EPA holding hearing on Amphenol clean up plan Thursday

After years of slow progress, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is asking for input on its final site remediation plan for the Amphenol/Franklin Power Products site.

The agency will hold a public meeting on the plan at 6 p.m. Thursday at Franklin City Hall. EPA officials will hold a question-and-answer session for the first hour of the meeting, with the formal public hearing to follow at 7 p.m.

The statement of basis plan was released in mid-May but could change based on public comments submitted during the 45-day public comment period, which ends July 1. The plan is outlined in a 75-page document online at the EPA’s Amphenol page and in a YouTube video posted on the EPA Regions channel.

Site history

The 15-acre site is located on the northeast side of Franklin, approximately one-mile northeast of downtown. The site boundaries are Hurricane Road, Hamilton Street, an abandoned rail line, and the former Farm Bureau Co-Op facility and former Arvin Industries.

The contamination accumulated over 22 years, when Bendix operated at the site from 1961 to 1983. During that period, waste acid, cyanide, and wastewaters from plating operations drained into a sanitary sewer manhole, which discharged into the city’s sanitary sewer system. In addition, spills on-site migrated to the soil beneath the building, according to the EPA’s history of the site.

Though the property owner built a wastewater pretreatment system to treat the plating room wastewater, the treated wastewater still contained volatile organic compounds (VOC). Those continued to be discharged to a sanitary manhole south of the facility, the EPA says.

The contamination was first known to be an issue in 1984, after Bendix was purchased by Franklin Power Products, however no action was taken to clean it up at the time.

Three cleanup orders have been initiated at the site since 1990, with the first resulting in a pump and treat system that is still in place at the site. During the 1998 order, the system was enhanced and biennial monitoring was put in place.

In 2018, after local advocacy organization If It Was Your Child called for further investigation at the site, the current order was put into place.

If It Was Your Child co-founder Kari Rhinehart and others were and still are concerned that chemicals released by the site could be related to the high amount of local pediatric cancer cases. The main contaminants at the site, trichloroethylene, or TCE, and tetrachloroethylene, or PCE, are carcinogens. However, the Indiana Department of Health has not found a specific link between the cancer cases and the site.

The current order has resulted in further investigation at the site, testing of groundwater and air at the site and in nearby homes. Vapor mitigation systems were installed in homes that tested over screening levels, sanitary sewers that were impacted by the contamination were replaced or relined to seal out contaminants, sewer laterals and/or plumbing systems were also replaced in impacted homes.

Next steps

The EPA is now asking for public comments on its statement of basis plan, which includes several final steps to clean up the property and ensure long-term stewardship of the land.

The plan includes treating contaminated soil in a multi-layer approach using techniques such as In-Situ Chemical Oxidation (ISCO) and In-Situ Chemical Reduction (ISCR) with Permeable Reactive Barriers (PRB) and/or bioremediation. In layman’s terms, these processes are designed to inject reactive chemicals into the ground to break down the contaminants.

The EPA would also monitor both processes to ensure groundwater cleanup goals are reached. The processes outlined in the plan would be completed multiple times to remove the contamination if necessary, EPA officials say.

In the short term, these goals will help the EPA get the contaminants below levels that make vapor intrusion possible. In the long-term, the goal is to eliminate the contamination to safe drinking water levels, EPA officials say.

The city of Franklin’s environmental consultant, Casey McFall, senior scientist with EnviroForensics, said the plan proposes appropriate techniques to reduce contamination.

“This method has been proven to reduce contaminant mass in the subsurface at other chlorinated solvent release sites and if implemented effectively, is very likely to reduce remaining groundwater contaminants in the Amphenol matter,” McFall said. “EnviroForensics and the City are currently reviewing the details of EPA’s proposed remedy to determine the likely effectiveness of the proposed plan.”

Rhinehart says the plan the EPA has submitted will address the contamination at the site, but she believes there has not been enough investigation into contamination offsite. She is working with Mundell and Associates, an Indianapolis environmental consulting group, to formulate a response to the plan.

Last year, Mundell and If It Was Your Child released a study that suggested the plume of contamination could be much larger. The EPA and city officials disagreed with the study.

Rhinehart is also planning to file a petition to extend the public comment period because she doesn’t believe there is wide enough publication of the comment period, she said.

All residents who are interested in making sure the contamination is fully addressed should be advocating for additional monitoring outside the current study area, Rhinehart said. For the EPA to change course, residents need to speak up, she said.

“When you have a community and the city leaders not pushing them any further, they won’t go any further,” Rhinehart said. “All they need to walk away from Franklin is for people to be quiet.”

How to participate

The public can submit comments several ways:

  • By attending the meeting at 6 p.m. Thursday at Franklin City Hall
  • Via web, at https://bit.ly/3kOUikw
  • Via email to [email protected]
  • Via confidential voicemail at 312-919-4621
  • Via mail to Kirstin Safakas at U.S. EPA Region 5 External Communications Office 77 W. Jackson Blvd., EC-19J Chicago, IL 60604-3590.