Bush Site (aka Griswold Property and Western Lucas County Drum Site), located at approximately 10745-10839 Old State Line Road, Spencer Township, Lucas County, Ohio.
The Bush site is a former private residence where salvage and disposal activities occurred. The site accepted a wide variety of waste streams for processing and disposal. Drums of wastes were accepted at the site, some of which were characteristically hazardous. Salvage, burning, and surface disposal operations primarily occurred on the northern two-thirds of the site. If statements by the deceased former owners are accurate pertaining to waste disposal occurring prior to their ownership, it is possible that the wastes known to exist on all seven adjacent parcels (including Griswold’s) may have been part of a single larger surface and subsurface disposal operation. All of the staged drums on the surface of the Griswold site were removed in the early 1990s by U.S. EPA Removal Program. Some excavation areas reportedly had waste debris within open trenches, but it was not readily apparent if wastes were buried in trenches throughout the property.
Following the removal action in 1992, the local health department issued orders to David and Martha Griswold to properly characterize and remove the remaining solid wastes. Over the next several years, the local health department and county prosecutor attempted to enforce the original order and a subsequent court order to abate the solid waste violations. While some improvement was noted at the site by the late 1990s, most of the waste materials still remained on-site and are on-site as of the most recent assessment activities (OEPA Site Reassessment conducted in December 2012).
During the OEPA Site Reassessment, numerous large piles of aluminum dross were observed on the ground surface. Continued open dumping appears to remain a problem at this site due to the history of past dumping and salvage operations, and a lack of site security. A pile of waste asbestos pipe wrap was also observed, which was scheduled to be removed by Ohio EPA. Household wastes, appliances, construction debris, and tires remain on the site surface, and heavy metals and SVOCs are present in surface soils on-site. Former salvage and disposal operations at the Griswold site and adjacent properties also appear to contributing to ground water contamination in the shallow aquifer. VOCs and heavy metals are present in the shallow ground water aquifer beneath the site. Some VOCs detected in monitoring wells exceed their respective MCLs, however, all residential well samples which were collected were below MCLs . Multiple source areas are suspected to be present on the adjacent properties based on historical information. Further investigations are needed to determine the nature and extent of the contaminant plume in ground water and additional source areas on adjacent properties. To date, no geophysical investigations have been conducted to assess for the presence of buried drums.
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