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- The Escambia Wood Treating Company (ETC) site is located at 3910 Palafox Highway, northeast of the intersection of Fairfield Drive in Pensacola, Florida, and is in a mixed industrial, commercial, and residential area. The site includes the 26-acre property of the former wood preserving facility and over 60 acres of nearby neighborhoods. The facility was in operation from 1942 until 1982, then abandoned by the owner in 1991. During its operation, ETC treated utility poles, foundation pilings, and lumber with creosote and pentachlorophenol. Production byproducts were dumped into on-site, unlined containment pits where they seeped into the surrounding soil and groundwater. Escambia Wood Treating Company The site sits above the aquifer which supplies drinking water to the county's residents and also flows into Bayou Texar and Escambia Bay. Contaminants from ETC have affected surface soils at the facility and surrounding areas, and have leached into the groundwater, causing a plume that extends approximately 1.3 miles from the site. A second Superfund site, the Agrico Co. site, is located near ETC, causing additional soil and groundwater contamination. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is the lead agency for the ETC site cleanup, and site remediation is being conducted and financed through Superfund with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP). In 1992 the EPA excavated around 255,000 cubic yards of soil on the ETC property, which was mounded onsite and covered with a tarp. This mound of contaminated soil became known to the local community as “Mount Dioxin.” ETC was added to the EPA's Superfund National Priorities List in 1994. Site clean up, including the removal of Mount Dioxin, did not begin until 2005, and is currently on-going. In 1997 the EPA's National Relocation Pilot Project began the relocation of 358 households affected by contaminants from ETC. In 2006, an additional 46 households were identified as being directly impacted by contamination, and the relocation of these families was completed in 2009. The removal of these residential areas was the third largest Superfund relocation initiated by the EPA, after Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York and Times Beach, Missouri. The neighborhoods surrounding the ETC were composed primarily of low-income African Americans in single family houses and federally subsidized apartment buildings. Residents were concerned by contaminants from the ETC, including creosote-related compounds, pentachlorophenol and dioxin, which occurred as an impurity in pentachlorophenol. The affected residents formed a grassroots environmental justice community, Citizens Against Toxic Exposure (CATE), to bring their concerns to the involved government agencies. CATE has been extremely effective at forcefully dealing with the government, obtaining congressional support, news media attention, and the assistance of national organizations. (en)
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- The Escambia Wood Treating Company (ETC) site is located at 3910 Palafox Highway, northeast of the intersection of Fairfield Drive in Pensacola, Florida, and is in a mixed industrial, commercial, and residential area. The site includes the 26-acre property of the former wood preserving facility and over 60 acres of nearby neighborhoods. The facility was in operation from 1942 until 1982, then abandoned by the owner in 1991. During its operation, ETC treated utility poles, foundation pilings, and lumber with creosote and pentachlorophenol. Production byproducts were dumped into on-site, unlined containment pits where they seeped into the surrounding soil and groundwater. Escambia Wood Treating Company (en)
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