Freedom Industries site demolition begins

CHARLESTON, W.Va. As another brief summer storm rolled through Tuesday afternoon, Mark Welch was watching the clock and monitoring the skies, hoping everything would line up perfectly so he could get moving on the next step in ridding the Kanawha Valley of the now-infamous white chemical storage tanks at Freedom Industries.

Contractors were on site. New demolition and storm water runoff plans were in place. Now, if the weather would just cooperate, and if a special large shear the machine that will actually cut apart those white tanks would make it in from Cleveland.

Were this close, Welch said, holding his thumb and index finger an inch apart.

Welch, the court-approved chief restructuring officer in Freedoms bankruptcy case, was hoping it would finally be the day that a major part of the work of closing Freedoms Elk River tank farm and cleaning up the site would begin.

Under a deal with the state Department of Environmental Protection, Freedom agreed to start dismantling and removing all above-ground storage tanks, associated piping and machinery by, on or before March 15.

But the tank demolition has been slowed by a series of problems, most recently a finding that there were 650 pieces of asbestos not three, as a survey originally identified that needed to be carefully removed from the facilitys equipment. Welch said the asbestos cleanup set work back roughly two weeks and that its not clear that all of the material identified as asbestos really was. It was easier, he said, to simply assume the worst.

Its better to be safe than sorry, Welch said. During an interview and tour of the site, Welch used that phrase liberally, perhaps in recognition of how Kanawha Valley residents have come to view the chemical storage facility responsible for the January spill that contaminated drinking water supplies serving 300,000 residents in Charleston and surrounding counties.

Welch is a managing director of the financial advising firm MorrisAnderson. At Freedom, his real job is to oversee the company as it basically liquidates its assets in bankruptcy court, a forum where the desires of a companys creditors for payment can often conflict with the demands to spend money on expensive environmental remediation projects.

But with attention focused on Freedom and the site cleanup, much of Welchs focus is on that project, especially following two storm water spills on consecutive days in June. Welch proudly shows off some of the many steps that hes taken to try to ensure the demolition goes smoothly. There are additional storm water pumps to prevent any runoff from reaching the river, and vacuum trucks to suck up any chemicals that happen to seep out of the ground when the tanks all now empty of Freedoms products are demolished.

Walking from Freedoms office building toward the tank farm, Welch points to a red trash bin full of somewhat tattered, bright yellow booms. Welch says he replaced those booms, in place since the Jan. 9 spill, with 1,000 feet of new spill-containing booms, as an extra precaution should anything really go wrong.

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Freedom Industries site demolition begins