Sierra Club Files Notice of Intent to Sue US Department of Energy in Kansas City

Suit To Allege Chronic PCB Permit Violations, Ongoing Wastewater Spills

Kansas City – The Sierra Club announced today that it has filed its intent to sue the US Department of Energy (USDOE) and its federal contractor Honeywell for repeatedly violating pollution permits at its plant in Kansas City. The environmental organization is alleging continuing discharges of dangerous levels of toxic PCBs and cites 14 unauthorized spills or discharges of contaminants including industrial wastewater and caustics over the last five-year period. Lawyers for the Sierra Club hand-delivered the required notice letter to plant officials on Monday, notifying the facility of its intent to sue in sixty days under the provisions of the federal Clean Water Act.

“What’s going on here is the continuing excessive discharge of dangerous toxics from a federal facility into streams that are being utilized by an at-risk minority community,” said Ken Midkiff, director of the Sierra Club’s Clean Water Campaign. “This is a clear case of the failure of the federal government to police itself, and the failure of our state government to protect some of its most vulnerable citizens.“

The federal plant on Bannister Road, at the intersection of Indian Creek and the Blue River, began operations in 1942 as a wartime aircraft engine manufacturing plant. In recent decades the complex has been operated by Bendix-Allied Signal and now Honeywell, manufacturing and procuring non-nuclear components for nuclear weapons under contract to USDOE. The complex has been plagued by environmental problems for over thirty years.

Last September, the Sierra Club released a summary of their audits of federal and state pollution files regarding the plant, documenting repeated chemical spills of hazardous substances including contaminated cooling tower water, Hexavalent chromium, volatile organic compounds, chlorinated hydrocarbons, phenols, propylene glycol, and Perchloroethylene. The agency records audits also revealed soil contamination, and groundwater polluted by heavy metals, PCBs, solvents and petrochemicals that have leached into the Blue River.

Even more disturbing according to Sierra Club officials was that the Missouri Department of Natural Resources had both the Blue River and Indian Creek designated as Whole Body Contact Recreation Waters – streams purported to support swimming, wading and fishing.

“Missouri’s state resource agency was literally inviting the public to swim and fish in a toxic soup of carcinogens,” said Scott Dye, director of the Sierra Club’s Water Sentinels program.

The group asked state and federal officials to immediately post the streams with warning signs to alert the public to potential risks. When health and environmental regulators refused, the Sierra Club posted all of the two streams’ public access points near the federal complex, and have kept them posted since last September.

“Frankly, we were appalled at our public officials’ callous disregard in addressing an obvious and ongoing threat to public health,” said Dye. “These officials were well aware of the threat and chose to do nothing.”

Dye was referring to a health risk assessment report completed in July 2001 by consultants working for federal contractor Honeywell that described health hazards associated with PCBs leaching from the plant. The report found that plant construction workers having skin contact with sediments or surface water would be exposed to PCB hazards up to 66 times what the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) considers safe. Adults and children recreating in Indian Creek, and eating contaminated fish, or having skin contact with contaminated sediments or surface water, would be exposed to PCB hazards up to 7 times what USEPA considers safe exposure. For children, just touching the contaminated water carried a PCB hazard quotient more than 2 ½ times the USEPA’s safety standard.

According to the USEPA, PCBs are a known carcinogen and endocrine disruptor and can also cause adverse effects on the immune system, reproductive system and nervous system as well as other health impacts. PCBs do not readily break down in the environment and may remain there for very long periods of time, binding to organic particles, stream bottom sediments and soil, and bio-accumulating in fish and aquatic organisms.

The Sierra Club’s suit will seek to compel the Department of Energy to immediately halt the discharge of PCBs and other toxics leaching from the plant.

The Sierra Club is represented by Kansas City attorney Charlie Speer, and by the New York law firm of Kennedy & Madonna.

“If a foreign government or terrorist organization did to an American community what the Department of Energy has done to the Bannister Road neighborhood our nation would consider it an act of war,” said attorney Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “The Department of Energy has deprived some of the poorest and most vulnerable Americans of their fundamental right to clean air and water and a safe environment.“