbiology at Auburn University Feng said that PCBs are not easily dissolved in water, and are more likely to cling to sediment and soil, making it unlikely that it would leave the ditches. However, the likelihood that PCBs remain in the ditches is strong, she said.
If PCBs are around in the ditches at concentrations deemed to be harmful to human health, EPA has told the county that it will remove the contaminated soil.
For more, see the Anniston Star article here.
