UPDATE February 6, 2025 – The three properties owned by UNIVAR Solutions at Oakdale Road and Main Street in Jamestown were purchased by Fortress Investment Group, a subsidiary of United Arab Emirates sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Company, on December 20, 2024. The Warranty Deed, recorded Dec. 30, 2024 in the Guilford County Courthouse indicates Fortress Investment Group, based in New York, purchased the property in a sale-leaseback deal for $2,917,833 through a company it set up in August 2024 called “FNLR Compounds Matter Too LLC.” A 20-year Lease Agreement between “FNLR Compounds Matter Too LLC” as Landlord, and UNIVAR Solutions as Tenant was executed and recorded, along with a REMEDIATION & ACCESS AGREEMENT that addresses and allocates “liabilities, responsibilities and expenses” for existing contamination and hazardous substances. The REMEDIATION AGREEMENT references a November 2024 site assessment that was not uploaded to the NCDEQ Public Records when we last searched in December, as noted in the next entry. More on the property sale is HERE.
The property at 109 E Main Street sold on November 22, 2024 to BMS Investment Properties, a Greensboro LLC, for $297,000.
UPDATE December 10, 2024 – UNIVAR’s current AIR PERMIT is below. Nothing has been added to Univar’s public records folder in the NCDEQ digital edoc files since this permit was added:
ORIGINAL POST – April 7, 2024
We recently shared groundwater and air sampling test reports for the contaminated properties at the corner of Main Street and Oakdale Road in the middle of Jamestown, NC. A now-empty site at 109 East Main Street, a former drycleaners that is currently for sale, has tested positive for high levels of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in the building’s interior (from PCE/TCE vapor intrusion), and a contaminated groundwater plume extends southwest from the site to a tributary of Deep River (at segment NC17-3.3).
Across the intersection and railroad tracks is the UNIVAR Chemical Company (previously known as ChemCentral), Highland Containers (now known as Hood Containers, owned by Hood Industries),
…and a contaminated superfund site and toxic lagoon at a facility that once produced metal fasteners (the long one-story brick building on Dillon Road at Main Street, across from the gas station).
In 2022, groundwater and surface water analyses were performed at the UNIVAR site. The report shows the same VOCs and contaminants (and more) in the groundwater at UNIVAR. It states that employees of the engineering company saw pipes coming from the Highland Container plant into Deep River that were likely pollutant sources.
Most important, it suggests that the NC DEQ responded to ongoing contamination by taking this segment of Deep River “offline” – ignoring this segment of Deep River as if it doesn’t exist. The NC DEQ hasn’t provide current data or classification info to the EPA via the 303(d) Integrated Assessment and ATTAINS databases and, as a result, the EPA’s public-facing databases (How’s My Waterway and ECHO) have no, or outdated, data for this stretch of Deep River, segment NC17-3.3.
Groundwater contamination from Univar/Chemcentral’s leaking underground tanks first appears in the NCDEQ records in 1989 (click to enlarge):
Site assessments, lab results, tank remediation and ongoing groundwater monitoring reports are in The Jamestowner Dropbox folder HERE. Recent events with respect to this location near the center of town in Jamestown are illustrated below, starting with the 109 East Main Street contamination and ending with the 2022 UNIVAR test results:
