Public meeting on Navassa Superfund site Tuesday
NAVASSA, NC (WWAY) — The public will have an opportunity Tuesday to give federal and state agencies feedback on a plan to restore the natural resources in a Brunswick County town where a wood treatment operation contaminated the nearby environment for several decades.
The public meeting will be held at 6 p.m. on Aug 18 at the Navassa Community Center at 338 Maint St. in Navassa.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, US Fish and Wildlife Service and the NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources are trustees acting on behalf of the public to develop and carry out a plan to restore the natural resources affected by the contamination as part of the Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration process.
The trustees are hosting the meeting so people can provide their ideas for restoring natural resources, which were impacted by four decades of contamination caused by chemicals that were used to treat wood at the old Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp. site in Navassa.
The state and federal agencies developed a scoping document, which details the environmental impacts and options for restoring the area. The area was added to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program in 2010. Funds from a $23 million settlement, which was part of one of the largest settlements of its kind in the nation’s history, will be used to restore the natural resources.
The site is a former creosote wood-treating facility. The site encompasses a 250-acre parcel bound by the Brunswick River to the east and Sturgeon Creek to the south. The facility was established in 1936 and was operated by multiple owners until its final proprietor, the Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp. ceased operations in 1974. During this period, wood treating activities resulted in the release of contaminants associated with creosote into the soil, groundwater and marsh sediments of the site. Kerr-McGee dismantled the facility in 1979, and in 2006 the site was transferred to Tronox, Inc., which entered bankruptcy in 2009.
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