Airplane Recycling Plant’s 30-year PCB Oil Problem, Hartford, Connecticut

The Problem: A massive industrial-grade salvage yard was designed to recycle discarded commercial airplanes. An exception was made to accept utility transformers for recycling. The utility company promised the transformers would be drained of PCB oil. PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, are highly toxic industrial compounds. The utility company lied. The utility transformers arrived with their internal PCB oil. The PCB oil waste in those days was not classified as contamination. When the laws changed in the mid-1980’s, PCB waste was reclassified as hazardous waste. Thus, the airplane recycling plant had widespread PCB impacts across the entire 20-acre property. After 35-years of costly investigation, including review by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the plant was shut down.  This led to financial failure of the company. Moreover, the property owner was unable to sell the property in its contaminated condition.

Our Solution: We assessed the property by individual parcel. My team reassessed multiple technical reports and constructed a comprehensive impact map revealing the impact extent of PCBs and other wastes. Our team drilled and sampled data gaps. These field findings completed the PCB investigation for one parcel. It took five months to write a comprehensive report. We covered the report costs and donated the comprehensive report to the USEPA. Our good will report resulted in reciprocal good will by the agency. The PCB case for one property parcel was granted this case closure. The remaining two parcels were scheduled for closure following investigation of the remaining data gaps.

The Benefit: Case closure of one property parcel enabled financial and liability relief to the property owner. The closure strategy for the remaining two parcels defined the shortest-practical path to exit this problem. The USEPA “no further action” letter granted a groundbreaking mixed residential-commercial re-use for this property in Hartford, CT. This increased the property value to benefit the property owner. This precedent also helped other PCB sites with a closure strategy based on this new agency policy.