Decommissioned Substation Soil To Be Tested

Fairhope, Alabama 

 

Former Nichols Avenue substation.

 

Former Church Street substation.

 

EPA REQUIREMENT

Southern Earth Sciences of Mobile was selected to perform testing for Polychlorinated  Biphenyls (PCBs) at the former sites of electrical substations on Nichols Avenue and Church Street -- for a cost of $26K.

50 boring samples (1 foot deep) will be taken at Church for lab-testing, and 78 at Nichols with an additional 30 "wipe swipes" on remaining equipment there as well. 

The Church Street site is owned by the Single Tax Corporation and future use is up to them; the Nichols one is city property and neighborhood residents are proposing for it be used as a park.

From Wikipedia: 

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are highly carcinogenic chemical compounds, formerly used in industrial and consumer products, whose production was banned in the United States by the Toxic Substances Control Act in 1979 and internationally by the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants in 2001. They are organic chlorine compounds with the formula C₁₂H_10−xCl_x; they were once widely used in the manufacture of carbonless copy paper, as heat transfer fluids, and as dielectric and coolant fluids for electrical equipment.^[2]