Due to extensive flood damage, FEMA tasked EPA to collect and manage household hazardous wastes (HHW), white goods, e-goods, and to place orphaned haz-mat containers and asbestos on curbsides.  In addition EPA will be providing air monitoring/sampling support throughout the operational theater.  During the week of July 25th, it was determined that vermiculite insulation (aka "Zonolite" or "Zonolite Attic Insulation" or "ZAI") is present in some of the older homes and neighborhoods.  Consequently, this asbestos bearing material has been appearing in the curbside debris piles as home owners return and gut their houses.

Returning property owners continue to bring out HHW and e-wastes for collection.  Orphaned containers continue to be present in all areas but in decreasing numbers (see Operations Section).  Asbestos bearing materials are present in abundance throughout the Minot area.

Recon Teams continue to use the established grid system of Ward and McHenry counties to systematically track and manage the presence of hazardous materials.  Summaries of these assessments can be found on the EPA Field Assessment Viewer (http://react.nvs-inc.com/epasilver/).   

The Operation Section is organized into three branches:

    I.      Processing Pad Branch
                Container Group (Waste Sorting/Bulking)
                White Goods Team (Cleaning/Freon Removal/Mercury Removal)
                START Team (Monitoring/Hazard Categorization/Counting and Reporting)

    II.     Container Collection Branch
                Curbside HHW Collection Group
                Orphaned Container Collection (Land) Group (open access collection)
                Orphaned Container Collection (Remote) Group (river and difficult access collection)
                Recon Team

    III.    Asbestos Collection Branch
                Bag Collection Group (collected bagged asbestos material)
                Excavation Group (excavate debris piles)
                Vac Group (vacuum loose piles of ZAI)
                Recon Team

Previous theater wide air monitoring/sampling efforts by ERT personnel have been judged sufficient and that branch dissolved, with these personnel being distributed to the Recon Teams.  Air sampling/monitoring efforts are now more focused on personnel monitoring for worker health and safety. This organization will be adjusted as tasks require.  Operations continue to be largely focused in the Minot area.  However, collection activities are underway in the towns of Burlington, Sawyer and Velva, as well as the impacted, unincorporated areas of Ward and McHenry counties.  Additional details of the response actions are below. 

Process Pad Branch (OSC Peronard)   The Pad crews continue to sort and bulk the incoming streams of HHW and orphaned containers.   Several truck loads (roughly 300 cubic yards) of e-wastes have been sent off-site for recycling.  Bulked loads of flammables, paints, gasoline, oil, oxidizers, pesticides, caustics, acids, and batteries are ready for off-site shipment.  The START Team has begun to conduct hazard categorization testing on the 800+ containers (1-85 gallons in size) accumulated to date.  The White Goods Team has cleaned over 1,200 refrigerators and begun efforts to recover freon and remove mercury switches.  As refrigerators are processed they will be turned over to the city of Minot for scrap-metal recycling.  To date, over 70,000 containers have been collected and processed at the Collection Pad.

Asbestos Collection Branch (OSC McComb)  Through coordination with the city of Minot, the state of North Dakota, the Regional EPA Office, and the FEMA Joint Field Offices, an outreach and education effort describing the potential threats associated with direct handling of ZAI is underway.  As a result, some property owners have begun bagging and labeling ZAI materials and placing them segregated at the curbside for collection (see attached photo).  To date the Bag Collection Group has recovered over 400 cubic yards of bagged ZAI.  However, this message has not been universally received.  As a consequence,  Recon Teams have found both piles of loose vermiculite (see attached photo) that are addressed by the Vac Group, or debris piles where ZAI has been mixed in with other construction materials.  These efforts are being closely coordinated by OSC McComb with the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), which has the larger debris collection mission under ESF-3.  Essentially, OSC McComb or Recon Team personnel work with the USACE oversite team to evaluate each debris pile to assess the ZAI content and resolve who (EPA or USACE) and how the pile will be removed.  This coordination effort has been working effectively to move forward both the ESF-3 and ESF-10 missions.

Container Collection Branch (OSC Banks and OSC Tien Ngyuen)  Initial collection sweeps for both HHW and orphaned containers (OCs) have been completed for the enitre operation area in both Ward and McHenry counties.  However, returning property owners continue to place HHW at the curb, and more OCs are discovered as water levels in the Souris River and its tributaries drop.  Although the level of effort required will likely drop, it is anticipated that these efforts will need to continue into September.  The Recon Team has also identified several large tanks that are trapped in or along the Souris River, with very limited access.  Because of this, the Container Collection Branch has brought in two Water Operations Specialists from the US Coast Guard (one PAC Strike Team, one Atlantic Strike Team) to assist in overseeing these operations.  To date, three 2,000+ gallon propane tanks have been found in difficult spots along the flood zone. In addition, another 2,000+ gallon propane tank has been moving down river (see attached photo) and will require a water based removal operation as well.  A summary of the collection efforts to date, as well as a graphical representation of collection trends can be found at the following link:  http://www.epaosc.org/sites/7093/files/Household%20Hazardous%20Waste%20Collection%20Trends%208-13-11.rtf  OSC Banks and ERT member Duane Newell conducted a water recon evaluation of the Souris River between Minot and Sawyer.  This effort was facilitated by local US Fish & Wildlife Services (USFWS) personnel.

As mentioned above, area wide air monitoring/sampling efforts by ERT personnel have been discontinued.
In short, while occasional excursions of both dust and VOCs occurred and continue to occur during the flood recovery efforts, no sustained levels or inherently hazardous conditions were observed in ambient sampling.  Activity Based Sampling efforts associated with EPA ERRS contract personnel (Environmental Restoration) showed that people directly handling ZAI (note: all ER personnel conducting this activity are in Level C respiratory protection and using engineering controls to reduce exposure) and/or mixed debris would be exposed to a fairly complex mixture of airborne fibers.  Phase Contrast Microscopy (PCM, NIOSH 7400 Method) showed fiber levels well above the OSHA PEL of 0.1 f/cc.  However, a subsequent analysis of these samples by Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM-NIOSH 7402 Method) revealed that non-asbestos fibers (largely fiberglass and celluose) were much more prevalent than asbestos fibers.   Nonetheless, EPA ERRS personnel doing this work will continue to use engineering controls and wear Level C protection.  EPA ERT personnel also assisted USACE in conducting personnel air sampling for their debris collection contractors.  These personnel are largely using heavy equipment to remove, load and dump the debris.  The levels reported by USACE analysis were several orders of magnitude lower than those experienced by EPA ERRS personnel, and subsequent TEM  revealed no asbestos fibers.

A link to a website http://react.nvs-inc.com/EPASilver/ contains a visual summary of all recon, collection, and other operational information through the area of operation.