NAVASSA — The restoration of the Kerr-McGee Superfund site is quickly materializing as the project’s two prime contractors are preparing to begin removing contaminated material from one portion of land early next year.
Ngozi Ibe, the senior trust manager for the Multistate Trust Site Navassa said two contractors are working concurrently on 15.4 acres of land but have different duties. Carl and Son’s will handle security, traffic control, logging, clearing, grubbing, transporting the soils and restoring the site, while Southeast Response & Remediation Environmental, Inc. will be responsible for excavating the site’s soil and loading it onto trucks used for transportation.
The 246-acre site in Brunswick County was formerly owned by Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp and used for creosote-based wood treatment until the company’s closure in the 1970s. The 2009 bankruptcy settlement of the firm’s spin-off Tronox transferred 156 acres of the site and $94.8 million to the Greenfield Environmental Multistate Trust LLC, the institution authorized to manage and redevelop the property under the oversight of the Environmental Protection Agency and North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.
In 2010, the EPA designated around 100 acres of the site to the National Priorities List of its Superfund program, which grants the federal government the funds and authority to clean up contaminated areas. Hazardous chemicals remain in its soil, subsurface, and groundwater.
The Multistate Trust has been working with the Town of Navassa to coordinate remediation and restoration plans; in July, council members chose to use 31 acres of the site to commemorate the area’s Gullah Geechee roots with a heritage center, a rice field dike, a conservation area for wetlands, a walking trail, and a pier with a viewing platform.
Many of Navassa’s residents are of Gullah Geechee heritage — descendants of the roughly 500,000 African Americans who settled on the coastal areas of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. The Gullah are known for their deep cultural influence on American art, music, and cuisine and played a pivotal role in the antebellum Cape Fear economy at rice plantations, including Orton and Belville.
The site has been divided into five sections designated as “operable units” and will be addressed in numerical order. The 20-acre operable unit one was cleared for health risks in 2021 and no longer has land-use restrictions, which the EPA requires during Superfund cleanups.
The contractors are working on a section on Navassa Road designated as operable unit two.
Ibe said the project’s design is completed and contractors are in their pre-construction phase, which includes documentation and training. Mobilization is expected to begin in late January or early February and will take around four months; the site is anticipated to be cleared of contaminants by late May.
Ibe said zoning and marketing will then take place to sell operable unit two as part of an 87 acre property also including operable unit one and a portion of the uncontaminated eastern upland area of the site. The Multistate Trust put up an invitation to bid for the property and it is anticipated to be used for a mixed-use development.
Claire Woods, Multistate Trust director of environmental justice, told PCD the Navassa reuse advisory council — composed of residents, town officials, and other stakeholders — planned to meet earlier in December to discuss the future of unit two but canceled because they did not receive any viable bids.
The Multistate Trust put up an invitation to bid for the property with commercial, light industrial, and high density residential potential future uses approved by the reuse advisory council. It is most likely to be a mixed-use development; Woods noted town officials have expressed interest in light industrial uses for the tax base benefits and job opportunities.
Ibe said she doesn’t yet have an estimated timeline for the restoration of units three, four, and five; the Multistate Trust is conducting investigations into the parcels to understand their degree of contamination and consider feasible remedies.
Woods told PCD the roughly 30-acre unit three is likely too marshy for development. Unit five also cannot be developed because it is groundwater, but the approximately 36-acre unit four is currently up for right-of-first opportunity bidding.
Ibe said the contractors are currently in the process of building their project team and have not yet determined any subcontractors; the Multistate Trust encourages the firms to hire and subcontract locally.
SR&R was founded in 1991 to respond to the growing amount of chemical and oil spills in eastern North Carolina. It is an EPA-approved waste transporter that provides industrial cleaning, spill response, remediation, and waste management services.
In addition to excavation, the company will provide clean backfill of dug out areas, surveying, and manage any debris left over from previous site areas. Contaminated soil will be transported to onsite stockpile locations; SR&R will be responsible for management of the stockpile.
Woods told PCD the project intends to contribute to the regional economy and provide training opportunities to local companies.
“Our goal is always to put the cleanup funds that we have back into the community,” she said.
Brunswick County NAACP president Carl Parker, president of Carl and Son’s — and of Gullah heritage — noted his firm is undertaking a class with Brunswick Community College to receive a Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response (Hazwoper) certificate for qualification to work on the site.
“We’re really pleased we were able to select two qualified local firms and they’re working together really, really well,” Woods said.
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