Plastic chemicals at the Radford Army Ammunition Plant (RAAP) may have washed into the New River in September during Hurricane Helene. Representatives from RAAP, often referred to as the arsenal, announced the pollution event at a community meeting in Christiansburg November 7th, six weeks after the flood.
A private company, BAE systems, oversees operations at RAAP, and the company’s environmental director, Carla Givens, said they are still looking for missing containers that contain a chemical called Dibutyl phthalate.
“Those were the last materials that were left in the warehouse,” Givens explained. “Based on the flood stage that NOAA predicted, we assumed that those materials would be ok.”
Most the facility at RAAP was impacted by flooding, Givens said. The New River crested at 31 feet in Radford, which was higher than forecasters had predicted. Although employees at the ammunition plant began preparing for the storm 72 hours before Helene reached Virginia, and relocated 14 trailers filled with materials, they didn’t remove the totes that store dibutyl phthalate, each of which weighs 2,000 pounds.
Four containers were later recovered, and nine are still missing, which account for about 225 gallons of Dibutyl phthalate, a compound used to make plastics more flexible.
Givens said they have no evidence at this time to suggest the released chemicals pose a risk to human or animal risk, and they have not observed any dead fish near their site since Helene.
According to Justine Barati, Chief of Public and Congressional Affairs with Joint Munitions Command, local emergency authorities are helping in the search efforts to local the missing totes. “If anyone finds a tote, they should contact their local law enforcement or fire department immediately,” Barati said.
Residents at the meeting voiced concern and frustration that they didn’t hear about the pollution earlier.
“I’m not someone who normally comes to these meetings,” said Sarah McGee, who lives downstream from RAAP. “I’m a concerned mother and grandmother. Do I allow my one-year-old granddaughter into the river come spring?”
Givens said they notified the Department of Environmental Quality on October 14th, and explained that the EPA and DEQ are in charge of regulating how much hazardous materials are safe to enter the river. “
Another resident, Alyssa Carpenter, an advocate with the group Citizens for Arsenal Accountability, pointed out that in the past, RAAP has not always been in compliance with their water permits, “It’s hard for us as a community to trust the regulatory agencies when we’re seeing this happen over and over again,” Carpenter said.
Givens replied, “I understand why you ask that question. We are consistently trying to improve performance.”
RAAP filed three other environmental reports in September and October, about other pollution events that were caused by flooding, including overflow of their wastewater treatment facility, sedimentation basins, and diesel.
Tristen Franklin, a spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Health Office of Drinking Water, told the Virginia Mercury that “there is no concern that those chemicals released by RAAP are in any Virginia residents’ drinking water.”
