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Intermountain Waste Oil Refinery

Site Type: Final NPL City: Bountiful County: Davis Street Address: 995 South 500 West ZIP Code: 84010 EPA ID: UT0001277359 SSID: 085G Site Aliases: Intermountain Oil Congressional District: 1

 

Site Status & Updates

The 2008 five-year review report has been posted in the Site Documents section.

Site Description

The Intermountain Waste Oil Refinery site covers about two acres at 955 South 500 West in a residential/commercial area of Bountiful, Utah. Contaminants, such as solvents, have been found on the site and have contaminated the groundwater underlying the site. Drinking water has not been affected by this contamination.

A number of different reported operations have occurred at the site, including:

• The site was originally part of a brick manufacturing facility, encompassing about 20 acres.
• Handling and refining of waste oil at the site began in 1957 and continued for approximately 35 years before closing in May 1993.
• In the 1950s, an asphalt business was operating on the site.
• The Intermountain Oil Company (IOC) operation was originally a trucking business that hauled various petroleum products to customers from the site.
• The oil blending business commenced in the 1970s.

At the start of the oil blending business, green bottoms (a fraction of crude oil) were blended with diesel fuel and sold for dust control at coal mines. Over subsequent years, used oil replaced the green bottoms and the end product was sold to cement kilns for use as fuel. The used oil was collected from facilities in Utah, Nevada, Idaho, and Wyoming. Waste sludge was reportedly disposed of in an off-site landfill and waste water that may have remained after the treatment process was boiled off at the site. Above-ground tanks used by IOC were located in an unpaved area surrounded by a soil berm.

The business was cited a number of times by the Davis County Health Department and the State of Utah. Neighbors of the site complained of odors and health problems, which they believed were associated with the wastes at the site. The owners took steps to resolve some of these problems. The company forfeited its permit to operate on May 3, 1993.

In 1993, the owners dismantled the refinery and consolidated some wastes into a pile, then covered some of the area with several inches of gravel.

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Site Risk

The site is organized into two Operable Units (OUs). OU1 addresses soils, subsurface soils and potential contaminant sources on site, including tanks, drums and containers; OU2 addresses groundwater.

Under OU1 a human health and screening level ecological risk assessment was completed to determine the risk from soil contamination. The risk assessment determined accumulation of contaminant vapors inside a building constructed on the site would likely create unacceptable risk.

EPA performed a human health risk assessment under OU2 to evaluate potential hazards from exposure to groundwater contamination at the site. The OU2 Baseline Human Health Risk Assessment calculates the risk from three potential exposure pathways:

• Ingestion of groundwater as a drinking water source.
• Inhalation of volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) that are released into the air from indoor water uses.
• Inhalation of VOCs that are released from groundwater and migrate upward through the soil into indoor air.
• Other possible exposure pathways were judged to be sufficiently minor and quantitative evaluation was not completed.

For each of the above pathways, non-cancer and cancer risk for current of future on-site workers, or future residents was calculated. The only chemical that contributed non-cancer or cancer risk above a level of concern was trichloroethylene (TCE). For non-cancer and cancer risk, the exposure pathway of chief concern is ingestion, with a contribution from inhalation of vapors during water use. Both the non-cancer and cancer calculated risk is only slightly above the values that indicate there could be a potential health impact. Exposure to TCE could cause various health effects depending on the contaminant concentration and length of exposure. Breathing small amounts of TCE may cause headaches, dizziness, lung irritation, poor coordination, and difficulty concentrating. Drinking small amounts of TCE over long periods of time may cause liver and kidney damage, impaired immune system function, and impaired fetal development in pregnant women. The extent of some of these effects is not yet clear.

Media Affected	Contaminants	Source of Contamination
liquid waste, soil, groundwater	solvents	petroleum processing wastes

 

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Cleanup Progress

The site was proposed for listing on the National Priorities List (NPL) in October of 1999 and finalized on May 11, 2000. In March, 2001, the field investigation began. A chronology of milestones follows:

1996 & 1998: the Utah Department of Environmental Quality (UDEQ) conducted sampling on the site. Several solvents (bromochloromethane, 1,1-dichloroethane, and 1,1,1-trichloroethane) were identified in the sump located east of the laboratory, and groundwater samples collected from an on-site monitoring well contained solvents (1,2-dichlorethane, 1,2-dichloroethene, and trichloroethene).

2001: In August, EPA removed and disposed of numerous containers and their contents. The removal included: all the chemicals located in the laboratory building; 55-gallon drums and 5-gallon containers holding various chemical or oily mixtures; two trailer tanks and their contents; the contents of an underground storage tank discovered during the investigation; and contents of the sump stored above ground in the southeast portion of the site. In addition, debris located in various portions of the site was removed. The debris removal included: miscellaneous piping located at various areas around the site; scrap equipment; and empty tanks.

2002: The Record of Decision (ROD) for OU1 was published. The remedy concerned finding a solution to vapors from soil contamination. It was determined these vapors might pose a health risk for anyone residing in a building constructed on the site. The ROD required any buildings constructed on the site to have a system that would prevent soil vapors from entering the building. The specifications of this requirement were formalized in a property notice filed with the Davis County Clerk and Recorder's Office.

2004: The Record of Decision for OU2, which outlined the selected remedy, was signed in August. The remedy addressed the groundwater contamination through extraction treatment coupled with Dual Phase Extraction (DPE). Using DPE, both groundwater and soil vapors are extracted and treated from the same well. The remedy combines the two technologies to optimize the effectiveness of the groundwater extraction and treatment of probable contaminant source areas. The Preliminary Closeout Report (PCOR) was signed in October 2006 indicating the completion of OU2 construction.

2006: In February, the groundwater pump and treatment system was shut down after sampling showed TCE remains below the clean up goal or drinking water standard. A three month period of groundwater monitoring was conducted to ensure the clean up goal had been achieved. A legal settlement has been reached for the site.

Current Status: Groundwater cleanup goals were reached in early 2006, and the groundwater pump and treatment system was shut down. Groundwater monitoring will continue for several years to ensure the groundwater contamination remains below the maximum drinking water standards. Additionally, the site was sold in 2006 along with adjacent property. The new owner is working to put the site back into productive use.

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Community Involvement

EPA and UDEQ routinely conduct public meetings, issue fact sheets, and interview citizens to ensure that the community is heard by the regulatory agencies. The Administrative Record contains the documents and information that EPA used to make its final remedy (cleanup) selections.

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Site Documents

You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view some of the files on this page. See EPA's PDF page to learn more.

Note: Best way to open a very large file: right-click and save it to a folder.

Annual Update to the Five-Year Review, January 2011 (PDF, 1 pg, 16K)

First Five-Year Review Report, September 2008 (PDF, 72 pp, 8.1MB)

Update Fact Sheet, October 2006 (PDF, 2 pp, 120K)

OU2 Record of Decision, August 2004 (PDF, 52 pp, 1.4MB)

OU1 Record of Decision, November 2002 (PDF, 71 pp, 1.3MB)

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Contacts

 

View Documents at:

Davis County Library, South Branch
725 South Main Street
Bountiful, UT 84010
801-295-8732

EPA Superfund Records Center
1595 Wynkoop Street
Denver, CO 80202-1129
303-312-6473
800-227-8917 ext. 312-6473 (toll free Region 8 only)

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