Displaying items by tag: superfund site in south knoxville
Waste at Smokey Mountain Smelters finally sealed
EPA consolidated toxic South Knoxville smelter refuse in single on-site landfill.
KNOXVILLE — The Smokey Mountain Smelters site is in the Vestal Community at 1508 Maryville Pike near Montgomery Village Apartments.
“We are excited to announce the cleanup at Smokey Mountain Smelters has been completed,” EPA remedial project manager Peter Johnson said.
From the 1920s through the 1960s, agricultural and chemical companies operated at the site before Smokey Mountain Smelters, also known as Rotary Furnace Inc., came to the location in 1979. The company melted scrap aluminum and aluminum dross together to cast the byproduct into aluminum bars. These operations continued until 1994.
Johnson has said in other talks the dross and saltcakes left over from the process react with water, releasing heat and ammonia gas. They leach aluminum, ammonia, chloride “and many other contaminants,” he said. Smokey Mountain Smelting’s toxins have flowed through groundwater into a tributary of Flenniken Branch, causing concerns about effects on fishing.
In 2010 the EPA placed the site on the Superfund program’s National Priorities List (NPL) because of contaminated soils, sediment and surface water resulting from past industrial operations at the site. The EPA did some cleanup work in 2010 and 2011.
High-profile cleanup to commence on South Knoxville Superfund site, but what about the other toxic sites?
Smokey Mountain Smelters site is seen in this EPA file photo. Work has commenced on cleaning up this particular Superfund site, but South Knoxville residents are wondering about the fate of the other highly toxic sites along Maryville Pike.
Vestal community leans into future of multiple South Knoxville Superfund sites
KNOXVILLE — City residents are discussing the future of the Vestal community’s toxic sites after a long history of industrial use and activism that recently led to federally funded action to clean up at least one infamous Superfund site.
Vestal community resident Cathy Scott shared the history of each of these sites near Maryville Pike at South Knox Community Center during two Vestal Community Organization meetings related to the cleanup of multiple Superfund sites on the south side of the city.
She said in an email to Hellbender Press that much of her information came from John Nolt, formerly of the University of Tennessee Philosophy Department and author of the essay “Injustice in the Handling of Nuclear Weapons Waste: The Case of David Witherspoon Inc.,” which is chapter three of the book “Mountains of Injustice: Social and Environmental Justice in Appalachia.”
While the EPA is focusing on the Smokey Mountain Smelter site, Scott, Nolt and others have discussed other properties and their effects on nearby watersheds. The sites are all connected to the Witherspoon family. They are at are at 1508 Maryville Pike; 1630 Maryville Pike and adjacent land; 901 Maryville Pike and 4430 Candoro Ave. The meetings took place Feb. 13 and 22.
“It was a phenomenal accomplishment of community collaboration,” Eric Johnson, president of Vestal Community Organization, said of the two meetings.