Shelby County Groundwater Quality Control board

Corey Owens/Greater Memphis Chamber

A diagram shows the layer of aquifers underneath Memphis.

Carrier Corp.’s plan to inject 400 gallons of treated wastewater into the Memphis Sand Aquifer every minute was paused Monday by the Shelby County Groundwater Quality Control (SCGQC) board.

The air-conditioning and refrigeration system manufacturer’s Collierville plant is a federal Superfund site with high levels of trichloroethylene (TCE) and hexavalent chromium. Both contaminants have been found in shallow parts of the aquifer under the plant.

Its current water-treatment process could be more efficient, a consultant to the company said. But the new plan would inject its treated wastewater deep into the aquifer, the source of Memphis’ famously pure drinking water. Experts familiar with the plan at the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) said the plan could put the “Memphis Sand Aquifer at risk of greater contamination.”

SCGQC board chairman Tim Herndon said “what bothers me is that you’re saying, ‘oh yeah, just let us get started and let us dump all this stuff into our aquifer.’” Many on the board had similar questions. Carrier’s request was paused to a later meeting in March.

Benjamin Brantley, working on the project for Carrier with environmental consultants Ensafe, said the company is not “recklessly dumping stuff into the aquifer.” Instead, he said the whole plan was created and vetted with Ensafe by officials with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

However, Herndon said he was skittish about those agencies as they installed an injection well on the Smalley-Piper site, without the groundwater board’s approval.

Carrier now cleans its water with onsite strippers and moves it to a Collierville-owned water treatment facility, adjacent to the Carrier site. That water is mingled with the rest of Collierville’s waste water and flowed into the Wolf River.

Carrier wants to move two wells farther south on its property off Byhalia Road. It would move the wells away from the nearby Smalley-Piper Superfund site, another contaminated site with high levels of chromium. The new wells would also pull water from the top of the aquifer where much of the contamination sits under the Carrier plant.

The plan would also allow its pumps to run all the time, cleaning more water. The water would filter through two towers where the contaminants would be stripped of contaminants, according Brantley. Then, the water would be pumped over to that water treatment facility owned by the city of Collierville. From there, it would be pumped into existing wells under the facility deep into the Memphis Sand Aquifer, instead of flowing it into the Wolf River.

Toby Sells

Benjamin Brantley, working on the project for Carrier with environmental consultants Ensafe, presents his plan Tuesday.

Brantley said the water that would be pumped into the aquifer would be cleaned to “drinking-water standards.” However, Brantley admitted telling people they are drinking water from a Superfund site is a “tough sell.” He said, too, that pumping 200 million gallons of clean water back into the deeper parts of the aquifer would help to clean the aquifer.

The plan was denied by the Shelby County Health Department in October. It was then appealed to the groundwater board.

The SELC asked the groundwater board here to deny the appeal, in a letter written on behalf of Protect Our Aquifer and the Tennessee Chapter of the Sierra Club. In it, the group said Carrier’s plan is illegal as “injection wells are expressly prohibited by Shelby County and the Well Code does not authorize any variances allowing injection wells.”

“Carrier Corporation’s proposal provides a good example of why Shelby County is right to prohibit injection wells without any exceptions,” reads the letter. “These injection wells would be installed in the midst of Carrier Corporation’s own TCE contaminated groundwater plume and the chromium plume, threatening to mobilize those contaminants even deeper into the Memphis Sand Aquifer, which serves as the drinking water source for Collierville and Shelby County.”

Toby Sells

A protest sign from Kathleen Meier reads: ‘Carrier Corp. work on a better solution. Don’t poison Memphis.’

The SELC said Carrier’s Superfund site has extremely high levels of trichloroethylene (TCE) contamination. According to the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), exposure to TCE can affect the central nervous system with symptoms like dizziness, headaches, confusion, euphoria, facial numbness, and weakness. Studies report TCE exposure to be associated with several types of cancers in humans, especially kidney, liver, cervix, and in the lymphatic system, according to the EPA.

But the SELC said that Carrier also detected hexavalent chromium in the well it has proposed to use for injection. This state of the element chromium is “known to cause cancer. In addition, it targets the respiratory system, kidneys, liver, skin, and eyes,” according to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The SELC experts said Carrier’s hexavalent chromium was likely originally drawn from the adjacent Smalley-Piper Superfund site, for which EPA is responsible.

The Sierra Club was disappointed by the Shelby County Groundwater Quality Control Board’s recent denial of our appeal of the last two (out of five) permits that the Shelby County Health Department issued to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to place wells in the Memphis Sand Aquifer. The stated intent of these wells is to provide the 3.5 to 5 million gallons of cooling water that will be lost to evaporation every day in the operation of a new natural gas plant.

We don’t hold it against the board. They were only asked to rule on whether the Health Department followed the rules that the board promulgated nearly 30 years ago. The board did not rule on the merits of our argument — that TVA’s wells may pose a threat to the future quality of our drinking water by inducing the downward leakage of lower quality water from the surficial aquifer through breaches in the confining clay layer that protects the Memphis Sand.

We are pleased, however, that our arguments have resonated with the public, with elected officials, and with the professionals who manage the Health Department’s Division of Pollution Control. A broad consensus has developed that it is time to revisit the Well Permit Rules adopted in 1987.

That 1987 groundwater ordinance was progressive for its time, far surpassing state law. Commissioners rightly recognized the immense value that the high-quality water from the confined aquifers deep beneath Memphis — the Memphis Sand and Fort Pillow Sand — represented to our public health and local economy. They had the vision to implement policies to conserve this resource and protect it from pollution.

Our appeal of TVA’s permit did expose several deficiencies in the rules, and the Sierra Club is now working with Health Department and County Commissioners to address them:

1) There is no provision for public notice or participation in the permitting process. We believe that the Department should maintain a notification list and make permit applications available.

2) Subjective terms like “reasonable use” need to be further defined. The criteria and procedures by which justification of need or exceptions are determined require more clarity, and the process needs to be much more robust and subject to public comment.

3) The appeal process appears to have been meant for those who have been denied a permit, rather than those who disagree with permits that were granted contrary to the intent of the rules. The time gaps between notice of issuance, deadline to file an appeal, and the hearing of the appeal need to be lengthened to allow a fair hearing of appeals.

4) At the recent hearing, the Sierra Club was not allowed to call experts from the University of Memphis Center for Applied Earth Science and Engineering Research (CAESER) or the United States Geological Survey (USGS) as witnesses, nor was the board allowed to ask them to answer any questions. The presence of such experts is essential if the board is to make science-based decisions.

5) TVA was allowed to act as a third party to the appeal, despite the fact that there is no provision for third-party intervention in the current ordinance. This allowed TVA undue influence over the rules of procedure and evidence.

6) As currently composed, the Shelby County Groundwater Quality Control Board does not adequately represent the public interest. The board should include more appointments from the public at large, specifically members who represent public health, conservation, and environmental justice interests.

7) There are several land use and/or facility siting decisions that may pose threats to our aquifers that should also be reviewed by the Groundwater Quality Control Board. These include zoning or permitting of sand and gravel mines, landfills, petroleum pipelines, and chemical or petroleum storage tanks.

The Sierra Club believes that the ideal permitting process would be similar to the Land Use Control Board’s procedure for planned developments. Well or other aquifer impacting permit applicants would file a permit. If more than 10,000 gallons per day, the public would be notified and would have 30 days to submit comments and request a public hearing.

At the permit hearing, the board would hear comments from the public and hear testimony from experts from the University of Memphis, U.S. Geological Society, and others. If contested, the board would vote and forward a recommendation to the Shelby County Commission for final decision. If the commission’s decision is appealed by either party, it would be heard by a court of competent jurisdiction.

It’s our water, and the water is our future.

Scott Banbury is conservation program coordinator for the Tennessee chapter of the Sierra Club.