The Velsicol plant in North Memphis (Photo: Ashli Blow)
Velsicol, a legacy polluter that manufactured pesticides, is proposing to hand over its 83-acre defunct facility in North Memphis to Tennessee as an environmental response trust. Should the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) accept a settlement agreement from the company, the state will be left to determine what to do with wide-ranging contamination including a baseball diamond-shaped pile of hazardous waste and a fluctuating groundwater plume of chemicals beneath it.
The proposal comes after the company faced questions this fall from environmental regulators and bankruptcy attorneys about inappropriate management and potentially fraudulent activity.
These new allegations shocked environmental justice advocates and residents in the historically Black community neighboring Velsicol. They have long expressed frustration over the company’s slow efforts to clean up, now more than 20 years in the making.
The North Memphis plant’s closure in 2012 was already a staggering delay compared to the nationwide action prompted by Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring, which exposed reckless pesticide production and application. As environmental policy changed and Velsicol plants shut down nationally in response, the Memphis facility continued creating these chemicals from a bygone era through the turn of the 21st century.
But even without a plant, the company has continued brokering chemicals in Memphis under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), a federal law designed to protect human health and the environment from hazardous waste disposal. Over the last few months, Velsicol has been undergoing its once-in-a-decade renewal process for its RCRA permit.
In September, the TDEC sent a “Notice of Deficiency” to the company that their RCRA application was incomplete, followed by 36 pages outlining missing data and unsatisfactory plans for soil contamination across its property. Now, Velsicol is proposing that it pay a $3 million settlement to TDEC over five years in exchange for a release of their permit obligations. TDEC estimates the company is still responsible for between $137 and $143 million in cleanup costs, according to claims it has filed as part of Velsicol’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case. Velsicol did not respond to the Lookout’s request to comment, and TDEC declined citing pending litigation.
Velsicol disputes TDEC’s and other claims brought forth in its bankruptcy case, in which nearly 600 organizations allege that Velsicol owes them money. Among them is the District of Columbia, whose Office of the Attorney General sued Velsicol in 2022 for contaminating local waterways and wants them to be held financially responsible.
The District of Columbia’s legal counsel filed a motion to investigate Velsicol’s financial condition in October. They presented evidence that company leadership received $10.6 million in salaries, expense reimbursements, bonuses, and consulting fees from 2012 to 2023.
“Investigation is needed to review the excessive transfers made to the shareholders over the past five years,” the counsel wrote in the motion, signed by attorney Kevin Morse. “In addition to potential fraudulent transfers prior to the bankruptcy, the District is very concerned about the viability of [Velsicol] moving forward.”
Paying for contamination
Moving forward, Velsicol as a company will no longer be in Memphis, should things go according to its plan of reorganization as filed in bankruptcy court this November. But its toxic legacy will be long felt.
It’s still deep in the Wolf River, where fish absorb chlordane as they swim through waters contaminated with the chemical, which doesn’t break down easily. If people eat these tainted fish they could experience tremors, convulsions, or even death. Velsicol produced chlordane — a by-product of a WWII nerve gas used by the Army — for commercial use starting in 1945. Although the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned its use in the 1980s, the Memphis plant continued to manufacture it as the sole producer in the U.S. through the 1990s for international export.
By the time the EPA banned it, more than 30 million homes and commercial buildings had been treated with chlordane, with the chemical washing into streams and rivers throughout the country like in Memphis and Washington, D.C., as detailed in the District of Columbia’s first complaint against the company. The District anticipates spending over $35 million to address contamination throughout the city.
A sign outside the Velsicol chemical plant. (Photo: Ashli Blow)
When 40 people gathered to hear about the future of a defunct chemical plant in North Memphis, many were surprised to learn the company has still been storing and shipping toxic materials for years.
Environmental advocates and residents met Velsicol Vice President George Harvell earlier this month at the Hollywood Community Center. Harvell organized this pre-application meeting as part of a mandatory step for his company to renew a state-sanctioned permit with Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC.)
For generations of Black families in the communities of Hollywood and Douglass Park, Velsicol’s toxic legacy is a familiar burden. Harvell recounted the company’s history during his presentation, citing familiar information about how Velsicol manufactured several pesticides that were later found to have harmful effects on both human health and the environment.
However, his presentation took an unexpected turn when he began discussing the storage of existing Velsicol products. People interjected with questions about how that was possible when the company stopped its chemical production in 2012. Warnings are posted at the Wolf River about the potential toxicity of fish caught there, a legacy of Velsicol.
Through Velsicol’s hazardous waste management permit, however, it is authorized to store and distribute chemicals including Hexachlorocyclopentadiene, also commonly referred to as hex. Used in flame retardants and pesticides, hex is a manufactured chemical that does not occur naturally.
Warnings are posted at the Wolf River about the potential toxicity of fish caught there, a legacy of Velsicol. (Photo: Ashli Blow
Harvell gave conflicting remarks on the current source and acquisition of hex prior to storage at the Memphis facility. At the start of his presentation, Harvell said, “Velsicol is not manufacturing any products anywhere in the world, and we just broker chemicals.”
Moments later, he detailed “the four main products that Velsicol manufactures.” These four chemical products, including hex, are prominently advertised on Velsicol’s website.
As people asked for clarification about the product development in the meeting, Harvell backtracked, explaining, “I misspoke, but we’re not manufacturing. We’re storing them in the warehouses.”
Harvell initially denied that the company is extracting chemicals from contaminated water and soil on its site and reselling them as these products. However, his responses became inconsistent when a resident directly asked, “Where are you getting them from?”
Storing and distributing legacy pollutants
Hex is a crucial component in now-banned pesticides such as chlordane, aldrin, dieldrin, and endrin – all of which are legacy chemicals that still contaminate soil and water on and around Velsicol’s Memphis facility to this day, although Velsicol does not manufacture it now.
Laboratory testing has identified chemical residue since the 1970s, when industrial hygienists reported excessive levels of hex to the EPA based on air sampling. Im 1982, a memo from the City of Memphis documented that soil samples taken from around the site exhibited the chemical’s oily-greasy nature and indicated the potential for hex preservation in the soil.
In the 1990s, Velsicol was the sole producer of chlordane in the United States, despite its banned status for use in the county. The Memphis plant continued to manufacture chlordane for international export. When it stopped production later that decade, the company then reported a subterranean plume of chemicals roughly the size of the Liberty Bowl stadium.
It contained 80,000 pounds of carbon tetrachloride.
According to the National Library of Medicine, hex can be produced as a byproduct of creating carbon tetrachloride. Recent reports filed with TDEC showed low levels of the hex compound remain on-site, while around 7,000 pounds of carbon tetrachloride persisted, as noted in the latest publicly available Corrective Action Effectiveness Report (CAER). These reports are required annually by TDEC, and David Winchell, a consultant for Velsicol and senior engineer with the firm WSP, signed the 2022 report.
During Thursday’s meeting, Winchell and Harvell took questions about if these legacy chemicals tie into their modern products, but they did not give straightforward answers.
When a woman in the meeting asked, “are those chemicals coming from out of the ground, because you’re cleaning up?” Winchell replied, “No, those are products. I’ll let George speak to that …”
Harvell continued, “Those four products, with the exception of hex, I don’t think we’re finding them on the plant side.”
The woman posed her question again, “Are they coming out of the ground?” Harvell empathically responded with “no.” She asked a third time about their origin, and in response, he said, “The carbon tetrachloride is coming out of the groundwater.”
Despite repeated inquiries from The Lookout to both TDEC and Velsicol regarding the specifics of extraction activities over the last decade and the remaining clean-up tasks, simple answers have not been provided.
The cost of clean up
Velsicol’s defunct 62-acre site in Memphis has led many residents to believe it’s a federal Superfund site, because of perceived inactivity and deteriorating infrastructure, though the EPA hasn’t listed it as such.
The facility is operating under a Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) permit, which allows Velsicol to legally store, treat and dispose of hazardous waste. Winchell and Harvell told people on Thursday they want to continue remediation of legacy pollutants, though it is unclear what is left to clean up.
In both federal programs, a distinction between RCRA and Superfund sites is that Superfund sites prioritize remediation and redevelopment, whereas RCRA is primarily focused on the management of hazardous waste. However, land reuse has successfully happened under RCRA permits.
The EPA typically designates a Superfund site when a company lacks the financial means to conduct clean-up or has abandoned its site.
The Memphis facility has faced several financial challenges over the decades. In 1986, people who lived near its rural dump site, then referred to by Velsicol as a farm, collectively filed a class-action lawsuit.
“Velsicol has taken the position that without the farm, the Memphis plant would close,” reads the court case. “Thus, the Court believes that it would be appropriate to deprive Velsicol of a reasonable part of the profit it made by improperly disposing of those chemical wastes to keep that plant open.”
The case raises questions about stockpiling chemicals and “unjust profits.” Attorneys argued that Velsicol may have pocketed between $23 and $63 million from not paying for proper chemical disposal, leading to significant settlements. The dump site later became a Superfund site, similar to the one in the Hollywood neighborhood, where Velsicol faced another class action lawsuit in 2008 for contamination, resulting in smaller settlements for affected residents.
During a months-long investigation into the Velsicol facility site in Memphis, The Lookout submitted a public records request to determine the company’s profits and clean-up expenditures over the past decade. The Tennessee Department of Revenue denied the request, citing sealed records.
Velsicol in Memphis is now navigating bankruptcy proceedings after filing for Chapter 11 in September. Discussions with the EPA and Department of Justice regarding future actions are underway, as confirmed by Harvell.
As part of the renewal process for Velsicol’s RCRA permit, the company must demonstrate to the state its financial ability to cover the costs of clean-up. In their previous permit renewal, Velsicol committed to providing $2.5 million for this purpose.
Velsicol is required to submit their current application to TDEC by April 3.
Following submission, TDEC will review and potentially revise the draft permit. This process can take over a year to complete, but in some cases, it can take as little as 60 days. If the review period is shorter, TDEC may hold public hearings on the draft permit as soon as this summer.
In the meantime, environmental justice movement organizers are trying to get a clearer picture of Velsicol’s present operations and upcoming plans.
The community wants more opportunities to engage with Velsicol over its redevelopment plans and federal funding opportunities, similar to those offered by the Superfund site process, particularly as the RCRA permit’s renewal occurs only once a decade — the only time public comment is required.
Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.
Entrance to a Memphis Velsicol plant. (Photo: Ashli Blow)
A chemical company in North Memphis that spent decades dumping toxic materials into waterways is looking to renew a state permit that would allow hazardous waste operations to continue at its defunct facility.
Unlike other Velsicol facilities across the United States that have become Superfund sites — a federal designation that allows the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to fund cleanup of contaminated areas — the Memphis location, 119 Warford St., has worked under a state-sanctioned permit since 2014. Under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) in Tennessee, companies can store, treat, and dispose of hazardous waste. The primary difference between the two is that RCRA addresses the management of hazardous waste and Superfund is geared toward the remediation of abandoned sites with contamination.
Environmental advocates and residents question whether a hazardous waste permit is the appropriate avenue for Velsicol or whether the company is using it as a means to circumvent national Superfund site status.
People will have a rare opportunity to ask during a public meeting on March 21 at 6 p.m. at the Hollywood Community Center, when Velsicol representatives plan to discuss its plans to renew and update its corrective action permit.
The public meeting comes in the wake of the company’s recent bankruptcy filing and their obligation to submit a new work plan to the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) to address contamination at a neighboring property, an affordable housing apartment complex.
“This [RCRA] permit is really supposed to be used for facilities that have hazardous materials on site … it’s not really supposed to be used for a long-term cleanup,” said Sarah Houston, executive director of watchdog group Protect Our Aquifer. “Really that should be something that has more federal oversight like the Superfund program, and we just see that this permitting structure has really made this a very slow cleanup process and isn’t doing the real due diligence of removing the toxins from the soil and the groundwater and really finishing the job.”
Velsicol created chemicals so dangerous that it changed environmental policy nationwide. Their pesticide production with chemicals like dieldrin and endrin became the center of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” published in 1962 and credited with the start of the modern environmental movement. Carson described the chemicals as the “elixirs of death” and warned of its neurological effects on people and wildlife, as well as its nearly irreversible pollution in ecosystems.
As America responded with federal regulation, such as banning chemicals for domestic use, Velsicol continued to make chemicals like chlordane through the early 1990s in Memphis — more than 30 years after the national reckoning. Meanwhile, the Black community around it was left to live with an enduring toxicity.
The Memphis facility closed in 2012, but to this day, as people pass by Velsicol, the 62-acre site appears unchanged from behind the chain-link fence. Many think it is a Superfund site, because of its appearance resembling that of a desolate lot.
The secretive operations of today’s Velsicol
In Southwest Tennessee, Velsicol is known for disposing of their chemicals in two landfills that became Superfund sites: One in the Hollywood community in Memphis and the other in Toone, an hour east of Memphis. Their cleanup at these dumps, and subsequent lawsuits and settlements, were heavily followed by mainstream media and politicians, but little public understanding exists about the facility where the chemicals were originally produced.
In anticipation of its permit renewal, something that only happens once every 10 years, the Lookout conducted a months-long investigation into Velsicol in 2022. We reviewed 125 public records that documented 40 years of its cleanup efforts. Under RCRA, Velsicol is required to submit a yearly Corrective Action Effectiveness Reports (CAER). To accurately understand the technical data in these reports, the Lookout talked to lawyers, policy analysts, and chemists who work with site remediation.
According to those reports, since 1999, Velsicol has been trying to reduce a fluctuating plume of chemicals beneath the facility that’s mass measured around 126 acres, which is roughly the size of Liberty Bowl stadium. The company calls the plume “under control.” It monitors a network of wells to calculate the boundary and weight of the plume, made mostly of carbon tetrachloride – a chemical used as house cleaner that is now also banned for consumer use by the EPA.
Their plume has decreased from over 80,000 pounds to 7,000 pounds of chemicals over 20 years.
“The fact that they have removed 90 percent doesn’t mean that it’s 90 percent less toxic. There’s much more in terms of threat and potential injury than just the total,” Christopher Reddy, a marine chemist who analyzes drinking water for pollutants, including pesticides, told The Lookout in 2022.
Velsicol reported to TDEC that it extracted another 2,659 pounds as of 2023, and it is unclear how much of the plume remains.
Scientists such as Reddy and advocates like Houston express concern about lingering chemicals and the groundwater’s flow, as these concentrations of chemicals may move downward into the ground and potentially reach layers of the Memphis Sand Aquifer, the primary drinking water source for over one million residents in the region.
But there are even more concerns about what lies above the surface.
Bankruptcy, residential contamination
Guided by RCRA regulations, the remediation for topical contamination in soil has unfolded gradually, marked by a series of inspections, investigations, action plans, status reports, and investigations.
During their permit tenure, Velsicol incurred minor violations from TDEC for mislabeling materials. However, following The Lookout investigation, Velsicol faced a different array of violations and deficiency notices from TDEC.
Last August, when attempting to file its latest CAER, Velsicol submitted a document that did not include analytical laboratory reports. This January, TDEC gave Velsicol a violation for not having documentation of hazardous waste management training in recent years. According to monitoring reports filed over the last decade, Velsicol employs two people at its Memphis facility.
The fact that they have removed 90 percent doesn’t mean that it’s 90 percent less toxic. There’s much more in terms of threat and potential injury than just the total.
– Christopher Reddy, marine chemist
TDEC is also now requiring that Velsicol submit an interim measures work plan by the end of April to address contamination at the neighboring Cypress Gardens Apartments on 1215 Springdale Street. The property manager of the affordable housing apartment complex hired an independent environmental consulting agency, Tioga, to collect soil samples. The Lookout reached out to the property manager, but they did not respond to comment.
Tioga took the tests to a lab that found several pesticides including aldrin and endrin with dieldrin exceeding the EPA’s contamination limit for residential properties.
“The findings of this assessment indicate that soil contamination associated with the former Velsicol plant still remains on the property and could potentially post a continued risk,” said the report, signed by Tioga Geologist John Luke Hall.
The report specified that the western building alongside Cypress Creek, where Velsicol disposed of their hazardous waste for years, was most at risk. The environmental consultants recommended the removal of the soil between the apartment building and Cypress Creek.
It would be a part of existing work that Velsicol does to extract patches of contaminated soil on its property, where a baseball diamond-shaped consolidation pile at the northwest corner of its property Each time soil is added to the pile, a tarp-like impermeable liner is put over it and welded into place. Eventually, the pile will be capped and “monitored in perpetuity to ensure the cap is not compromised.
“[The permit] comes around every decade,” said Kathy Yancey-Temple. “So we’re here again, and we have to fight them off again.” (Photo: Ashli Blow)
The Lookout reached out to Velsicol’s Vice President George Harvell for comment, but he had not responded to our request by the publication of this article.
Velsicol Chemical LLC and its parent corporations filed for bankruptcy in September, and Harvell wrote in a letter to TDEC that the company plans to reorganize. It’s a similar step that the Velsicol plant in Michigan, which operated under a different corporate parent, took, also filing for bankruptcy and relying on the EPA and State of Michigan for funding to clean up its site. It’s now one of the country’s costliest Superfund sites.
“[The permit] comes around every decade,” said Kathy Yancey-Temple. “So we’re here again, and we have to fight them off again.” (Photo: Ashli Blow)
Kathy Yancey-Temple lives near the Velsicol facility in Douglass Park, a historic community established by a formerly enslaved individual to provide safe property ownership for Black families during the Reconstruction era. The neighborhood is now surrounded by industry.
Yancey-Temple believes that Velsicol’s toxic practices have been at the expense of her community’s health and livelihoods.
As an organizer for the Center for Transforming Communities, Yancey-Temple has had difficulties in getting clear answers about the company’s actions over the past decade, submitting her own public record requests to the state for information. Despite her efforts, neither she nor other community members have received outreach from the company about health implications of the contaminants that linger.
Years of committed environmental justice advocacy efforts played a crucial role in the company’s closure. Yancey-Temple is confident that continued community organizing can be instrumental in navigating this next phase and advocating for a thorough cleanup to conclude, allowing the property to be redeveloped.
“[The permit] comes around every decade,” she said. “So we’re here again, and we have to fight them off again.”
Tennessee Lookoutis part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.
