The Vertac Superfund Site
The Vertac Superfund site in Jacksonville, Arkansas was a man-made disaster that affected the city in multiple ways socially and economically. It all began with the start of World War 2, and the construction of the Arkansas Ordnance Plant in 1942. After the end of World War 2, the site was no longer needed and was bought up in parcels by other companies looking for land. Reasor-Hill bought and reused the area for chemical production.
While the company created jobs, it also began to create the setting for an environmental disaster, as more chemical companies traded the site around for chemical production, including the components for Agent Orange. It is inextricably connected to the Arkansas Ordnance Plant, the reuse of the main site from munitions creation for World War 2 to chemical production for the Vietnam War. Not unlike the Love Canal Superfund site in Niagara Falls, this happened in the middle of a town and had a lasting effect on the people and the environment.
The history of the Vertac site begins with World War II. The Arkansas Ordnance Plant (AOP) was built in Jacksonville, Pulaski County, Arkansas to aid the war effort. It was commissioned on June 4th, 1941, before the United States officially entered the war. It was one of six ordnance plants in Arkansas. Others were in the Hempstead, Union, Jefferson, and Camden counties. There were two in Pulaski County, including the AOP. The first assembly line was created on March 4, 1942, and operated until 1945. It was at the height of production on November 22, 1942. The site made munitions including primers, detonators, fuses, relays, and boosters. Munitions are military ammunition, weapons, and equipment.
Thousands of men and women worked there during its tenure. Most of the workforce at the AOP were women, known as woman ordnance workers, or WOW girls. They were transported to the AOP by Inter-City Transit Company buses and Missouri Pacific Railroad shuttles, as workers were not allowed to drive their vehicles to the site due to safety concerns. A prefabricated housing project called SunnySide began in 1942 in an attempt to remedy the lack of housing near the ordnance plant. As many as 20 houses were built a day. Even with this extra housing, many employees lived in tents or vehicles. Many of the houses are still around and in use today.
After the end of World War II, the site was closed down immediately. After sitting for some time, the site was marked for sale to companies in 1946. Some of the buildings were also sold and became part of educational facilities around the state, as well as other businesses that also bought up previous Ordnance Plant land. These businesses included Redmond Motors of Ososso, Michigan, and family-run businesses.
Fragments of the Ordnance Plant’s time can still be seen in Jacksonville, such as some sidewalks and a guard post in front of the Jacksonville Museum of Military History. AOP warehouses are still in use around the city as well, one of them being the Goodsell truck accessories store, begun by WWII veteran Odes Goodsell. The Jacksonville museum sits on the site of the original AOP administration building. Underneath the museum sidewalk there still lies the original sidewalk and foundations of the AOP. It includes exhibits on the AOP and the people who worked here.
Figure 2. Image of Arkansas Ordnance Plant Guard Shack standing outside the Jacksonville Museum of Military History.
In 1948 the roughly 90-acre site was sold to Reasor-Hill, a chemical and insecticide manufacturing company. They produced DDT (Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), which was later banned in 1972 due to devastating environmental effects and the potential danger it posed to humans.DDT was the first synthetic insecticide that worked well in fighting insect-borne diseases. Reasor-Hill also produced 2,4,5-T (2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid) and 2,4-D (2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid), chemicals now known to produce dioxin. Dioxin is a persistent organic pollutant that is toxic and stays in the environment for a long time. Dioxin has negative effects on the environment as well as on humans, causing health issues.
From 1948 through 1952 the Reasor-Hill corporation was reported to have employed 125 people and invested around 200,000 dollars into Arkansas by 1950, which is around 2,618,476.60 dollars today, accounting for inflation. A Sanborn map from 1950 shows the Reasor-Hill plant site and facilities. Sanborn maps are fire insurance maps for determining a building’s level of hazard concerning fire.
In 1961 the land and facilities were sold to the Hercules Powder Company, which also produced pesticides and herbicides in addition to DDT. They also produced 2,4,5-T (2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid) and 2,4-D (2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid) much like Reasor-Hill did. The mix of 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D are also known under the code name of Agent Orange, the herbicide used in the Vietnam War. While its effects were not widely known before the war, its impact on the environment and humans was made apparent during the Vietnam War. Many Vietnamese people noticed health effects and birth defects and U.S. soldiers noticed the same issues after coming home from war.
Figure 4. 1979 Political cartoon about Vertac and Dioxin by Jon Kennedy. Courtesy of UALR CAHC.
A Superfund site works in steps. The first step is the identification of a potentially contaminated site. Then an EPA or state agency assessment of the potential site occurs. This is when the site can be placed on the National Priorities listing if the site is noted to have a considerable amount of contamination. A two-part investigation occurs afterward, the first part being the remedial investigation where contamination and site-related threats to the environment and public health are looked at. The second part is the feasibility study where different approaches are evaluated to address site conditions. A preferred remedy out of all of these approaches is chosen. The public, state, and local officials are given an opportunity to comment on this choice, and then the final remedy is chosen.
For a different example, the Love Canal, or LaSalle community in Niagara Falls is a more well-known Superfund site. It all began with an early 1900s dream to create a community. William T. Love was the man to begin the creation of the dream community, but even with substantial funding it quickly fell apart due to the economy by 1910. The canal was only partially completed and the ditch was left there for years until the Hooker Chemical Company found the site in the 1920s. Hooker Chemical bought it and began using it as their dumping ground for all types of chemical waste barrels, some of which had to be punctured before disposal lest they combust while in the ground. Some of the Hooker Chemical workers would be splashed by the waste while disposing of it and get chemical burns or worse.
After filling the land back up with soil, the former dream community site was sold to the board of education for one dollar in 1953. The Niagara Board of Education needed more schools as the population exploded, and even inquired about the property themselves. The only stipulation was that Hooker Chemical would not be liable for damages later and that the land was indeed a chemical waste disposal site. A school and multiple houses were built on the site, disturbing the barrels of chemicals and removing some of the clay caps that had been keeping the chemicals in their place.
The area mostly operated fine until 1978. There were some incidents of children finding ‘chalk’ only to have it be toxic waste buildup on the ground near their school or strange chemical odors in people’s basements. But it was not until the record pouring rainfall of 1978 that everything exploded into a horrible situation for the residents of Love Canal. Chemicals that had been mostly dormant underground began leaching above the ground, creating pools of chemicals that children were advised to stay away from. While this seems to have been a significant problem, the school district announced that the school year would proceed as usual.
The residents were concerned and turned for help but found very little until John LaFalce, a New York congressman, got involved. Even then, there still seemed to be a culture of disinterest as it was a small community and there were very little funds for this type of issue from the EPA. This incident happened before Superfund sites were created for this very issue. Eventually, the New York governor announced that houses that were affected by the chemicals would be purchased by the state, and emergency financial assistance was provided by President Jimmy Carter on the same day in 1978. The Superfund cleanup ended in 2004, with the neighborhood being demolished.
The EPA did not just have the dioxin to contend with, but activists from Jacksonville as well. The Jacksonville People With Pride or JPWP organized in an attempt to prevent the incineration of dioxin waste. Another group was the People Against a Chemically Contaminated Environment (PACCE). In 1988 the EPA announced that it was offering grants of up to 50,000 dollars for assistance in the community understanding the technical aspects of Superfund cleanup. JPWP originally got three of these grants until it was discovered that Hercules was providing funding to the group. It was thought to be a clash of interests since Hercules was one of the companies responsible for the dioxin buildup.
In 1990 Governor Bill Clinton received thousands of ‘coupons against incineration’ from not just Jacksonville residents but other people in different states. The coupons portrayed fears of an “America’s Chernobyl” and of using Jacksonville children as guinea pigs for the burning of dioxin. The people who signed the coupons requested that he take action now to end the dioxin burning. The burning continued, despite the thousands of people interested in that not happening.
Barrels of waste were burnt at a fairly rapid rate. Just in the week of March 16, 1992, 384 drums were incinerated. 3863 barrels in total were incinerated by March 16, 1992. Considering that there were around 29,000 barrels to be incinerated, and they had only started in 1989, this was a good rate. The cleanup was officially designated as finished on September 1st, 1998.
Figure 1. Map of Vertac Superfund site location.
Figure 3. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map showing the Reasor-Hill Corporation.
Figure 5. Image of the Vertac site buildings, Rocky Branch Creek, and boundaries. Butler Center: Bill Clinton Gubernatorial record group; Natural and Cultural Resources Series; Kenneth L. Smith subseries Box 31.
The Vertac site is not dissimilar to the Love Canal disaster but was more contained in its damage. Love Canal’s school and houses were deliberately built on top of a chemical waste site, but no one had any clue about the Vertac site being so close to housing structures or the potential damage dioxin could cause.
In 1979 the State of Arkansas sued Vertac to stop the contamination of the chemical manufacturing facility. Federal entities also filed a similar lawsuit against Vertac in 1980, so the State of Arkansas joined that one. That led to a Consent Decree between the parties and Vertac as well as Hercules Inc., which was a plan of action for the contamination. It addressed some of the buried waste at the site, but not the contained waste above the ground.
Chemical leakage had been occurring for a considerable time, and when the EPA got involved in testing the site in 1979, toxins were everywhere. The nearby rocky branch creek was contaminated, even being closed off to the public due to the level of pollution. Anne Fadiman’s article in Life Magazine reported on Jacksonville in October 1979, calling it a ‘poisoned town’ and going into detail about the hazards the chemical contamination had caused for the environment and the residents. Fadiman writes about the dangers the Vertac employees faced from dioxin-related hazards, including chemical burns and chloracne, a type of acne that is related directly to dioxin exposure.
The EPA had already put the site on the National Priorities Listing in 1983. By 1984 it was number 18 on the list. The Vertac corporation had been doing some cleanup activities at the behest of the EPA. They installed a French drainage system around the disposal areas, closed a cooling water pond, and repaired clay caps, finishing in 1985.
Vertac later declared bankruptcy in 1987, leaving the former AOP plant site and tons of dioxin-contaminated waste buried at the site. So the EPA took over the site in February of 1987, under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) of 1980, or Superfund. By 1989, Arkansas had ten Superfund sites. This included two other sites near Jacksonville, the Rogers Road Landfill and the Jacksonville Landfill. For comparison, New Jersey had the highest number of Superfund sites in 1988, at 103. The Arkansas Department of Pollution Control and Ecology collaborated with the EPA for the disposal of the dioxin at the site. By 1987 the EPA had spent over 3 million in the cleanup efforts.
There are multiple other hazards related to the types of chemicals that were produced at the Vertac site. The development of Agent Orange at the site put the employees in danger, especially as the 55-gallon barrels of dioxin waste leaked nearby. Some employees were even required to rehouse the waste in new barrels without safety equipment until the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) stepped in.
In total, there were about 13,700,000 pounds of 2,4-D waste, and 1,800,000 pounds of 2,4-T waste at the site in above-ground barrels alone, about 17,000,000 pounds of waste, or about 8,500 tons. This number does not include other contaminants such as soil. MRK Incineration of Louisiana was chosen for the roughly 29,000 drums of dioxin waste cleanup in 1989. MK-Environmental services were also used to handle some of the other operations at the Vertac site cleanup. The original contractor chosen for the cleanup was International Technologies (IT) but they unfortunately had to drop out due to administrative changes how long it took for the actual cleanup to get started. So the MRK Incineration company began work as the Vertac Site Contractors (VSC) on July 11, 1989.
The dioxin burn itself was a contentious topic, multitudes of newspaper articles and pamphlets were written and distributed. Much of this contentiousness was due to fears about the potential to make dioxin spread through the smoke. A 360-hour dioxin test burn was allowed by Judge Stephen Reasoner in June 1991. The EPA set the success rate for dioxin or PCB (polychlorinated bicarbonates) burns at 99.9999%, higher than a general burn success rate of 99.99% due to the hazardous compounds present. The burn would be conducted by way of a mobile incinerator that is assembled at the site. The 2,4-D waste that does not contain dioxin began to be incineration on September 25, 1990. A sample of the amount of barrels that would have to be incinerated can be seen in Figure 7.
Figure 7. A hazardous chemicals sign, barrels of waste, and storage area C with barrels of 2,4,5-T waste. Courtesy of UALR Center for Arkansas History and Culture.
Figure 8. Example of a mobile incineration unit. Courtesy of the Butler Center: Bill Clinton Gubernatorial record group; Natural and Cultural Resources Series; Kenneth L. Smith subseries, box 31.