A major project to remove decades-old contaminants left behind by a lumber processing plant is ongoing in Westline, Lafayette Township.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency earlier this month announced that the administrative record, a collection of documents relating to the cleanup of the former Day Chemical Co. site located adjacent to the Kinzua Creek, is now available for public review.

“Wood tar had been exposed along the right-descending shoreline of Kinzua Creek,” EPA spokesman Roy Seneca told The Era on Friday. “These changing conditions pose a threat to public health or the environment. The objective of this current removal action is to mitigate the public health and environmental threats associated with direct contact to hazardous substances present in surface and subsurface soil at the site.”

Already, Phase One of the project has been completed and included the removal of about four cubic yards of wood tar from seeps along the right-descending shoreline of Kinzua Creek.  

“The four cubic yards of wood tar is secured and staged on-site pending transport and disposal at an approved disposal facility,” he said. “During Phase One, the right-descending shoreline has been secured with stones to provide temporary stabilization until the Phase Three (creek realignment and shoreline stabilization) can be implemented.”

Meanwhile, Phase Two involves removing surface wood tar seeps from the wetland areas near the Phase One work. The excavated area will be restored with wetland vegetation, Seneca said.

“Phase Two will start once EPA can finalize the off-site transport and disposal requirements,” he said. “Phase Three involves creek realignment and shoreline stabilization to prevent future migration of wood tar into Kinzua Creek. The EPA on-scene-coordinator is completing the erosion and sedimentation plans for this phase in conjunction with EPA’s partners and stakeholders.”

Also with that phase, which is expected to begin in June, the EPA is coordinating with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation to replace the Westline Road bridge, Seneca said.

All of this proposed work is due to the toxic legacy of the Day Chemical Co.

From 1901 to 1952, the business operated on the site and converted lumber into charcoal, methanol and acetic acid. The company placed wood tar material containing phenolic compounds and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons into on-site lagoons and into small canals that allowed material to flow downhill towards the banks of Kinzua Creek.

But a fire and an explosion in 1952 forced the facility’s closure, and the owners left behind the plant’s foundation, demolition debris and a tar-like production waste.

The contaminated site was discovered during a routine inspection of oil operations in the Allegheny National Forest in 1982.

A year later, a cap was put over the main lagoon near the Westline Inn in an effort to reduce erosion, in addition to the removal of 2,000 tons of tar and contaminated soil from the same spot.

The same year, the Westline site was named to the National Priorities List of the nation’s most hazardous waste sites. But by the early 1990s, the EPA determined the residual contaminated soil and wood tar material remaining on-site posed no potential carcinogenic risk.

In 1992, the site was taken off of the National Priorities List.

“At that time, there was still an estimated 4,000 tons of wood tar and material left at the site, however, most of the wood tar remaining on-site was three feet below the surface and was not direct threat to humans,” Seneca said.

Nearly 20 years later, in the fall of 2013, a contractor hired to put in a new driveway at a seasonal residence at the Westline site said tar was found in that area.

A year later, EPA contractors took samples of the on-site wood tar seeps from areas on both sides of the driveway and from the wood tar along the right-descending shoreline of Kinzua Creek.

The EPA examined the site from 2014-16, and officials discovered that volatile organic compounds, most notably Benzene and Ethylbenzene, as well as semivolatile organic compounds, were buried on the site, and the chemicals were seeping to the surface.

Now, the EPA wants to spend at most $600,000 on the project, a majority of which would come from the Regional Removal Allowance.

The project has been in the works for about two years and includes several partners and stakeholders, such as the state Department of Environmental Protection, Pennsylvania Fish and  Boat Commission, PennDOT, McKean County Conservation District, EPA’s Regional Biological Technical Assistance Group, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, landowners and local utilities.