THE polychlorinated biphenyl contamination cleanup in Tanapag is expected to go on for a few more months due to the discovery of additional areas with up to 5 parts per million of PCB.
Frank Ono, on-island representative of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said this means additional excavations and soil stockpiles.
“There are still areas that we need to clean up. So while we are still treating the remaining contaminated soil stockpiled, we will also be digging at other sites,” Ono said.
Several areas within and outside the old cemetery near Tanapag Elementary School have between 1 ppm and 2 ppm of PCBs.
Several small red flags near the graves had been put in place to mark the sampled areas.
A roadside area leading to the PCB treatment site had also been found to have contamination of between 1 ppm and 5 ppm of PCB.
With the recent approval of the Marianas Public Lands Authority, the excavations are set to begin in the next few days, Ono said.
The Army Corps and its contractor, Environmental Chemical Corp., are required to excavate and clean the contaminated areas to less than 1 ppm.
The excavations at these new sites will come at a time when the first batch of PCB residue had already been shipped out of Saipan.
Ono said the Army Corps and Environmental Chemical Corp. aim to complete the additional excavations before the onset of the typhoon season.
There are 20,000 tons of PCB-contaminated soil stockpiled at the treatment area. About 12,500 tons had already been treated. The Army Corps earlier targeted a July-August timeline for the completion of the treatment.
On Monday, 60 bags of PCB filter cake and 10 bags of liner waste were shipped out of Saipan.
They will be brought to Utah where one of the two existing PCB disposal sites in the U.S. is located.
