Where to dump 230 acres of arsenic-contaminated soil slated for removal from the Barbers Orchard subdivision in Haywood County could put property owners in the Balsam subdivision at odds with other county residents.

Property owners cannot build homes on vacant lots until the contaminated soil is removed. But the clean-up will cost the federal government $40 million and could take up to 10 years — holding in limbo property owners who are unable to sell their lots nor build on them until they are decontaminated.

David Miller, a property owner in Barbers Orchard, said the building ban is an illegal infringement on property rights and has devalued his property to nothing.

“Here we are paying taxes on a worthless piece of property,” said Miller.

There is one route the county could take to help the property get cleaned up quicker — allow the contaminated soil to be dumped in the county landfill rather than hauled to Tennessee as planned. It could cut the clean-up cost and duration in half, according to Paul Bornholm with the Environmental Protection Agency.

While this option would likely appeal to Barbers Orchard property owners, county leaders are hesitant to open up the county landfill for the contaminated soil as it would lop 10 years off the life of the landfill, which otherwise would last the county until about 2040.

“There’s so much dirt that has to be taken out of Barbers Orchard, that it would completely fill up our existing cell. What would we do with our garbage then?” asked County Manager Jack Horton.

The county opened the White Oak landfill in 1993. So far the county has used up a 10-acre and three-acre unit. The county last year opened a new 10-acre unit. The contaminated soil would completely fill that unit, requiring the county to open a new one.

At $300,000 an acre for lined landfill space, it would cost the county $3 million to build a new unit to make room for the Barber Orchard dirt. It would also decrease the overall life of the landfill, Horton said.

The cost would be offset, however. The county would charge the regular dumping fee of $38 a ton for all the contaminated soil, Horton said. In addition, the county could try to get financial assistance to open a new landfill unit, and then use the contaminated soil as cover to spread over layers of trash in other units.

“It’s worth considering if it could benefit the (Barbers Orchard) residents and the landfill,” Horton said.

Another problem, however, is what to do with the rainwater that trickles through the landfill. Typically, a lining under the landfill collects the rainwater in a basin. It is then pumped out and trucked to Waynesville’s sewer treatment plant. Whether the sewer plant could properly treat water with arsenic contamination is unknown and could kill the deal, Horton said.

Lowering the bar

The Barbers Orchard subdivision is located on the site of a former apple orchard that used an underground pipe network to distribute pesticides. Corroded pipes allowed the arsenic-based pesticide to leach into the soil over time, and areas where the pesticides were mixed also have high contamination levels.

When contamination was discovered in the late 1990s, the EPA led a multi-million dollar emergency clean-up effort of contaminated lots occupied with homes. Vacant lots were not included in the initial clean-up.

The scope of contamination was “more widespread” than expected, according to Bornholm.

In the initial clean-up that focused on occupied lots, about 43 percent of the 65 lots sampled were contaminated. The ensuing soil tests of the entire subdivision showed that 60 percent of the remaining acreage is contaminated.

The EPA initially planned to clean-up all lots with greater than 20 parts per billion. Now the EPA is considering lowering the bar, and only cleaning up sites that register above 40 parts per billion, Bornholm said.

But this would only spare a few subdivision lots from clean-up, Bornholm said. Most contaminated lots either registered in the 80 parts per billion range or weren’t contaminated at all, Bornholm said.