Toxicity tests

An Oroville group concerned about area ground contamination has made new strides in a bid to test soil around the city for cancer-causing dioxin.

The Oroville Dioxin Education Committee (ODEC), whose goal is to “educate and prepare community members, to raise awareness, and to lead the effort to safeguard our community against dioxin,” recently received $3,000 in grants from The Rose Foundation, an Oakland-based organization concerned with environmental health issues.

Dioxin has been linked to human reproductive and developmental problems, damaged immune systems and cancer, but many of the people who live in the area have remained unaware of its presence and danger.

Local pollution has been linked to fires in 1963 and 1987 at the now-closed Koppers wood-treatment plant in the Highway 70 Industrial Park as well as emmissions from the Pacific Oroville Power Inc. (POPI) cogeneration plant, owned by New Jersey-based Covanta, which ceased operations in 2012.

Geologist John Lane, of Chico Environmental Science and Planning, will do the dioxin testing, which he has done in the past for the Butte County District Attorney’s Office investigation into POPI’s operations.

“We’ll be looking for patterns and what is the exposure at sensitive receptors,” he said, “which includes places like schools, places where there is human activity.”

He said dioxin is not water-soluble, which means there is not a lot of concern about direct groundwater contamination.

“However, it does get into body fats and so if it gets into the river it can affect fish and wildlife,” he said.

Lane is working on a plan that will include a total of 30 tests for dioxins in the area to try to establish patterns and gain a better idea of just how contaminated the area is. Dioxin tests cost about $850 each, which means the ongoing project will call for more funding.

Seven samples Lane gathered for the district attorney’s investigation indicated there were at least 40 parts per trillion of dioxin present, which the Department of Toxic Substance Control and the World Health Organization call the “regulation action level”—the level at which actions should be undertaken to protect the public.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded Oroville two grants, totaling $750,000, through the Brownfields Program, which is designed to help communities “prevent, assess, safely clean up, and sustainably reuse brownfields.”

Brownfields are defined as properties where development “may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant.”

Don Rust, Oroville planning and development services director, said he has met with representatives from the Butte Environmental Council—which formed ODEC last year—to talk about the grants, but warned they may not meet ODEC’s needs.

“It can’t go to dioxin testing,” he said. “It goes to brownfield assessment. Basically this is for people to volunteer to help clear their properties so they can be developed.”

Those properties include abandoned commercial and industrial sites from Oro Dam Boulevard south along Fifth Avenue to Georgia Pacific Way. The program provides testing for contaminates such as petroleum and heavy metals, but not dioxin.

Mark Stemen, a Chico State professor and president of the BEC board of directors, offered an analogy comparing the EPA grants with those from the Rose Foundation.

“BEC’s grant allows them to look for the needle in the haystack,” he said. “Oroville’s grant helps them build a new barn for the haystack.”

Still, he said, the two projects are “compatible and complementary,” and that BEC has received letters of support from both the Butte County Public Health Department and Supervisor Bill Connelly.

Lesley Kuykendall, a native of New Zealand who has lived in Oroville with her husband, Tom, since 1980, took over as head of ODEC last year from former BEC member Julia Murphy soon after it was formed.

“Last summer Julia had two or three meetings at the Oroville Library and she had people from some of the different agencies there,” Kuykendall said. “They gave us a summary of what they had discovered with the … testing and said they were looking for local people to take up the work. They had run out of funding.”

Kuykendall has put together information on the dioxin situation to hand out to locals and said people are becoming more interested and asking for more information.

“At this time I can’t tell them too much because we need to do more soil testing.”