The Villa Mobile Home Park Battery Dump Site (the Site) is isolated to a small portion of the Villa Mobile Home Park located in Kannapolis, Cabarrus County, North Carolina. The mobile home park is comprised of several parcels over 10 acres of land containing approximately 54 mobile homes. It is bound to the north and west by Verona Street, to the south by Irene Street and to the east by McLain Road. The primary area of concern is located to the southeast of the intersection of Verona and Venice Streets. The surrounding land use to the north, south and west is residential. The area to the east is wooded.
On June 17, 2010 a complaint was received by the City of Kannapolis regarding battery casings found in an open channel portion of a drainage culvert at the Villa Mobile Home Park. The extent of the buried battery casings and associated contamination is unknown at this time, although estimated to be contained within three parcels of the property. In August of 2010 DENR and TetraTech, contractor to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Emergency Response and Removal Branch (ERRB), observed layers of battery chips throughout the banks of the open channel. Analytical sampling identified one soil sample and its duplicate with lead concentrations of 4,130 and 5,400 milligrams/kilogram (mg/kg), an order of magnitude higher than the EPA Regional Screening Level (RSL) of 400 mg/kg for residential soils. Corrective measures voluntarily conducted in 2010 by the Potentially Responsible Party (PRP) included covering the exposed soil and battery casing pieces with a plastic liner and large rip rap rock. Subsequent to this action, erosion in the area damaged the protective cover on the bed and banks of the stream, exposing battery chips. In November 2011 NCDENR Inactive Hazardous Site Branch (IHSB) contracted S&ME to further assess the soils containing battery casings. In February and March 2012, S&ME excavated and documented nine test pits in the area where the battery casings were present in order to delineate the horizontal and vertical extent of battery casings in the vicinity of the open channel.
