Coal tar in Newtown: How it was found decades ago and why cleanup is still years away

In the 1990s, coal tar was discovered under wetland soil in Greenville, just outside Unity Park. Today, the state is preparing to clean it up through a multi-year excavation proposal. But environmental advocates and some residents say it’s taken too long, and the clean-up isn’t thorough enough.

The contaminated soil is a remnant of a former manufactured gas facility that operated across the street for more than 30 years. The site is located in the Newtown neighborhood within Greenville’s Southernside, a historically Black neighborhood that has faced disinvestment and displacement as Greenville has grown.

The Bramlett site has seen many studies and some voluntary cleanup since the pollution was discovered, but even now, the project could still be nearly a decade away from completion – something residents said they’re concerned about. Others fear those tasked with the cleanup won’t finish the project.

However, residents are also concerned about how the cleanup will happen. Several locals told the state’s Department of Health and Environmental Control that they hope the cleanup will allow private businesses and government entities to partner with Newtown residents to create economic opportunity and help invest in their community-led master plan.

While the cleanup could offer opportunities for the future, Newtown residents are also concerned about the contamination's impact.

Coal tar can lead to health risks from long-term exposure. Before anyone knew about the contamination, kids from the area played on the site.

William McKinney, a 71-year-old who grew up in the Newtown area, was one of several attendees at a cleanup meeting on June 6 who said he used the Bramlett site as a playground when he was younger.

He said he knows the state has studied the impact of the contamination on the river, but he wants to know if they’ve studied the potential impact on the area's long-term residents.

“I also played down there in that wetland,” McKinney said, “My tennis shoes got that tar all over them.”

How did the coal tar get there?

In 1917, Southern Public Utilities began manufacturing gas to fuel the city of Greenville. At that time, coal was used as a power source. The gasification of coal created a tar-like material, which traveled through wastewater under Bramlett Road to be discharged into the flood plain across the street.

In 1939, Duke Energy acquired the plant, which operated until its closure in 1951. Today, the site is full of overgrown greenery, lined with fences, and owned by freight rail company CSX Transportation.

On top of the contaminated wetland area, Robert Vaughn of Vaughn Construction and Demolition began operating an unpermitted landfill in 1988 before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers told him to halt operation in 1993.

Throughout all the changes in ownership and the site’s various uses, contamination lingered below the surface. A 1995 investigation from a CSXT-hired contractor showed that the materials from the landfill weren’t directly contaminating the area; rather, the soil below it was host to chemicals and coal tar.

In the early 2000s, the former gas plant was removed. Duke removed 61,000 tons of material across several acres from three to 12 feet below the surface and replaced it with clean soil. Since then, Duke has been monitoring groundwater at the site.

In 2013, the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control approached Duke and CSXT about participating in a voluntary cleanup program. CSXT did not agree to the program, but Duke signed the agreement in 2016.

Several studies later, DHEC plans to begin cleanup once an official plan is decided. That brought DHEC, Duke, CSXT and Newtown residents to Mountain View Baptist Church on June 6.

More than 100 attendees filled the pews from the front of the church to the back row.

What comes next for the Bramlett site?

At the meeting, DHEC presented five different mitigation options to clean up the site, ranging from doing nothing and allowing the site to sit as is to excavating the entirety of the Vaughn landfill and other parcels of land with impacted soil.

DHEC’s preferred cleanup method is the complete excavation option. Over a six to seven-year timeframe, 183,800 cubic yards of material would be removed from the Bramlett site, including the Vaughn landfill, various spots of impacted soil, and part of the Legacy School Property that now operates across the street.

DHEC’s preferred method also includes monitored natural attenuation (MNA), which involves monitoring soil and groundwater closely while contaminants naturally decrease via biodegradation, dilution, sorption (when one chemical attaches to another), or chemical reactions. Additionally, the method includes land-use controls (LUC), which place physical or legal barriers on-site to prevent further contamination.

The project is estimated to cost $39.5 million and will undergo a public comment period, where residents are encouraged to submit their thoughts on the cleanup plan to DHEC.

Critics of the plan said at the meeting that groundwater contamination mitigation needs to be a higher priority. DHEC plans to monitor it, though no additional treatment has been outlined in the proposal. Several meeting attendees, including attorneys from the South Carolina Environmental Law Project, Friends of the Reedy River, and Upstate Forever, encouraged DHEC to take a more aggressive approach to treating the contaminated groundwater.

Lucas Berresford, who coordinates the voluntary cleanup program, said the groundwater does not currently pose a risk to public health as it does not serve as public water. He also noted that much of the groundwater would be removed during the cleanup, and installing equipment to treat it before removing contaminated soil would be futile.

Berresford said the organization’s goal is to finalize a decision on how they’ll clean up the Bramlett site by the end of the year. Then, there’s the matter of contractors, getting Duke and CSXT to agree to the plan and any other housekeeping needed for the project to kick off.

“At the earliest, if everything went perfectly, we're probably about two years out from everything going,” Berresford said at the meeting. “We want to do it in the safest, most effective manner that we can.”

All told the completion of DHEC’s cleanup plan could be nearly a decade away.

Could the cleanup play a role in revitalizing Newtown?

Newtown is a pocket of Greenville’s Southernside neighborhood, spanning several streets, including Cagle Street, West Washington Street, and Bramlett Road, where the contamination is located. It’s sandwiched between two railroads, one of which is Greenville’s Amtrak station.

Read more: Bainbridge: A railroad runs through history of Greenville's Southernside community

The center of the community is a Greater Greenville Sanitation site, but the heart of the community is Mountain View Baptist Church. The church has been in the community since 1908, and many residents who attended the June 6 meeting are members of the congregation.

But the church’s impact goes further. In light of Newtown’s history of disinvestment, the church launched the Parish House Community Development Corporation and created a community-led master plan to reinvest in Newtown.

The reimagined Newtown will center around social value, access to affordable housing and healthy food and employment opportunities. Over 25 years, the church has also purchased lots throughout the area, on which they plan to build affordable housing. Many of these sites were tested for contamination from the Bramlett site.

During the DHEC meeting, several attendees said they wanted to see people from Newtown be provided jobs in the cleanup and allow people to invest in their community.

Attendee Melanie Brown said the six-to-seven-year timeframe could help future generations.

“Do you all have experience or examples where projects like this have been able to create workforce development programs?” Brown asked. “There is an economic component that can reinvest back into the community for job creation with something like this.”

Berresford did not have examples of cleanup projects leading to workforce development but said there is “potential for a lot of redevelopment in the area.”

The potential for redevelopment on a former contamination site has already been proven in Greenville.

Another former manufactured gas plant once stood on East Broad Street. Today, it’s home to the luxury Ellison on Broad apartment complex.

Critics, advocates, academics and lawyers have suggested that the difference in how the two sites were treated is a case of environmental injustice.

The Greenville News reported that DHEC disagrees that environmental injustice occurred between the two sites.

Read more: Opinion: Why it's time for Greenville to address environmental sins from its past

In a report on environmental injustice in Greenville, Furman University Shi Institute Fellow Lydia Stubbs used the Broad and Bramlett sites and their respective remediation processes as case studies, examining the median income and demographic makeup of the census tracts where the sites are located.

According to the data Stubbs used and the most recent data available, the median income per household in the Broad Street census tract was nearly $87,000 annually, and 86% of residents were white. Meanwhile, in the Bramlett census tract, the median income was nearly $24,000 annually, and 55% of the residents were Black at the time of Stubbs' reporting.

According to the most recent Census Bureau data, the median income in the Bramlett tract is now roughly $75,500 annually, and only 34.5% of residents are Black, while 55% are white.

Berresford said during the June 6 meeting that the sites are different because Bramlett has more contamination and Broad Street was not on top of the wetland area. He also said a developer had already expressed interest in the Broad Street site during remediation.

“Comparing apples to apples, they weren’t dealing with contamination of wetlands that had traveled down old stream beds. They weren't dealing with the landfill that had been put on top of the material,” Berresford said. “They basically were going in and excavating out the coal tar, moving in, bringing in clean material and then were able to redevelop that property.”

As the project moves ahead, several attendees asked DHEC to use resources within the Newtown community rather than outsourcing.

Attendee Charles Gardner, who works on affordable housing in Greenville, asked Duke, CSXT and DHEC to work with the Rev. Stacey Mills of Mountain View Baptist Church to keep the community master plan as a focal point for the upcoming changes.

“We ask that you intensify your conversations with Reverend Mills in putting this master plan together. Become a partner in that. Support him in any way that you can. You have an awful lot of resources that can be brought to the table that can help him facilitate that project and I know your assistance would be welcome there,” Gardner said.

Gardner also asked those in charge of the project to commit to hiring minorities to work on the project, investing in the people who live in the area, and helping them develop skills they can use when the cleanup is complete.

“A lot of those contractors will be from out of this area. There’ll be money coming out of this area and going someplace else. It won't happen unless there's a deliberate effort to do it – to make sure that those contractors use minorities in the work that’s to be done, and where possible, use some workers from this community,” Gardner said.

In the meantime, DHEC is asking locals to weigh in on the proposed cleanup. The plan is open for public comment through Aug. 6.

People who want to comment on the proposed plan can use DHEC’s website to find more information or provide written comments to Project Manager Greg Cassidy. Cassidy can be reached by email at [email protected] or by mail at 2600 Bull St., Columbia, South Carolina.

Sarah Swetlik covers climate change and environmental issues in South Carolina's Upstate for The Greenville News. Reach her at[email protected] or on X at @sarahgswetlik.

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This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Coal tar polluted Southernside for decades. Cleanup still years away.