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Concrete turned to mush at plant threatening Bay Pines

Staff photo by MICHAEL SPOONEYBARGER

State records show environmental agencies had enough information to "clearly indicate" industrial pollution posed a public health threat near a former APF Industries plant.

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By MARK  DOUGLAS | News Channel 8

Published: October 8, 2009

Updated: 10/08/2009 07:23 pm

An accident waiting to happen. A hazard to the public.

Those are the words Becky Sharp used when she called Pinellas sheriff's deputies to report what she had found at an old industrial plant: Open containers of acids, cyanide and other poisons so powerful they turned concrete to mush and burned her feet.

Sharp, a private environmental inspector, feared the chemicals would catch fire or explode.

The date was Feb. 3, 1992.

Seventeen years later, people living nearby in Bay Pines Estates are hearing about it for the first time. They're learning that the fallout from that neglect may threaten them today.

Teams of workers from the Pinellas County Health Department have placed hangers on doors in a neighborhood west of the former APF Industries plant, at 4800 95th St. N. The health department is seeking permission to test their irrigation wells.

Little was ever done to clean up the site beside some first steps taken by the federal government. But there has been correspondence about the danger among the health department, the state Department of Environmental Protection, the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the sheriff's office.

The only ones kept out of the loop were those who must live with any effects of the pollution.

It was official silence like this that spurred state Sen. Charlie Justice to sponsor legislation requiring notification of residents nearby when industrial pollution is found.

Justice, a St. Petersburg Democrat, was reacting to concerns raised by people living near the now-vacant Raytheon Co. defense plant. They never knew about a plume of groundwater pollution there until it was reported in March 2008 by News Channel 8.

"People are upset that it happened, but they're more upset that they didn't know about it," Justice said.

When the Department of Environmental Protection came under fire in the Raytheon case, district director Deborah Getzoff said many people don't want to know whether pollution is near, only if it is on their property.

That's not true with at least one of the people living near the APF Industries site.

"I can't imagine why they wouldn't want to know if their families are at risk," said Phil Greene, who said he bought his house 18 years ago on 51st Avenue in Bay Pines Estates, two blocks from the pollution site. "I think it's something anyone would want to know."

Justice's bill failed in the Legislature earlier this year. It got no support from the Department of Environmental Protection, he said. He plans to introduce it again when lawmakers convene in January.

Meantime, door-to-door surveys and testing are finally planned for the APF site. The state already knows groundwater on the plant site contains a hazardous stew of vinyl chloride, trichloroethylene (TCE), tetrachloroethylene, arsenic, lead and cadmium.

The question is whether it has spread.

"If they received a door hanger from us, we'd like them to call our office and give their consent to sample the well," said Lisa Frazier, the health worker who led the well surveillance teams.

Those teams delivered 400 door hangers to 300 parcels of property and logged 50 private irrigation wells in the target area, health department spokeswoman Maggie Hall said.

Hall said her agency will refer 15 of the wells to the DEP for contamination testing.

The health workers are performing the well surveys under a contract with the state agency. Even now, they do not alert homeowners about the underlying reason for the visits.

"It's not really up to us to say why they're testing," Hall said.

If residents have any questions, the health department refers them to DEP.

Records on file at DEP indicate APF did metal-plating work on airplane parts beginning in 1964 and went bankrupt in 1990 after saturating the soil with hazardous chemicals. Some chemicals are found in concentrations as much as 1,400 times the level at which the state targets an area for cleanup.

According to federal records, the Pinellas sheriff's office's Environmental Crimes Division initially notified the EPA in 1992, saying the site "posed a threat to the community."

The EPA initiated a $1.7 million cleanup to remove some of the contaminated soil and any obvious sources of hazardous chemicals at the site.

EPA records show the federal agency determined "the release or threat of release of hazardous substances at the site may present an imminent and substantial endangerment to the public health or welfare or the environment."

There is no indication the sheriff's office or EPA alerted Greene or his neighbors.

When the state DEP took over the problem from the EPA in 1995, no one warned neighbors, either, even though DEP administrators were telling each other the pollution still posed a health risk.

In 1996, a local DEP official wrote to his boss that "sufficient data exist which clearly indicate that contamination from the site is threatening public health and the environment."

Ownership of the APF property has changed twice since in the past 14 years.

In December 1995, county and state records indicate, the Investment 195 Trust from Mission Viejo, Calif., purchased the land out of foreclosure for $1,000. In October 2006, the current owners, known as 4800 LLC, bought the property for $500,000, according to records from the Pinellas County Property Appraiser's Office.

Since then, DEP has been losing patience with the lack of progress in assessing the pollution and cleaning it up. Last year, DEP filed a violation notice to force 4800 LLC, managed by Darrin and Collette Horst, to take action or face civil penalties up to $10,000 a day.

Darrin Horst referred a reporter's questions to his Tampa attorney, Ron Noble, who has declined to discuss the problem. Noble did say the Horsts are not personally liable for any pollution at the APF site.

On Aug. 15, 2008, one day after DEP filed its violation notice, the agency's William Kutash requested funding for a well survey from his supervisors, noting "both soils and groundwater are heavily contaminated, and the groundwater plume is off-property."

Kutash, district program administrator for DEP's Division of Waste Management, wanted a count of private irrigation wells within a quarter-mile of the APF site and public water supply wells within a half-mile. He called the request a high priority, seeking tests for TCE, vinyl chloride, arsenic, lead, cyanide and other chemicals.

Fourteen months passed before the Department of Health began well surveys.

Said Pamala Vazquez, a spokeswoman for the DEP, "It has taken some time to negotiate the additional work with DOH, and to design a meaningful scope of work to ensure that this pilot project becomes a viable process that can be used as needed throughout the state."

The decision to test the wells arose, in part, out of the state's investigation of the Raytheon defense plant in St. Petersburg, said Vazquez, with DEP's southwest district. The Raytheon pollution is the subject of a federal class-action lawsuit.

Vazquez said the health department didn't notify neighbors of the APF contamination because state law does not require it. The agency did inform another land owner in the industrial park where the former APF Industries plant is located. The contamination, according to DEP, had spread beneath his property.

Records suggest the plume of contamination is migrating toward the east and south in the general direction of the Harbor Lights mobile home park.

So far, the only word Harbor Lights property owner Dave Travis has received about the pollution came from a reporter.

"I haven't heard from anybody at the state on that," Travis said. "It's definitely something that we'd like to know."

Sen. Justice said he understands their concerns. He is looking for signs that DEP cares, too.

The agency raised concerns about his notification bill that resulted in a watered-down proposal, limiting notice to those living just 500 feet from a contaminated site. That's about how far Greene lives from the former APF Industries property.

The DEP negotiations took so long, Justice said, he couldn't build support for the bill.

"I wouldn't say they lobbied against it. They certainly were not supportive," Justice said.

"There were some stumbling blocks with them, quite frankly."

Broader notification, Justice said, is likely to make the wheels of government turn faster. He plans to reintroduce his bill for the legislative session that convenes in January.

"I think if the community had known about it and the law had been in place, we would have had more public pressure on cleaning it up faster, and maybe you wouldn't have had migrating plumes."

Reporter Mark Douglas can be reached at (727) 709-2753.

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