PCB removal to continue in Rome for foreseeable future

It is common for contaminants and pollutants to find their way into residential waterways. The most common of these in Rome’s rivers are dirt and fertilizers, according to Eric Lindberg, Rome-Floyd environmental director.

Others common contaminants include trash, stormwater runoff carrying oils, cigarette butts and other harmful materials and animal waste contaminants in smaller feeding streams. Although the majority of the contaminants are relatively common in residential waterways, the Coosa River basin has had an additional challenge in the form of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.

What is a PCB?

Polychlorinated biphenyls are oil-based chemical compounds that were used by General Electric as an insulator and coolant in transformers produced at GE plants, including the one in Rome.

Click to see more about PCB's on Berry College's War for Water web page.

Since the local plant’s doors opened in 1953 until the late 1970s, the GE plant used PCBs in the production of transformers, according to Richard Lester, GE’s Rome facilities and team leader.

Some believed that PCBs would be an excellent protection against termite infestation in the home. However, while many employees carried PCBs home, it was not part of regular plant practice.

The use of PCBs became heavily regulated in 1979, after they were found to share common traits with other toxic chemical compounds. By then, however, the contaminated area in Rome encompassed much of the GE site and other nearby properties.

GE employees who worked directly with the PCBs were not, surprisingly, the most highly contaminated. Lindberg, who has studied the effects of PCBs on the environment for more than a decade, said that while there are no immediate health problems caused by exposure, studies have shown that PCBs are a precursor to various cancers and can cause lower birth weights.

However, the presence and effects of PCBs are even greater in animals, he said.

PCBs are a neurotoxin when consumed by animals, destroying brain cells and remaining in the body even after death, according to Christine Clolinger, a senior environmental science major at Berry College and student carbon neutrality manager of environmental compliance and sustainability at Berry.

“PCBs are now likely present in every animal and human in the world,” Lindberg said.

Relic of the past

The General Electric plant shut down production in 1997 because of the company’s inability to compete in the medium-sized transformer market, Lester said.

“GE never intended to pack up and leave,” he said, it was simply a matter of losing money on the product.

With a crew of 15 employees, down from roughly 1,800 during production, the facility is now operating as a large water treatment facility for groundwater and storm water. The parts of the plant that aren’t used as part of the water treatment facilities are used for little other than storage.

“The few things stored in the warehouses will be removed soon and then the surrounding buildings will be completely empty,” said Lester.

Dedicated to treating water

At the former factory, GE now processes both stormwater runoff and ground water. Lester explained that in 1990, the plant began to treat rainwater that fell on the site by collecting the water found in storm drains and ditches and running it through a variety of filters and chemicals to separate the PCB material from the water before it is released back into community streams.

Storm water drainage must be treated because the plant’s storm drainage system outputs into Horseleg Creek. Smaller streams like Horseleg eventually flow into the Coosa River system, the primary source of Rome’s drinking water, but this is downstream from any intake by the city. Untreated stormwater runoff can bring the chemicals and pollutants that are on the ground or on the roadways into the nearest river, Lester said.

Groundwater underneath the plant must also be treated and sent to Rome’s sewage treatment facility, even though the GE-treated groundwater is cleaner than the water that comes out of Rome’s sewage treatment plant, according to Lester. He explained that this is because the plant has stricter regulations that it must meet, regulations set by the Georgia Environmental Protection Division.

GE began treating groundwater at the Rome plant in 2001. In treating the water, PCB sludge is separated and stored in a holding tank. This sludge is dewatered periodically and then shipped to the nearest chemical waste landfill, in Emelle, Alabama whenever necessary.

What else has GE done?

To date, GE has taken more than 30,000 soil samples in the Floyd county area to monitor PCB levels. Cleanup has been heavily focused in areas along Little Dry Creek and Tolbert Park, Lester said. A total of 101 houses have been investigated in the area, investigations spurred in a self-reporting system by which concerned homeowners ask to have their property inspected, according to Lester. GE has already treated several residential properties in the Floyd county area.

There are an additional 123 acres around the plant site that GE has already offered to donate to Rome. Lester said this property has been cleaned and meets the Georgia EPA’s requirements for commercial, industrial or recreational use. Lester said that there are still places to investigate and clean up, however, and that this year GE’s cleanup focus has been to treat a storm water drainage ditch that runs behind the Walmart on Shorter Avenue.

What can residents do?

People interested in assisting in river clean up or in participating in the Adopt-a-Stream program can contact the Coosa River Basin Initiative. The organization posts on its website its scheduled river cleanup days. Residents can also contact the Rome-Floyd County River Center to become a part of Adopt-a-Stream, Lindberg said.