Helena Chemical Company

• Site Profile
• Administrative Record Index (PDF): OU1 (11 pp., 425K), ESD (1 pp., 24K)
• Helena Chemical Company (Tampa Plant) Reuse Fact Sheet (PDF: 1 pp, 769K)
• Additional Site Documents including Five Year Reviews, Records of Decisions (ROD) and Explanation of Significant Differences (ESD).
• For documents not available on the website, please contact the Region 4 Freedom of Information Office (http://www.epa.gov/region4/foiapgs/submit.htm).

Site Description
The Helena Chemical Company Site located in Tampa, Hillsborough County, Florida is located in the Orient Park Industrial area. The Site is an active facility.  The main operating portion of the facility covers approximately eight acres. The facility was built in 1929 as a chemical plant for the production of sulfur. The initial owners manufactured wettable and dusting sulfur and formulated pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and fertilizers. Helena Chemical Company purchased the facility in 1967. From 1967 to 1981, Helena Chemical Company produced wettable dusting sulfur and formulated pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and liquid and dry fertilizers.

Site Responsibility: This site is being addressed through responsible party’s actions.

Threats and Contaminants
Studies have documented soil contamination by pesticides related to former operations by Helena Chemical Company and its predecessors. Groundwater contamination of the surficial aquifer and Hawthorn Formation’s semi-confining unit also exists, but to a much lesser extent. Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services (FHRS), in cooperation with the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), prepared a public health assessment in September 1993. In that report, FHRS expressed concern for on-site worker contact with contaminated soils and exposure to sediments and groundwater.

Cleanup Approach
EPA issued a Record of Decision (ROD) in May 1996 outlining the selected remedy and contingency remedy for the Site. The selected remedy includes biological treatment (i.e., bioremediation) of pesticides and other site-related contaminants located in surface soils and sediments to levels appropriate for future industrial use of the Site. In addition, the selected remedy includes groundwater recovery and treatment to remove pesticides and other site related contaminants.

Response Action Status

Removal of the pesticide contaminated soils was completed in September 2000. Approximately 7,700 tons of contaminated soil were excavated and shipped off-site for biological treatment and disposal at the WMI facility Carlyss, Louisiana.

The remedial design (RD) for treatment of contaminated groundwater has been delayed due to the discovery of an adjacent facility, Alaric Area Groundwater Plume Site, where volatile organic compounds discharged onto the ground have migrated into the groundwater and appear to be commingling with the western portion of the groundwater plume from the Helena Chemical Site.  Sampling of the Site’s groundwater was initiated in late December 2006 and continued through 2007.  This sampling was designed to determine whether the data exist to support an amendment to the ROD.  The amendment proposed by the responsible party would modify the selected remedy for the Site’s groundwater from groundwater containment to monitored natural attenuation.  This proposal was not received well by EPA and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.  As a result, in September 2008 the responsible party proposed a series of pilot-scale treatability studies designed to evaluate the degration of both the remaining low-level pesticide plume, as well as the xylene source area.  The draft Work Plan for these studies was received during the week of March 23rd 2009 and was reviewed and commented on by both EPA and FDEP.  Field work for the pilot-scale studies are scheduled to start in August 2009.  Results of the 2007 sampling indicate generally low-level pesticide concentrations, however, above the ROD’s clean-up goals.  A source area of xylene remains on the Helena Chemical property, with a shallow xylene plume migrating in a southeasterly direction.

Between late April and mid-June 2004, approximately 1,824 tons of sulfur-contaminated soil were removed and shipped to Carlyss, LA for treatment and disposal.  After removal of the sulfur, lime was mixed into the remaining soil, in order to neutralize the sulfuric acid created through the interaction of the sulfur and groundwater present at four feet below land surface.  An additional 1,146 tons of bulk sulfur were removed during the spring of 2005.  Lime was also mixed into the unexcavated soil, as described above.   As of mid-2007, the addition of lime appears to have had minimal effects on area with very low pH.

The site’s first Five Year Review Report was concluded in January 2006.  The link to the Report is: http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/fiveyear/f0604002.pdf.

Site Repository
University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Avenue, Tampa, FL 33620
EPA Region IV Superfund Records Center, 66 Forsyth Street, Atlanta,  GA 30303