The 2008 remediation settlement agreement between the NC Dept. of Environmental Quality and Seaboard “Remediating Parties” required the ongoing submission of monitoring documents to report on the progress of groundwater, soil and surface water cleanup at the Seaboard/High Point Landfill site on Riverdale Drive in Jamestown.
One of those documents was a five-year report, the first of which wasn’t produced by Seaboard/High Point until 2023. Noticeably missing from that 2023 report is mention of the 2008 REMEDIAL ACTION SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT, SCOPE OF WORK, ORDER and responsible REMEDIATING PARTIES (all of are in the document linked in the previous paragraph). Instead, the 2023 five-year report references remediation documentation from the early 1990s:
The Remedial Action Settlement Agreement (dated December 29, 2008) is between the NCDEQ and the City of High Point, Seaboard Group II and the “Work Parties” named in this document:
The 2008 Settlement Agreement states that the “obligations of the Settling Remediators to perform the Work required pursuant to this Agreement shall terminate when the Settling Remediators receive written notice from the Division that all Work required pursuant to this Agreement has been completed to the Division’s satisfaction.” Further, the NCDEQ reserved the right to make claims against the Settling Remediators for future response costs at the site; liability for failure to comply with the Settlement Agreement; the right to require additional response actions beyond the Scope of Work in the Agreement, and more.
The groundwater, soil and surface water remediation has a long way to go – due partly to the scope and size (Seaboard served for years as North Carolina’s only hazardous materials dump, receiving, storing and disposing of more than 18 million gallons from 1974 to 1989); partly due to a series of treatment technology failures; and partly due to a series of a dozen “Technical Memoranda” that extended the remediation benchmarks by decades.
WHICH IS WHY it’s hard to ignore the fact that Seaboard’s 2023 five-year report suggests the remediation, cleanup and containment is much further along than it actually is. In fact, the report writer goes so far as to falsely state that the migration of volatile organic compounds into the groundwater is contained (i.e. “COMPLETED”), and then talks about the above-ground structures and facility closure that happened in the late 1980s/early 1990s:
The 2008 REMEDIAL ACTION SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT clearly outlines the groundwater phase of remediation – which obligates the City of High Point, Seaboard Group II and the “Working Parties” to complete the task of cleaning up the contaminated groundwater, surface water, soil and stormwater draining to Deep River, drinking water supply. The 2023 five-year report tries to equate groundwater remediation to the facility closure.
The 2023 five-year report also attempts to paint a rosy picture of the Seaboard site, implying that VOC and 1,4-Dioxane levels are decreasing. The NCDEQ representative responds by noting that even though the results show lower levels of contamination at some of the wells, the contaminants are still much higher than the legal limits.
In a later 2024 reporting cycle, an NCDEQ representative brings up an important point: results from some of the more significant (higher contamination) monitoring wells are missing from the more recent Seaboard groundwater/surface water monitoring reports. This is a pattern we’ve noticed as well – the shifting and dropping of monitoring well and surface sample collection sites around the property.
There are also several years of “dry water” surface water samples. The idea that a lab technician couldn’t retrieve a surface water sample from Deep River (which has had water in it since the jurassic era) speaks volumes.
[NOTE: to those of you who have graciously offered or expressed an interest in helping out with research (or if you’re good at drawing maps), drop a note in the Contact Us box below.]
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