Fike Chemical is a former
heavy chemical company and notorious
superfund
Superfund is a United States federal environmental remediation program established by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA). The program is administered by the United States Environmental Pro ...
site in
Nitro, West Virginia. Founded by Elmer Fike in 1971 in the buildings of a
World War One government
nitrocellulose plant, the 11-acre factory specialized in taking on jobs that larger chemical companies would ignore. To make this profitable, the company did no
waste remediation, dumping hazardous chemicals into unmarked
55-gallon drum
A drum (also called a barrel) is a cylinder (geometry), cylindrical shipping container used for shipping bulk cargo. Drums can be made of steel, dense paperboard (commonly called a fiber drum), or plastic, and are generally used for the transpor ...
s and open-pit lagoons on the site, next to the
Kanawha River.
The site was subject to continual problems. In one infamous example, the company had agreed to dispose of the
sodium coolant from the closed
Fermi 1
Fermi 1 was the United States' only demonstration-scale breeder reactor, built during the 1950s at the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station on the western shore of Lake Erie south of Detroit, Michigan. It used the sodium-cooled fast reactor cyc ...
nuclear reactor, which they did by dumping it in a WWI-era bunker. Rain began to leak in, causing the sodium to explode and requiring the town to shelter in their homes while the fire was put out over a 12 hour period. This was only one of several newsworthy incidents which eventually attracted the attention of
60 Minutes
''60 Minutes'' is an American television news magazine broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program was created by Don Hewitt and Bill Leonard, who chose to set it apart from other news programs by using a unique styl ...
where
Lesley Stahl
Lesley Rene Stahl (born December 16, 1941) is an American television journalist. She has spent most of her career with CBS News, where she began as a producer in 1971. Since 1991, she has reported for CBS's ''60 Minutes''. She is known for her ne ...
introduced the segment stating "Now we take you to the messiest place we've ever been".
The 60 Minutes segment attracted the attention of the
Environmental Protection Agency
A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...
(EPA). They admitted the site "fell through the cracks". By 1982 they had reached an agreement with Fike on soil and water testing and remediation of the site. In 1983, the EPA was told by the mayor that Fike had laid everyone off and abandoned the site. Throughout, Fike complained about government oversight and claimed it was their fault he went out of business.
Fike sold the site to Artel Chemical in 1986, but they closed the plant in 1988. In June 1988 the EPA sent in teams to clean it up, finding an unsecured cylinder of
hydrogen cyanide
Hydrogen cyanide, sometimes called prussic acid, is a chemical compound with the formula HCN and structure . It is a colorless, extremely poisonous, and flammable liquid that boils slightly above room temperature, at . HCN is produced on an ...
, remaining sodium metal, a huge tank of flammable
methyl mercaptan, 10,000 unlabeled barrels with
volatile organic compounds and other dangerous chemicals, and high
dioxin
Dioxin may refer to:
* 1,2-Dioxin or 1,4-Dioxin, two unsaturated heterocyclic 6-membered rings where two carbon atoms have been replaced by oxygen atoms, giving the molecular formula C4H4O2
*Dibenzo-1,4-dioxin, the parent compound also known as ...
levels in the ground. After cleanup, in May 1999 the EPA transferred the property to the Nitro Development Authority. All major cleanup was considered complete in 2011, which showed no residual leakage into the river. Monitoring of the aquifer continues.
References
Citations
Bibliography
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Superfund sites in West Virginia