The property at 301 N. Scientific in Jamestown ranks number 82 on North Carolina’s list of “inactive” hazardous sites. A “toxic lagoon” is on the property, which drains to Deep River. No cleanup of has taken place.
Chain of ownership is: Monarch Furniture/Chromecraft Furniture -> Greensboro Metal Parts -> Scientific Technologies (a Pennsylvania company) dba Riverdale Global.
UPDATE, April 12, 2024 — Now the white pipe at 301 N. Scientific Street is attached to a black pipe or hose and is flowing into a ditch to a tributary to Deep River. So, contrary to public discussion, this is not an occasional flushing of the hydrant by the fire department. It’s an ongoing thing: High Point’s water hydrant is flowing 24/7 into Jamestown’s water supply at the unmonitored, unreported Deep River segment known as NC17-3.3:
In addition to receiving water from the Riverdale Global sites and hydrant, this segment of Deep River (NC17-3.3) also receives wastewater, stormwater runoff and groundwater from the contaminated properties at 102 and 109 Main Street, UNIVAR Chemical Company (at Main Street and Oakdale Rd.), HIGHLAND/HOOD CONTAINER, manufacturer of corrugated cardboard (on Main Street, between UNIVAR and Dillon Rd.), and Teknor Apex, manufacturer of “PVC alloys, CPVC compounds and vinyl compounding” (at Main Street and Dillon Rd.).
Teknor Apex and Highland/Hood Container both enjoy NCDEQ water discharge permits under the (wrong) SIC code for “FINISHED APPAREL (cutting & sewing), PRINTING, LEATHER, RUBBER & MISC. MANUFACTURING” instead of “Corrugated Cardboard Manufacturing” and “PVC/Plastics Manufacturing/Compounding.”
We also found another “oversight” today. Up until now, we’ve referred to the 301 N. Scientific Street site as Monarch/Greensboro Metal Parts, because that’s who’s on record in the NCDEQ files as the recipient of the state’s annual and most recent (2023) “Inactive Hazardous Site” Notice, as shown in this May 19, 2023 correspondence:
We now know that 301 N. Scientific also belongs to Pennsylvania-based Riverdale Global, owner of the site next door at 600 N. Scientific. The reason for the weird jump in address number is that 301 N. Scientific (the contaminated sites) is in Jamestown, and 600 N. Scientific is in High Point.
On August 12, 2021, Greensboro Metal Parts (Mark Myers, President) sold 301 N. Scientific to Scientific Technologies, 11 Crozenville Road, Aston, PA, 19014.
On July 18, 2016, Cramer Wood Products sold 600 N. Scientific to The Stephen Maguire Family Trust, c/o Maguire Products Inc., 11 Crozierville Road, Aston PA 19014. On April 9, 2019, The Stephen Maguire Family Trust transferred ownership to Scientific Technologies, 11 Crozierville Road, Aston, PA 19014.
The white water pipe sits on the zoning line that separates Riverdale Global’s Jamestown location (301 N. Scientific) from its High Point location next door (600 N. Scientific). Triad Business Journal’s Andy Warfield wrote about the 301 Scientific sale to Scientific Technologies, a real estate holding company for Riverdale Global:
We could find no permits for Riverdale Global in the NCDEQ files.
UPDATE, MARCH 20, 2024 — The white pipe is flowing again at 301 N. Scientific Road. The white water pipe sits on the zoning line that separates Riverdale Global’s Jamestown location (301 N. Scientific) from its High Point location (600 N. Scientific). Because the zoning line that separates Jamestown from High Point lies between the two properties, the address numbers jump from 300 to 600. The water flows into a culvert that flows to a tributary that flows to Deep River. Water has been flowing nonstop from the white water pipe for at least two weeks.
UPDATE, JANUARY 27, 2024 — Site Assessments at Monarch Furniture, 1995 and 1991, indicate that drinking water for 3,000 Jamestown residents plus workers at the Oakdale Dam came from Deep River. Memoranda from 1994 and 1995 suggest that Jamestown residents had been switched over to the High Point water system (City Lake and Oak Hollow), but Oakdale Mill workers were still served water from a downstream Deep River intake.
The 1991 documents are in the second half of this pdf file:
UPDATE, JANUARY 17. 2023 — The white pipe is gone. We have heard from a source (who seems to be pretty knowledgeable about hydrants and pipes) that the reason it’s gone is most likely due to the freezing temps. He said that the water flowing out of the pipe is what keeps the water clean… chlorine dissipates from the water quickly after flowing from the pipe… when this is done, the city allows water on the far reaches of the water system to flow a little to keep fresh water moving to the residents. We’re still confused about the direction of the outflow – why it goes from a High Point pipe into a Jamestown tributary that flows into Deep River.
ORIGINAL POST, DECEMBER 22, 2023 — This week on our Facebook page, we continued a conversation that popped up in a couple of Jamestown neighborhood holiday gatherings – about the water gushing from hydrants around town. Not just an occasional hydrant flushing… one of the hydrants runs for hours, on random days. The other is a white pipe next to a hydrant that has been flowing 24/7, for several months.
The white pipe/hydrant assemblage on N. Scientific Street, spews water into a ditch that runs to a tributary to Deep River. As you’re driving along Scientific Street, at first glance the white pipe appears to belong to 600 N. Scientific Street (Riverdale Global), but it was originally part of the property next door, 301 N. Scientific Street.
Our curiosity about the white pipe led us on a search for answers – which led us to a big fat file dating back to the 1980s – a file full of murky stuff about the toxins and contaminants on the 301 N. Scientific property – it’s a fat file because this Jamestown property is ranked number 82 on the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s list of unresolved (still dirty) Inactive Hazardous Sites.
Here’s the most recent version of the plat recorded in the Guilford County records, and how it looks on Google satellite maps. It’s a triangle-shaped lot, described as being a little over five acres. The approximate location of the white pipe is circled in red on each of these maps:
According to the Guilford County property records, both 301 N. Scientific and 600 N. Scientific are owned by the same Pennsylvania company, but the zoning lines are drawn so that the boundary line for High Point inches slightly northward – which places the white pipe in High Point, along with all of the 600 N. Scientific parcel. Here’s a screenshot of the Guilford County GIS map. Jamestown (and the triangular shaped 301 N. Scientific site) is yellow; High Point (and the big square-ish building addressed as 600 N. Scientific) is lavender.
The white pipe is in the City of High Point, but the water coming out of it flows into a culvert to an unnamed tributary to Deep River – from one municipal water system (High Point) to another (Jamestown).
As we started reading through the file, our attention turned from the white pipe to the property, which has a nasty history of contamination and noncompliance. It has dumped, discharged and leached toxic metals and contaminants into Deep River for decades, was once a Superfund site, has never been cleaned up, and is not being monitored.
It’s listed in the NCDEQ and EPA Hazardous Sites records as “INACTIVE” — despite the fact that GREENSBORO METAL PARTS has been ACTIVELY conducting business there since 1990. And it’s still called “MONARCH FURNITURE COMPANY” even though it’s been GREENSBORO METAL PARTS since 1990. The chain of ownership is confusing.
According to its president, John W. Myers, GREENSBORO METAL PARTS “purchased” this plot of land from MONARCH/CHARTER FURNITURE on August 2, 1990 (see letter below).
The property had already undergone extensive testing and was found to be HIGHLY contaminated long before Mr. Myers and GREENSBORO METAL PARTS set up shop. The NCDEQ files have hundreds of pages of analysis and sampling of Deep River and the local water supply dating back to the early 1980s.
The state and federal officials and engineers were also very concerned with the impact on Jamestown’s groundwater, and the location of private wells, within a FOUR-MILE RADIUS of 301 Scientific Street:
Back then, the water testers came to the conclusion that MONARCH (301 N. Scientific Street) would remain on the Inactive Hazardous Sites list until it was cleaned up, and that the local residential water customers were probably okay since their water came from High Point City Lake. DEEP RIVER wasn’t a drinking water supply source back then – it was used as a wastewater dump.
The BIG problem here is that the MONARCH FURNITURE/GREENSBORO METAL PARTS site at 301 N. SCIENTIFIC STREET – which includes underground wells, tanks, runoffs to Deep River, and a stream-side “lagoon” where hazardous stuff was dumped until it could be “washed away,” is now part of our DEEP RIVER DRINKING WATER SUPPLY.
There’s a LOT in these linked files (maybe someone will have time to read through them all), but suffice it to say that once a year, EVERY year, Mr. Myers gets the same form letter from the NC Department of Environmental Quality reminding him that GREENSBORO METAL PARTS sits on a hazardous waste site at 301 N. Scientific, and that it is Mr. Myers’ responsibility to clean it up so that his company can be removed from the NC INACTIVE HAZARDOUS SITES list.
Mr. Myers has ignored those letters ever since 1993, when he basically said it wasn’t his problem.
Here we are THIRTY YEARS LATER. And just like the contaminated superfund site SEABOARD CHEMICAL on Riverdale Road, the monitoring, testing, enforcement stopped, and the present state of 301 Scientific Street remains a mystery.
They are just two entries on a list of two dozen chemical companies, manufacturers and landfills whose dirty contributions to the Randleman Watershed and our Deep River surface waters continue to be downplayed, ignored, misrepresented, or zoned away into a calculated chaotic state of “not my problem” oblivion. Both sites are very much STILL leaching toxins into DEEP RIVER just by virtue of the fact that their groundwater is so contaminated.
The Jamestown residents – private citizens – that contribute to this site have been writing letters, articles, social media posts, and speaking in person with local, state and federal officials NONSTOP since last summer, asking why DEEP RIVER’s surface waters along this very stretch – the stretch that lies within the boundaries of Jamestown and is being dumped into every single day, has been UNMONITORED AND UNTESTED for more than TEN YEARS. There’s no TMDL program for Deep River and Bull Run in the town limits of Jamestown where all the polluters are. No current figures in the ATTAINS database. No DMRs to view from Teknor Apex, Univar, Oakdale Mill, Alberdingk Boley, Riverdale Global, or Greensboro Metal Parts.
NONE. ZERO. NOTHING. AND THEY WON’T TELL US WHY.
And at this new hazardous site on N. Scientific Street, which we only found out about today, not only has Mr. Myers been ignoring the NCDEQ’s annual notification letters, but our town, county, state and federal government have ALLOWED him to ignore these notification letters. Here’s the most recent letter:
There’s one letter like this for every year. From 2023 back to 2012, these letters were uploaded into the state file individually. Prior to that, they were lumped into this combined correspondence file dating from 2012 back to 1993. Take a look at the list of contaminants:
Here’s a link to the complete file:
Here are a few more things we found:
Even though Mr. Myers says GREENSBORO METAL PARTS purchased the 301 N. Scientific Street property in 1990, the Guilford County property records say its “Scientific Technologies Inc” in Aston, Pennsylvania. This was pulled from the county records today at 4:31pm – it’s the same owner of the 600 N. Scientific Street property (Riverdale Global) next door – what have these two companies got going on over there on that big vast parcel:
And here’s a gem: In the 1970s, MONARCH was doing business as “THADEN METALS” and discharging its dirty effluent (wastewater) directly into DEEP RIVER. When the NC DEQ told them to stop they responded by dumping it into a man made “lagoon” and later “spread” it all over the property, like petulent children:
This next linke file contains photographs from a 1995 site inspection – the ditch they discharged the contaminated water into is the same dug ditch that STILL carries it to a tributary of Deep River today:
Here’s that file: (the 1995 site inspection)
Here’s a big fat file from the 1980s MONARCH/CHROMECRAFT years, when the guy in charge of risk management sat in the home office (called MOHASCO) in Amsterdam, New York. The “Mr. Meyer” in this first letter is not the same person as the Greensboro Metals Parts “Mr. Myers” :
As we’ve said many times before, SOMEONE has been and continues to be allowing an alarming level of environmental rule breaking and toxic cover-up in Jamestown – and it’s been going on for DECADES. This is deliberate, planned for, and these polluting companies are being accommodated – most of them based/headquartered in other states and countries.
They are unshakably confident that they don’t have to be responsible stewards of our streams, watershed and environment. They avoid interaction with the citizens of this town. They are under the impression that they aren’t expected to obey the rules and regulations of our town ordinances; nor to adhere to our county permits, watershed, erosion and sedimentation controls; nor to abide by the rules of the federal CLEAN WATER ACT and SAFE DRINKING WATER ACT. They appear to answer to NO ONE.
One thing that has remained consistent in our ongoing pursuit of pubic information is the dismissiveness of the Winston Regional Office of the NC DEQ Division of Water Resources. While we’ve had great success and wonderful interactions with the EPA, and the NC DEQ Air and Waste Management divisions, the Winston office has fallen short numerous times, and it’s getting worse.
They no longer answer our FOIA public record requests. Their enforcement of Jamestown’s expired stormwater permit is lax. They just APPROVED a 401 Water Quality Certification for the new Harvey Road Development (Windsor Homes) on undeveloped Jamestown land – USING the JORDAN LAKE RULES, in writing, in the certification document instead of our own RANDLEMAN WATERSHED WATER SUPPLY RULES!
In addition, within the past year, ALBERDINGK BOLEY, a discharger of 1,4 DIOXANE, has had two major spills of thousands of gallons of raw wastewater into BULL RUN STREAM, which runs through our neighorhoods and backyards before merging into DEEP RIVER.
Neither the Winston Regional Office nor the Town of Jamestown will provide us with the records of the spill, the exact timing, date, cleanup, enforcement action, and what was in the water. To date, Alberdingk has only received a $5,000 fine for the first spill (16,000 gallons) – for operating without a permit. This, too, was approved by the Winston Regional Office of the NC DEQ Division of Water Resources.
Here’s the weirdest part of all: The Winston Regional Division of Water Resources employee who oversaw and “approved” these lax compliance and enforcement actions is a RESIDENT of JAMESTOWN. She and her husband own TWO homes here. How about that?
We need to start demanding to know WHO is allowing the degradation of our streams and water supply to continue, WHY they are doing so, and hold them financially responsible for the clean up.