SEPTA, EPA argue over PCB runoff plans in U.S. Court

By Frank Laylor, Suburban Staff Writer

At presstime Wednesday, a federal court ruling was pending on which of two measures will be taken to keep toxic PCB in the Paoli railyard out of neighboring homes.

SEPTA contends that a water containment and diversion system intended for the site by the Environmental Protection Agency would, in the words of an affidavit read in court, “shut down the Paoli yard and, consequently, the entire commuter rail system.”

SEPTA officials turned away EPA workers who had come to install the system on Aug. 18.

In place of the EPA action, SEPTA is proposing a “remedial investigation and feasibility study” that could last a year and would address the effects of the PCB on both railroad workers and neighbors and gauge the extent of PCB-contamination soil erosion.

At a hearing on the matter Tuesday, SEPTA and EPA attorneys disputed the measure of danger posed by the erosion of soil at the railyard.

“The fact is, that Paoli is simply not that dangerous a site,” SEPTA Attorney Gary Windkoop told U.S. District Court Judge Anthony Scirica.

“The EPA has stirred people up.”

Windkoop based that conclusion on the fact that the Paoli railyard has yet to appear on any of the EPA’s priority lists for hazardous waste sites, even after the latest round of samples triggered an EPA emergency action in February.

Windkoop also said that a recent series of tests of railyard workers turned up “absolutely no adverse physical conditions.”

Judge Scirica observed that there would be no reason for the hearing if Paoli was on the EPA’s priority list.

Assistant U.S. Attorney, Stephen J. Engelmayer, who represented EPA, called the Paoli contamination “as serious a problem as we’ve bumped into” regionally.

“There is very serious consideration being given to putting Paoli on the national priorities list,’ said Engelmayer.

“Its not up to those who created the problem to analyze it, categorize it, and act on it. Congress has said that's the EPA's job.”

“We've had every defendant sitting at that table ignoring the problem for the last five or six years”.

Windkoop was accompanied by attorneys for Conrail and Amtrak, co-defendants with SEPTA in an ongoing suit brought by the Justice Department on behalf of the EPA to affix the liability of the eventual costs of a permanent clean up of the site.

Windkoop claimed that the $300,000 sediment control system proposed by the EPA was too expensive and less expedient than the other alternatives.

SEPTA agrees with some sediment filters, but not on the scale the EPA is intending. Basically, SEPTA opposes the series of four sediment retainment basins and concrete dykes the EPA wants to install to channel water and catch run off long enough for ...

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Suburban and Wayne Times, 8/28/1985.

Found by Greg Prichard.

Note - photos of a 1986 demonstration in Paoli are available in the Image Database as are photos of the railyard from that period.