Whistleblower at Jordan Cove LNG-terminal site warns of contaminated soil
The Jordan Cove Energy Project, a $7 billion liquefied
natural gas export proposal, plans to dredge 2.3 million cubic yards of
material out of the North Spit of Coos Bay to accommodate its shipping
berth. It plans to use resulting spoils to build massive berms that
would elevate its gas liquefaction and power plants out of the tsunami
inundation zone. The site is a former log sorting and waste disposal
site for a closed paper mill, and a former environmental coordinator on
the site says soil contamination issues are being ignored and swept
under the rug.
(Courtesy of Jordan Cove)
on December 19, 2014 at 5:01 AM, updated December 19, 2014 at 7:07 PM
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Barbara Gimlin was employed by SHN Engineers & Geologists as a biologist and environmental compliance specialist on the Jordan Cove Energy Project from March 2013 to April 2014. She says she supports the project, but resigned as a matter of professional integrity after being ignored and reprimanded by supervisors when trying to take required compliance steps after contaminated soil was excavated, moved and reburied in a berm during testing.
She aired her concerns in a public comment this week on the project's draft environmental impact statement with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. She claims the contamination issues were not disclosed in the federal environmental analysis, not reported to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality until she blew the whistle, and could pose a hazard to the estuary and workers at the site.
The FERC issued the draft environmental analysis in early November, concluding that there were limited environmental impacts from the construction and operation of the terminal that could be mitigated to less than significant levels.
Michael Hinrichs, a spokesman for Jordan Cove, declined on Thursday to answer specific questions that Gimlin's comments raised. But he said the contamination issues are well understood and were disclosed in the federal analysis, though he referenced a 2006 resource report that was based on limited testing at the north end of the site, and was filed well before Gimlin says the additional issues were discovered.
Jordan Cove is a massive project, and has garnered political support because of the economic development that its $7 billion investment could bring to an area of the state that has been economically depressed since the 1980s. Plans call for a natural gas liquefaction plant, shipping berth and power plant on the North Spit of Coos Bay, and a feeder pipeline that would stretch halfway across the state.
The liquefaction and shipping berth would be built on the site of a former log-sorting yard and mill waste disposal site for an old Weyerhaueser paper mill. The mill site itself would be home to the power plant.
Jordan Cove plans to dredge some 2.3 million cubic yards of material for its shipping berth on the Coos Bay channel, and use the spoils to build up massive earthen berms to elevate the liquefaction and power plants out of the tsunami inundation zone.
Gimlin told regulators that she discovered months after the fact that archeologists from Southern Oregon University had stopped cultural survey work in one area after discovering black soils that they deemed to be contaminated and unsafe to work in.
Gimlin says she was met with "subdued hostility" from her boss and told it was not her concern when she asked whether DEQ has been informed.
Contacted by The Oregonian, the head of the lab, Prof. Mark Tveskov, said the team did work around contaminated areas identified by SHN, though he doesn't remember abandoning work in any area and says his team is not responsible for identifying contaminated soils. Gimlin says she's quoting directly from reports prepared by the lab's team. She said Tveskov wasn't at the site much, and may be looking to protect a lucrative contract with SHN.
During the spring of 2014, the construction contractor, Kiewit, performed an exploratory test program at the site, and Gimlin says she was charged with overseeing environmental considerations. She said unidentified contaminated soils and sediment surfaced during excavations in an area that she had repeatedly been told was "clean fill" from previous channel dredging by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.jordan cove
Gimlin told regulators the potential contaminates included numerous black soils; bright yellow powder found in clumps of varying size; gray gummy material that was likely related to hydraulic drilling by a contractor; and the exposure of a concrete storage tank punched through by heavy equipment with an unknown, gray and foamy liquid inside that was 15 feet away from a temporary office trailer.
The storage tank, she said, was deemed to be an abandoned septic tank by her boss without being tested. The tank opening was covered with plywood and workers continued to park there and walk over it until Gimlin said she asked that it be cordoned off.
She said the archeologist hired to monitor Kiewit construction activities reported that his work boots were falling apart and the seams disintegrating. She said he also reported potential contaminates until he was pressured not to.
"While the potential contamination continued to be untested," Gimlin told regulators in her comment, "I became the problem instead. When I repeatedly reported concerns about ongoing discoveries and the process that needed to be followed, my efforts were repeatedly ignored most of the time, and I was told I didn't need to be involved."
She said she resigned in April after she contacted the primary DEQ person responsible for environmental cleanup at the site, Bill Mason, and learned he had not been informed of any of the contamination issues in the test program, and that the project's Unanticipated Hazardous Waste Discovery Plan had not been implemented.
"I was stunned, just flabbergasted to find out that the DEQ hadn't been contacted at all," she said Thursday. "It was inexcusable. Transparency and integrity were the two words that kept coming to mind, and they were totally lacking."
Mason, a senior groundwater hydrologist with DEQ, said "it is absolutely true" that the agency wasn't informed, and that it subsequently sent Jordan Cove DEQ a warning letter after discovering that the contaminated soil had been pushed into a berm, covered and reseeded.
Steve Donovan,
Gimlin's boss at SHN, would not comment on his interactions with her, which he called an employee matter. He did acknowledge that the soils were excavated and moved without notifying DEQ.
"I'm not aurguing with DEQ that we should have notified them, and in the future we will notify them more promptly," Donovan said. But he went on to say that his identification of the septic tank was correct, that the contamination issues at the site are well understood, and that a work plan is already in place.
"It's not a big deal," he said.
In Gimlin's view, the feds' environmental analysis allows Jordan Cove to skirt around the soil-contamination issues. It states, for example, that there aren't contaminated soils at the Jordan Cove site, while acknowledging in the next breath that any contamination is below allowed thresholds.
The DEQ's Mason says he believes conditions at the site have been fairly well characterized in successive rounds of soil testing and that there will be a rigorously monitored work plan when and if site excavations gets underway.
Gimlin dismisses that as wishful thinking. She says the DEQ lacks the budget and manpower to manage such a huge project, and is dependent on self-reporting. She believes there needs to be more testing at the site before excavations start.
"The DEQ is famous for not doing compliance monitoring," she said. "Whenever they did excavation work out there, they were turning up contaminants, so why wouldn't the entire site be contaminated?"