"EPA: Clean Up at Navassa Will Take Years"

"NAVASSA, N.C. – Officials involved in cleaning up the contamination left here decades ago by a wood-treatment operation say the process will take years, but now that an initial investigation of the Superfund site is complete, a new phase in the effort is about to begin.

Federal, state and other officials updated town residents Tuesday for the first time in about a year on the status of the ongoing work at the former Kerr-McGee Chemical Corp. site. The 251-acre waterfront property in this Brunswick County town is where wood for railroad ties and telephone poles was pressure treated with creosote, a coal tar-based preservative, from 1936 until 1974. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the lead agency in the cleanup, placed the site on a national priority Superfund sites in 2010 because of contamination of groundwater, soils and sediments.

About 65 attended the meeting, including presenters, at the Navassa Community Center on Main Street."

Mark Hibbs reports for Coastal Review Online August 4, 2016.