![]() Unfortunately, now they've dragged this process out," he says.Īndrea Blackford, a spokesperson for Alexandria, said city staff is reviewing the lawsuit filed by the Potomac Riverkeeper Network. "They asked us to work with them in a proactive way. Naujoks says his group first met with Alexandria officials about the issue in 2016. "We just feel like we had to take action on this." "They promised that they would fix it and we still have all these problems and it hasn't been resolved," says Naujoks. District Court in Alexandria earlier this month, the city's fixes so far haven't worked. Alexandria then entered into a voluntary remediation program with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.īut according to the suit, filed in the U.S. Coast Guard notified the city it must immediately address the ongoing releases. ![]() Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Work to fix the problem started after the U.S. The first discharges were reported in 1975, according to the city. But along the way, the pipe picked up pollution from the gas plant, discharging toxic chemicals along with the stormwater. In the course of redevelopment, a new stormwater pipe was put in adjacent to the old gas plant, to drain rainfall from the streets into the river. The discharges from the pipe began after the gasworks site was redeveloped in the 1970s, replaced by townhouses and offices. There are between 3,000 and 5,000 old manufactured gas plant sites around the country, according to the EPA. Many of these chemicals are considered by health agencies to be probable human carcinogens. That pollution now gets into the river via a stormwater pipe that discharges at the northern end of Founders Park.Ĭoal tar and other byproducts from manufactured gas plants contain polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, according to the EPA. In the process, it released plenty of air pollution - but even worse, it left behind a legacy of soil and groundwater contaminated with coal tar that has yet to be remediated more than 75 years after the plant closed. Between 18, the plant powered the city with coal-derived natural gas. The Alexandria manufactured gas plant was located in Old Town, near where Oronoco St. Before the advent of electricity, many communities, including Alexandria, had factories that used coal to produce natural gas - relied on at the time for household energy needs from lighting to heating to cooking. ![]() The source of the problem can be traced back to the mid-19th century. "We want them to fix the contamination problems that they've created." ![]() "The city of Alexandria owns this pollution," says Potomac Riverkeeper Dean Naujoks. The city of Alexandria, Virginia, has allowed toxic chemicals to discharge into the Potomac River for more than 45 years, and has not taken action to fix the problem, according to a new lawsuit by the Potomac Riverkeeper Network. An oily sheen in debris-filled water in Alexandria, Virginia. ![]()
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