Drinking water poisoned near sewage disposal site

Folks in Pelion complained bitterly 21 years ago about human waste and grease that would be dumped on fields in their community.

But state regulators approved plans for a sewage disposal site anyway — publicly assuring residents the waste wouldn’t stink up the countryside or hurt the environment.

Now, the same agency that approved the sewage dump site is scrambling to stop dangerously high levels of toxic pollutants from spreading in groundwater.

Records show that nitrates float in the groundwater beneath the C.E. Taylor sewage disposal grounds. Nitrate levels have increased steadily for much of this decade.

And just this year, unsafe levels of the contaminant were discovered in private wells that serve four nearby homes. Excessive levels of nitrates can kill infants who drink baby formula made with contaminated water.

The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control is so concerned that it considers cleansing the pollution “a high priority’’ since private drinking water wells are nearby, records show. DHEC staffers met Friday with C.E. Taylor representatives to discuss the problem.

Groundwater contamination is a sore spot for many Pelion residents, who say the state never should have approved the C.E. Taylor site in the first place.

Many oppose a new state permit for the Taylor operation to keep discharging waste. Continuing the discharges doesn’t make sense, particularly since they were told the operation would last for only 20 years, critics say.

“Do I think it should shut down? Yes,’’ said Pelion’s Sandra Walker, who was among 200 people who attended a February 1989 hearing to protest the first sewage disposal plan. “People have been very tolerant.’’

Some voiced their reservations at two meetings DHEC held in the past two months with residents. They have long been upset about odors, but the threat of drinking water pollution is another matter.

“People have been concerned about the smell … and now that people are having water problems, that’s a very serious concern,” Walker said.

C.E. Taylor representatives say they’ve done their best to run a clean operation near Pelion, a crossroads community about 30 minutes southwest of Columbia.

They say DHEC has given the company poor direction on certain disposal practices. But they also say farms in southern Lexington County are more likely sources of groundwater pollution than their own operation.

“I think its coming from another source,’’ said Joe Ben Weeks, a former Clemson University extension agent and fertilizer expert who has worked for Taylor as a consultant. “I think they got falsely accused of causing the problem.’’

Still, company officials signed an agreement with DHEC two years ago to study the extent of the contamination beneath the Taylor land — and clean up pollution that it found. The June 2008 written agreement says applying solid sewage waste to the land likely caused the groundwater contamination at the site.

Walker and other critics of the Taylor operation say they’re glad DHEC is pushing for a cleanup, but some question whether the groundwater pollution would exist today if department regulators had simply turned down Taylor’s permit request in 1989.

They want to know if the nitrate contamination could affect their health or the health of their children and grandchildren.

“We were worried about it back then and were told, ‘Oh, it’s not going to be a problem,’” said Peggy Wise, who attended the 1989 meeting and learned this year that her well contains unsafe levels of nitrates.

DHEC did not make agency officials familiar with the issue available for an interview last week, nor did the agency respond to written questions from The State newspaper. Agency officials said they would discuss the matter this week.

Babies at Risk

The Pelion contamination is considered serious because nitrates exceed safe drinking water standards in two wells serving four families. DHEC also has identified a “cluster” of wells with above-normal levels of nitrates east of the Taylor property, records show.

Nitrates that contaminate wells at high levels can cause “blue baby syndrome,” a deadly condition in infants younger than 6 months old. The condition interferes with the blood’s ability to absorb oxygen. The disease is noticeable because it sometimes can give the child a bluish tint.

“Infants below the age of six months who drink water containing nitrate in excess of the (federal standard) could become seriously ill and, if untreated, may die,’’ a flier in DHEC’s file says.

At elevated levels, nitrates also can cause problems in some adults. Short-term exposure at high levels can cause nausea, diarrhea, dizziness, vomiting and breathing problems.

Exposure generally should be avoided at levels exceeding 10 parts per million, federal authorities say. Some nitrate levels found in the disposal site’s groundwater in Pelion are at least five times that amount, records show.

While nitrates sometimes are found naturally in groundwater, nitrate pollution is a particular concern in a place like Pelion. The area’s sandy soils make it easier for contaminated water to soak into the ground.  Once in groundwater, nitrates can spread rapidly.

Nitrate contamination often is associated with farms and human sewage. Hog farms that apply wastewater to the land in eastern North Carolina have been linked to nitrate contamination in groundwater.

Pelion’s Judy and David Bennett found out about nitrates last summer.

When they opened the mail one day in June, the former New York state residents learned that nitrates were polluting their well at levels “substantially above” the federal safe drinking water standard. Those levels, more than 40 parts per million, are four times the safe drinking water standard and are among the highest found so far by DHEC in a private well near the site.

DHEC’s letter urged precautions against letting infants or the elderly drink the water, since they are most likely to get sick from nitrates. While the Bennetts don’t have a baby — they have a 12-year-old son — they must watch David Bennett’s elderly mother, who is in failing health. She lives with them in their double-wide mobile home off S.C. 302.

The Bennetts say living near the disposal site has exposed them to powerful odors that sometimes force the family indoors. But the real concern is groundwater pollution. DHEC officials have told the family that groundwater flows from the Taylor sewage disposal grounds toward their home on Northcutt Road, they said.

“Odor will come and go, but the water is a constant thing that’s always going to be there,” David Bennett said from the living room of his home last week. “It’s something that you need to live. You have to have it to cook with, you have to have it to bathe with, and you have to have it to wash your dishes and clothes.’’

Since the DHEC letter came in, the Bennett family has used bottled water for drinking, cooking meals and brushing teeth. The only way to fix the problem is to install a filter that could cost as much as $6,000. But they said they can’t afford that. Judy Bennett works at a Columbia grocery store, while David Bennett works for a Lexington County school district.

In a Nov. 3 memo, DHEC officials said they plan to hire a contractor to install filters in the homes at state expense. The agency also said it will continue discussions with Taylor about its operations and the site’s impact on groundwater. The memo did not say how much DHEC was willing to spend.

The agency’s action would suit the Bennetts.

A big reason they settled in Pelion was the rural, unspoiled nature of the land. They live in a forest of scrubby oaks and pines, down a sparsely populated dirt road. Their property is just on the other side of the woods from the Taylor disposal area.

Although the Bennetts have been satisfied with DHEC’s response to the water pollution, they say it has been frustrating and frightening to deal with polluted drinking water. Tests showed the water was fine when they moved in more than a decade ago, they said.

“We are now in the highest danger zone” for polluted water, Judy Bennett said.

Taylor, DHEC at odds

The 287-acre Taylor disposal grounds are off S.C. 302 just outside the town limits of Pelion.

Some of the disposal areas are rolling fields. Others are little more than flat land that turns muddy during heavy rains, according to DHEC records. The site is ringed by pockets of mobile homes and houses, and is near the local air strip.

Unlike municipal wastewater treatment plants that discharge treated waste into rivers, the Taylor operation discharges human waste directly on the land. The waste is supposed to be treated to minimize its impacts on the environment.

The sewage comes from septic tanks and portable toilets. The site also takes grease from restaurants. Over the years, the waste has been sprayed on fields and injected into the sandy soil, DHEC records show.

Applying treated sewage to land is considered a sound practice if done properly. But if too much waste is applied, it can overload the land with pollutants contained in the waste.

In Taylor’s case, the company has been at odds with DHEC in recent years about its land application practices. In a 2008 letter to Taylor, DHEC questioned whether the company had applied sewage in a way to “minimize the transfer of nitrate(s) through the root zone to the groundwater,” records show.

The department also has been pushing Taylor to keep crops on the land, a practice that is supposed to help absorb nitrates and other toxic material in sewage. But as recently as last month, that was not the case, according to an e-mail written by DHEC’s Paul Wise, of the agency’s enforcement section.

“There still is no cover crop on at least 50 percent of the site, and weeds have taken over in many areas,” the Oct. 11 e-mail said. “He is applying waste to the areas with absolutely no cover crop.”

Taylor officials aren’t happy with DHEC, and records show they have threatened to sue the department. One company executive said DHEC gave poor guidance that caused the business to remove cover crops, according to notes of a meeting between DHEC and Taylor representatives.

“Mr. Taylor was pounding on the fact that DHEC was partly responsible for this problem — because the district (office) said he could plow in the cover crop,” the meeting notes say.

In an attempt to control odors that were causing community complaints, DHEC in 1999 told Taylor to churn up the soil after spreading waste material on the land, records show.

Taylor did so, but within three years of DHEC’s order, nitrate levels began to increase steadily at the disposal site, according to the June 2008 written agreement with Taylor. The pollution was so pronounced that by 2005 DHEC had put the Taylor disposal grounds on its groundwater contamination inventory, a list of sites across the state with tainted water.

Weeks, Taylor’s consultant, said he does not believe the amount of wastewater put on the land could cause the nitrate levels now being found in groundwater.

“They were not putting enough stuff out there to cause any real contamination in the groundwater,” Weeks said.

Records show that, at one point, Taylor was permitted to discharge as much as 50,000 gallons per acre, per year, of septic waste, grease and sludge at the 287-acre site.

The company scaled that back late in 2009, records show. The amount dropped to about 12,000 gallons per acre, per year.

Internal discord at DHEC

Despite DHEC’s recent push against Taylor, records reviewed under the state’s Freedom of Information Act show that some agency staffers noted concerns years ago about the operation.

Department staff members found nitrate levels above the safe drinking water standard in one test well in 1990, not long after the site opened. They later dismissed the contamination as naturally occurring after reviewing a consultant’s report.

In 2004, DHEC groundwater regulator Janice Cooke said pollution in four monitoring wells was a violation of state environmental rules and the Taylor company should stop applying waste near the wells, records show.

Then, in 2007, Cooke said she was sending the matter to the department’s enforcement section.

“Bluntly, the land can’t take any more,” she said in a Sept. 17, 2007, e-mail. The e-mail asked how DHEC should go about revoking Taylor’s permit.

A day after Cooke’s e-mail, DHEC enforcement agent Robin Foy asked, “Why did we let this go on for so long?’’ according to an e-mail he sent groundwater section manager Tom Knight.

The e-mail asked why “we have never been advised” to issue a notice of violation and why DHEC was pursuing an agreement with Taylor, rather than enforcement action. Enforcement actions often result in fines.

Knight responded that, while it is “evident that the problem is getting worse,” he could not tell whether Taylor had violated its permit.

“At the moment, we are proceeding as we would with any such problem: find out the cause and try to correct it,” Knight said in a Sept. 18, 2007, e-mail response to Foy.

Less than a year later, DHEC and Taylor signed the agreement in which the company pledged to study the pollution and clean up any that it finds. The agreement contained no fine.

The next question is whether DHEC issues the company a permit to continue its operation.