Lodi Council told of success in PCE/TCE cleanup

The City of Lodi believes they have met state standards for mitigation of the PCE/TCE central plume contamination with soil vapor and groundwater extractions.

During Wednesday’s city council meeting, Lodi City Manager Steve Schwabauer said the city is preparing a closure report for the California Regional Water Quality Control Board. If accepted, the city would be able to close the central plume located in an alley south of Pine Street between Church and Pleasant streets. The plume leaks into local groundwater.

“We believe the plume is closable and that we have extracted as much of the contaminants to a point that we have reached a point of diminished returns,” Schwabauer said.

A vapor system pulls the chemicals through the ground and into treatment systems. The vapor is then run through three carbon filters to remove the PCE/TCE before it is discharged into the air.

A groundwater extraction system pulls groundwater from 100 feet below ground level and runs it through carbon filters. The city then discharges the filtered water into the sewer.

“To date, public works crews have removed 20,000 pounds of PCE from the central plume,” he said.

Efforts to remove PCE and related contaminants from the central plume have been ongoing since 2003.

Perchloroethylene, or Tetrachloroethylene, more commonly known as PCE/TCE, is a hazardous organic compound that can be a colorless liquid or vapor commonly used for cleaning. It is slightly denser than water and eventually turns into TCE.

The contamination was first discovered in 1989 while crews were pumping water into a Locust Street tank. The Public Works Department then shut down the wells in downtown.

The State Department of Toxic Substances Control began testing the soil and measuring toxins in an area ranging from Turner Road to Kettleman Lane, just west of Highway 99 and east of Ham Lane.

The chemicals were believed to have leaked into the city’s groundwater from companies such as dry-cleaners and metal shops.

The City of Lodi filed a suit in 2000 against 15 Lodi businesses to force their insurance companies to clean up sites contaminated with TCE and PCE.

Two companies named in the suit included Guild Dry Cleaners, located at 17 S. Church St., and Busy Bee Laundry and Cleaning, located at 110 E. Elm St. in the city’s Central Business District. The Lodi News-Sentinel was also named in the suit.

After nine years of legal battles and attorney’s fees that reached nearly $30 million, the city was awarded $6.3 million in a settlement from the Regional Water Quality Control Board. The city then abandoned its lawsuit and began the pollution cleanup itself.

During that time, Busy Bee Laundry also chose to clean the pollution in a plume along East Elm Street — dubbed by the city as the Busy Bee plume — on its own.

The company hired an outside contractor to begin monitoring the groundwater in 2003. Two remediation systems, including 29 soil vapor extraction wells and 38 groundwater extraction wells, were installed and began operating on the property in 2008.

By 2012, the Regional Water Quality Control Board determined that Busy Bee Laundry could discontinue the extractions because it had cleaned the plume as much as it possibly could.

Busy Bee spent $600,000 to clean the pollution and removed 110 pounds of PCE/TCE, according to NewsSentinel archives.

The city was responsible for four other plumes, referred to as the central, northern, southern and western plumes.

The western plume contains just PCE and is located under the neighborhood at the southwestern corner of Lodi Avenue and Hutchins Street.

The southern plume, which contains both PCE and TCE, is located at Kettleman Lane and Sacramento Street, and extends to Sycamore Street, according to city documents.

The northern plume, located between Elm Street and Turner Road, contains just TCE, according to city documents.

“If the California Regional Water Quality Control Board allows us to close up the central plume, we will be closing the main source of contamination but we still will have, for our lifetime, a relatively inexpensive low-flow pump at the toe of the plume,” Schwabauer said.

During the council meeting, Schwabauer said that after 16 years of soil vapor extraction and groundwater extraction, it is astounding that the city is nearly done clearing the contaminates from the main source site.

“Most of the experts at the time (of the PCE/TCE) discovery said we would never clean it up, and we would never get out of it, and that it would be impossible to pay for,” Schwabauer said.