Hazardous sites in our area

Officials in Glascock County are thinking of trying to get the county landfill, which is contaminated with mercury and dichloroethene, on the state's Hazardous Sites Index to help pay for its cleanup costs, the Jefferson News and Farmer reports. So what other places in this area are on the HSI? Here's a list from the state's Web site. You can see the complete list, organized by county, as a PDF file here, and you can use the "site numbers" on that list to go here to look up details about the pollution at each location and what's being done about it.

Warren County:

• One site, Martin Marietta:
  "This site has a known release of trichloroethene in groundwater at levels exceeding the reportable quantity. This release has resulted in suspected human exposure. Other substances in groundwater: toluene; dichloroethylene, N.O.S.; naphthalene; carbon disulfide; vinyl chloride; 1,1-dichloroethene."

McDuffie County:

• The Hoover wood plant
• United Technologies Automotive
• Williams-Mesena Road Landfill
• Martin Marietta Aggregates (same plant as in Warren Co.)

Washington County:

• Washington County Landfill-Kaolin Road
• Washington Manufacturing Co.

Wilkes County:

• Wilkes County-County Road 40 Municipal Solid Waste Landfill

Jefferson County:

• Forstmann & Co. Inc.
• Jefferson County Landfill on U.S. 1/Avera Road
• Oil Processing Corp.
• ThermoKing Corp., where Jefferson County officials just had a mock disaster drill involving a simulated suphuric acid spill, the News and Farmer reports
• Vantran Electric - site inspection ongoing as to whether this should be a federal Superfund site, according to the EPA's Web site.

And Glascock and Hancock counties currently have no sites on the list. And none of the counties listed above have any sites that are actually in the federal Superfund program right now, according to the EPA.

As for what's doing at the Glascock landfill, dichloroethene can harm the liver, kidney, lungs and central nervous system. It also may cause cancer. Mercury can harm the human nervous system.