TCEQ conducts state funded removal of antimony & lime laced soil in Los Arcos colonia; Anzon non-participant in clean-up

By María Eugenia Guerra

Upon order of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), nearly a thousand cubic yards of lime and antimony-laden soil has been removed from the streets of Colonia Los Arcos in eastern Webb County. The soil, or “product” as antimony slag mixed with dirt is called by the TCEQ and the Environmental Protection Agency, came from the now defunct Anzon antimony smelter which is located on IH- 35 in an area bordered by Manadas Creek as it crosses the Mines Road .

The soil was dumped on the streets of the Hwy. 59 colonia, according to Webb County Judge Louis H. Bruni's pronouncement at a March 14, 2005 Commissioners Court meeting, in a gesture of largesse by the judge himself, trash and dirt hauler Jerry Resendez, and a third party whom the judge said at that meeting “wishes to remain anonymous.”

Bruni told the court he acted on behalf of Bruni Energy, while trucks and heavy equipment from Resendez Enterprises hauled the material and took heavy equipment to Los Arcos to spread the soil. The third party has yet to be named.

While some speculate the judge's intention was to one-up Commissioner Judith Gutierrez -- who as the commissioner for the Los Arcos area had asked the court to provide emergency disaster assistance to Los Arcos for sorely needed road repairs -- the judge's gesture of providing free road material goes on the record books as the largest-ever recorded dumping of hazardous materials in local environmental history. As all of Judge Bruni's many public pronouncements resonate with something memorable, none rings more like prophecy than one in particular at that March 14 meeting. “It's simple to say, ‘Let's declare this a disaster.' A disaster has to meet certain criteria,” the judge said.

The Los Arcos soil dumping ordered by the Judge met the disaster criteria of the TCEQ, prompting a state-funded removal action. No doubt the dumping of Anzon's soil “product” at Los Arcos will hold the dubious distinction as the largest TCEQ haz mat clean-up on record; a record that will likely hold until the TCEQ completes its investigation into the dumping of the soil and Anzon's own stockpile of contaminated “product” so readily visible from IH-35 and so subject, as the material has been for the 70-year life of the antimony smelter, to runoff into Manadas Creek and eventually the Río Grande.

Results of initial sampling taken from the Los Arcos roadways on April 15, tests ordered by Webb County, returned with alarmingly high quantities of antimony in the donated soil. Webb County engineer Tomás Rodriguez forwarded those results to the TCEQ District 16 office in Laredo and to Carlos Rubinstein at the TCEQ's Harlingen office on April 22.

The TCEQ, initially slow on the draw to react to news of the dumping and the complaints of Los Arcos residents about respiratory and skin problems, responded to Rodriguez a month later. By June 5, the TCEQ asked Webb County to participate in a joint sampling of the material. The early June sampling results, which came from two independent labs, mirrored and sometimes exceeded the first sampling made by the county and also identified a large content of lime in the soil.

Webb County employed Drash Engineering/Alamo Analytical Laboratories, and the TCEQ used Severn Trent Labs in Corpus Christi . Rubinstein and other TCEQ staff members assembled the agency's environmental strike force team, put Niton portable x-ray fluoresence monitoring technology on the ground at Los Arcos on June 14, and contracted Eagle Construction & Environmental Services, L.L.P. to begin and execute a plan to remove the contaminated soil on the streets of Los Arcos.

By the time Rubinstein, TCEQ's watermaster for the Río Grande , and other TCEQ staff members met with the residents of Los Arcos at a June 16 meeting at Santa Teresita Mission, he was well prepared to answer questions about the Anzon product that had been dumped on the colonia roads. He told them the TCEQ had identified a two-fold problem with the soil. One had to do with the high levels of lime in the dirt mix as a health hazard and the other had to do with antimony as an environmental hazard.

According to Rubinstein, samples indicated highly alkaline pH levels of 8.7, 8.8, 9.8, 9.9, and 10, relative to the amount of white specked lime in the Anzon product mix. Rubenstein told a meeting of about 100 Los Arcos residents that he believed their eye, skin, and throat irritations had more to do with the lime in the soil than the antimony slag product.

The Los Arcos residents listened to Rubinstein's findings and the TCEQ's plan to remove the hazardous materials from the streets of the colonia.

They also spoke with Israel Reyna of the Texas RioGrande Legal Aid. “The good deed doesn't square with what happened in the end,” he said. “There was a certain amount of negligence in dumping contaminants that endanger lives on the roads of Los Arcos. We will be assisting the residents of Los Arcos with whatever remedies they have. They've taken a great first step getting the state environmental people involved. We are advising the people of the colonia of their rights and what they can expect. We know lines were crossed here, and that someone is responsible. There are consequences for this. Human beings were harmed here. That's a problem that will be resolved sooner than later.”

Rubinstein said that antimony levels as high as 3,500 mg per kilogram had been found in Los Arcos but that the real criteria for examining the potential danger of antimony in the environment was the federal non-waste water application guideline that permits a leachate of 1.15 mg per liter. That compliance criteria is set in the code of federal environmental regulations. Measurement of some of the leachable amounts of antimony found at different sites in Los Arcos were 7.46, 8.92, 5.67, 10.9, and 9.53.

“The leachable values told us that the antimony in this soil could migrate,” Rubinstein said. “That factor, plus the health problems caused by the lime, dictated that the antimony-soil-lime mix needed to be removed from the streets.” Rubinstein added that the ongoing TCEQ investigation would determine how the slag soil got to Los Arcos and why it did not meet federal and state standards. “We will define the responsible parties and we will look at who produced it and made it available,” he said. Rubinstein said samples taken at the massive piles of “product” at the old Anzon smelter site evidenced antimony levels of 989 mg per kilogram and a total leachable value of 4.83 mg per liter, well above the 1.15 mg per liter regulatory standard set by the federal government.

The TCEQ spent 10 days in the area, employing the expertise of strike team members from Corpus Christi , San Antonio , Beaumont , Harlingen , Houston , Austin , Dallas and Fort Worth , Tyler , Waco , Harlingen , and the Laredo office on the streets of Los Arcos. The community water well got a clean bill of health from the TCEQ. At all times for 10 days the TCEQ had at least eight staff members on site.

Eagle Construction's five-man crew wet down the roads of Los Arcos for dust suppression before digging down four inches, scooping the material up, and loading it into trucks for shipment back to the old Anzon antimony smelter.

While the Eagle Construction crew loaded the contaminated soil into dump trucks over several days, Webb County road crews worked to put down caliche where the soil had been removed.

Webb County engineer Rodriguez noted Anzon's conspicuous absence from the cleanup effort. “I turned this same dirt product down several years ago. I wanted a letter from the TNRCC saying there would be no liability in the future if we used it. None was forthcoming,” Rodriguez said. The engineer is no stranger to antimony. He has been studying it in river water over the last decade. “When I was an engineer for the City, I would check after a rain and find that the antimony level was high, that antimony leachate had made its way from Manadas Creek into the river. Because there were no American standards for antimony, I studied the Rhine River which had three antimony plants on it -- one in France, one in Germany , and one in Belgium . The plants had extremely stiff standards and required water to be pre-treated before it was released. I adopted their standard of .003 parts per million for the City of Laredo before the TNRCC had any on the books,” Rodriguez said.

Judge Bruni said through his chief of staff Raul Casso that Anzon had represented the soil product as safe from health and environmental problems. “We have a 50-page fax from Anzon to that effect. We relied on those representations,” Casso said.

Though Bruni had earlier told the Commissioners Court that he and Resendez had donated 200 to 400 yards of dirt (Anzon's “product”), Casso indicated that only 72 cubic yards had been purchased, noting that Resendez and not Bruni Energy Corporation had purchased the soil. Casso also noted, “Bruni Energy Corporation provided no equipment and did not go on anyone's property. Mr. Resendez provided equipment and performed the work. We are confident he meant no affront.”

Though Judge Bruni commented to television reporters that he hoped Anzon had deep pockets because he intended to sue them, he would not comment to LareDOS about a possible suit. Casso said, “The TCEQ sent a demand letter to Anzon as the responsible party. No such demand letter was sent to Louis H. Bruni, nor Bruni Energy Corporation. TCEQ regional director Mr. Carlos Rubinstein told Louis Bruni that he knew that Bruni was not at fault.”

Resendez, who was contracted by Eagle Construction to haul the soil product back to the Anzon site, said, “It was a good intention. The outcome was negative, but it was fortunate that it got taken care of. By the way, it was only 72 yards .”

Rubinstein said that the TCEQ's two-part plan to address the environmental problems at Los Arcos came with a heavy price. “We have the removal of the soil and an investigation into why that material did not exhibit the criteria that would have allowed the antimony and soil product to be able to be land applied, why it exceeded the 1.15 criteria,” he said.

“The preliminary estimate for the cost of Eagle's removal of 950 cubic yards of this soil was $55,400,” Rubinstein said. “We haven't tallied the cost of the members of the strike force team in place for 10 days, including their travel and per diem or the costs of soil sample tests and testing on the confirming samples. There is also the matter of whether Webb County can find cost recovery for its efforts. The TCEQ can seek recovery for actions undertaken by the TCEQ when we conduct state-funded removals.” And certainly there is the cost to the people of Los Arcos.

Carlos Hornedo, a consultant to Anzon who spoke with LareDOS last month, said he had no comment and refused to give LareDOS a phone number to reach representatives of Anzon. An e-mail sent to Anzon in Philadelphia remained unanswered as of press time, as did a call to John Sullivan of Environmental Recycling Technologies in Corpus Christi , the company that represented Anzon Divestitures and the Cookson Group regarding the recycling and beneficial use of antimony slag and other materials that could be recycled from the Anzon site.

Also unanswered as of press time was an open records request made to the City of Laredo concerning the use of the antimony slag product on the Chacon Park walkways on the banks of Chacon Creek.