Contamination of our Chicot Aquifer: April 3, 2017, CCGG Meeting

The Concerned Citizens for Good Government (CCGG) held its regular 1st meeting of the month on Monday, April 3, 2017 at Alesi’s Pizza House in Lafayette, LA.  Guest speaker was Michael Waldon, PhD, and retired licensed professional environmental engineer. The title of the presentation was: Contamination of our Chicot Aquifer.  What do we know? How do we know? What should be done? WaterMark Alliance spokesperson Kim Goodell also gave an update to pending litigation and the I-49 Project. As always, there was an opportunity to ask pertinent questions at the end of the presentation.

If you missed the meeting, you can still participate. Click the following links to learn more about the meeting"

• Michael Waldon's presentation slide show. 
• Full presentation video made available by CCGG .
• Read the Acadiana Group of the Sierra Club/WaterMark Alliance recommendation letter to our civic leaders.

Additionally, you can still participate by sharing to Facebook or other media using the share buttons below, and by adding your ideas and questions in the comments section. If you feel strongly about the issue, please contact our political leaders. Our local leaders' contact information is available by clicking HERE.

Citizens seek action to protect our health, property, and drinking water supply

On March 22, the Acadiana Group of the Sierra Club and the WaterMark Alliance delivered a letter to local Lafayette leaders asking for immediate actions responding to contamination of our Chicot Aquifer water source and abandoned railyard site downtown. An article in The Independent by Wynce Nolley titled Green alliance offers advice to LCG on water contamination describes this letter and provides additional background information.

Express your opinions and concerns to the Lafayette mayor-president and council! Contact them by phone, email, or postal mail. Contact details for all these leaders are available in the previous post titled Who is my council member? Who is the mayor-president? How do I contact them?

The March 22 letter states in part:

"The contaminated railyard site next to our downtown and residential neighborhoods perches above water wells that provide much of our municipal water supply. Beyond the obvious risk to neighbors’ health and property resulting from this un-remediated site, we now see clear evidence that it is contaminating our aquifer. Currently, we are pumping millions of gallons of water every day from the LUS water wells near sites of contamination. This continued pumping poses a threat to our aquifer and the future health and prosperity of our city."

Evidence of contamination appearing in LUS drinking water wells was presented at a January 19 meeting organized by the Sierra Club. The measured concentrations are below EPA Designated Contaminant Levels and are measured before treatment. However, contaminants reaching our water wells “present a warning to the public and our civic leaders that action is needed” said Harold Schoeffler, chair of the Sierra Club Acadian Group. Attention has been focused on the abandoned railyard in downtown Lafayette since DOTD has revived their plan to construct I-49 over the railyard site which is known to be contaminated with toxic substances including some of those being monitored in nearby LUS wells. Schoeffler went on to say that “both property and public health require protection.” A  March 22 letter from the Sierra Club Acadian Group and the WaterMark Alliance to Lafayette Mayor/President Joel Robideaux and Council members makes the following ten recommendations:

1. Plan and execute a study of surface contamination within the wellhead protection area of our wells. Include sampling for all contaminants that have been monitored in LUS well water, and for contaminants found at other US rail sites which are either undergoing or have been remediated.
2. Where appropriate, partner with other state and federal agencies.
3. Intensify sampling of well water by increasing the frequency of sampling and adding contaminants for analysis to include all known or suspected contaminants present on the surface or in the surficial aquifer (groundwater just below the surface).
4. Make all past and current well monitoring and sampling data easily available for public review and analysis.
5. Begin contingency planning for shutting down all wells in the vicinity of the North Treatment Plant. Abandoning some or all of these wells may be necessitated in the future to allow aquifer remediation through recovery well operation or other groundwater cleaning technology.
6. Identify responsible parties and methods to recover ratepayer and taxpayer costs.
7. The abandoned railyard site is a public hazard and should be posted as such. It is known to be contaminated with arsenic, asbestos, lead, and many other contaminants which endanger public health from dust and direct contact.
8. Public access and parking of any vehicles on the abandoned railyard site should be immediately prohibited.
9. Determine new protection measures to be fully integrated into policy.
10. Ordinances based on LDEQ drinking water protection sample ordinances should be drafted and adopted.

Schoeffler hopes to see a response to these recommendations at future meetings of the Council and Utility Board.

The letter's civic leader recipients were:

• Joel Robideaux, Mayor-President
• Kevin Naquin, Council Member District 1
• Jay Castille,  Council Member District 2
• Patrick Lewis, Council Member District 3
• Kenneth P. Boudreaux, Council Member District 4
• Jared Bellard, Council Member District 5
• Bruce M Conque, Council Member District 6
• Nanette Cook, Council Member District 7
• Liz W. Hebert, Council Member District 8
• William G. Theriot, Council Member District 9

Copies of the letter were provided to Terry Huval, P.E., Director, LUS, and Craig Gautreaux, Water and Wastewater Operations. Manager, LUS. A copy of the signed letter is attached below or can be viewed online by clicking here.

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Y-49 takes a turn: Public meeting summary and video, January 19, 2017

This post compiles information from the Y-49 public meeting held on January 19, 2017 at the Lafayette Public Library. Roughly 100 citizens attended this meeting. Video of the meeting was produced by the Acadiana Open Channel (AOC), and the full two hour meeting video is available through YouTube.

In the summary that follows, direct links to the beginning of each speaker's presentation are provided for your convenience.

Meeting announcement.

Woody Martin welcomed the public on behalf of the Acadiana Group of the Sierra Club, and provided introductions of the evening's speakers.
     https://youtu.be/PTu1xtmUDGs?t=11s

Bill Goodell has been an environmental attorney for over 30 years. He shared some of the results of his investigations into contamination from the abandoned Union Pacific Railyard in downtown Lafayette, which sits above the Chicot Aquifer, Lafayette's drinking water source. His information came primarily from publicly available records. Goodell focused attention on p-dichlorobenzene (p-DCB or simply DCB) which has been monitored for several years in LUS water wells beneath the railyard. DCB does not occur naturally; it must originate at the surface. Because DCB is one of many known contaminants at the abandoned site the legal presumption is that the contamination originates from the contaminated railyard site. In 1974, the Louisiana constitution required conservation of our environmental resources and protection of the public. Public bodies have a duty to uphold this constitutional requirement, referred to as the public trust doctrine.
     https://youtu.be/PTu1xtmUDGs?t=3m44s


Kim Goodell leads the local WaterMark organization. She provided a history of citizen opposition to the I-49 Connector project and discussed the need for our political leaders to integrate the public trust doctrine into their actions. She stated that because of the public trust doctrine our local and state officials are expected to not simply be reactive, but be proactive in protecting the public from risks like drinking water contamination. Why have our local officials been less than aggressive in carrying out their constitutional duty?
     https://youtu.be/PTu1xtmUDGs?t=29m45s

Michael Waldon, PhD, is a retired from a career as an environmental engineer, hydrologist, and professor at LSU and UL-Lafayette. Dr. Waldon described the Louisiana DOTD Phase I Environmental Site Assessment (ESA) of contamination within the footprint of the proposed I-49 Connector. This includes the heavily contaminated railyard. Of the 195 properties in the footprint of the I-49 project, DOTD consultants recommend that 24 properties including the railyard need further evaluation. Although a year old, this study has not been publicly released for review, and was obtained only through a Freedom of Information Act disclosure. While we agree with the recommendation that more study is needed, the report has numerous deficiencies and failed to report important publicly available information. The report failed to discover monitoring data that show that surface contamination has reached Lafayette's water wells.
     https://youtu.be/PTu1xtmUDGs?t=52m10s

Harold Schoeffler is a leader with the Sierra Club and other civic organizations. Mr Schoeffler gave a brief history of the railroad in Lafayette. The Sabine was the first steam engine to arrive in Lafayette in 1875. Since the later 1800's the Lafayette railyard was a site for trains to take on water, sand, and fuel. Lafayette was also a major site for engine maintenance. The roundhouse, constructed in 1882, serviced steam engines for many decades. Maintenance often involved washing trains with the organic solvent trichloroethane (TCE), and removal of asbestos which was disposed of in ponds on-site. Every form of waste was dumped into the disposal ponds. The roundhouse operated until 1962. The railyard at times employed over one thousand people, and was a major source of employment in Lafayette. Mr. Schoeffler concludes that the railyard should have been cleaned up in the 1960s when it was closed. Today the wastes remain and the abandoned site still needs to be cleaned up.
     https://youtu.be/PTu1xtmUDGs?t=1h18m45s

Public comments and questions were solicited. Questions included what quantitative information is available and whether any political leaders or government employees were in attendance. The geographic extent of the impact was also discussed. Commenters suggested that attendees express their concern to our local political leaders. People were concerned about the status of compliance with Louisiana DEQ and US EPA requirements - were these agencies protecting the public? Finally, the US EPA EJScreen environmental and social justice mapping tool was suggested as a useful source for comparing the railroad site with other sites across the US.
     https://youtu.be/PTu1xtmUDGs?t=1h31m24s


Other links related to the meeting:
Article by Wynce Nolley, The Independent, January 20, 2017.  "Sierra Club: contamination in LUS water supply"

Article by Kendra Chamberlain, Louisiana Uncovered, January 27, 2017. "Lafayette citizens meet over concerns about alleged water well contamination - While city council members are MIA"

Dr. Waldon's slide presentation is separately available through SlideShare.net

The current LUS drinking water quality summary report is available for download at   http://lus.org/index.php/water/water-quality

Louisiana Could Assume Cleanup Liability from the Railroad Corporation

BOMBSHELL!!! Last night (April 28, 2016) following the Community Working Group meeting I learned from one-on-one discussion with Dr. Shawn Wilson, Secretary of Louisiana DOTD, that if the railroad is a willing seller of their abandoned rail yard then the current owner must clean it up or pay the state of Louisiana for the cleanup. HOWEVER, if the State expropriates the property, all cost of cleanup can fall to the taxpayer. This could relieve the responsible party of hundreds of millions in liability, and move it onto the public. A DOTD staff person confirmed this, and told me the state has already taken other contaminated property that is in I-49 Connector the right-of-way.

Now, if I were in the shoes of the railroad corporation or any of the other responsible parties who have cleanup liability, what would I do? It would certainly be in my self interest to just let the State of Louisiana take my land, pay me the estimated "fair market value," and enjoy total relief from all responsibility to clean up my own property and the property of property of my neighbors contaminated by migration of the waste.

  --Mike Waldon

This post is based on an earlier Facebook post available at
 https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10204988937756624&set=a.1950146486814.85718.1637181971&type=3&theater