Windfall Brings Tough Choices For Supervisors

It’s been almost two years since Yalobusha County received $3 million in proceeds from a settlement in an environmental lawsuit and supervisors have a tough job deciding how the money should be spent. The hospital is entitled to a big portion of this money, and supervisors have acknowledged this by funding several projects during 2021. This includes a vote during Monday’s meeting to allocate $239,000 for a long overdue boiler replacement at Yalobusha General Hospital. The boilers provide heat and hot water at the hospital and are older than I am.

The joint county-hospital lawsuit stemmed from a contaminate, trichloroethylene (TCE), that was released into the environment from 1973 to 1987 by the Holley Automotive Division of Colt Industries. The TCE contaminated the soil and groundwater at the plant and spread to approximately 340 acres north and northwest of the former Holley Carburetor Plant. Much of the contaminated property listed in the lawsuit that is in the contaminated area is owned by the hospital, but as the hospital is county-owned the proceeds from the settlement went directly to the county coffers.

The hospital was also hardest hit after the environmental problems derailed a long-planned expansion project that included a second floor addition that would have added 8,000 square feet to the building. Almost $700,000 was spent from hospital funds on the planning, architectural and engineering work before the project would be abandoned. The project first went out to bid in 2017 and supervisors awarded the $5 million job to a contractor. Two months later supervisors rejected the bid after concerns surfaced about the use of piers to support the second floor addition. The piers would have required deep penetration in the ground and could disturb the TCE in the soil and ground water.

In 2018 the project was cleared after the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality granted an environmental covenant that would allow the construction if steps were taken to address the potential TCE threat – steps that included monitoring the air and other precautions.

The project was rebid in August, 2018, but the momentum faltered after the hospital board split on recommending that supervisors award a second $5.3 million bid for the expansion as three of the seven hospital trustees expressed reservations about the project. One trustee was against borrowing the money and the other two felt there were too many obstacles relating to environmental issues.

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The decades old contamination attracted renewed scrutiny when Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) officials arrived in Water Valley on a Saturday in February back in 2016 and started testing in the contaminated area. The scrutiny, agency officials explained, stemmed from new guidance that had been issued by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2015 regarding vapor intrusion, or the process when vapors from underground solvents travel upward through the soil. The potential problem was the levels of TCE, a known carcinogen, enters a residence or building from the soil through vapor intrusion.

The TCE wasn’t the only thing that bubbled up during the months that followed. It turned out that EnPro Industries, Inc., the company that acquired the liability for the contaminated area in 2002, had not fulfilled its obligations to remediate the pollution. A remedial pumping system intended to remove TCE from the groundwater was shut down by EnPro in 2011 without informing MDEQ.

The lawyers smelled blood and the joint county-hospital lawsuit was filed in January, 2019. A second lawsuit was filed a month later by 33 plaintiffs that included landowners, homeowners and business owners in the affected area. The settlements were reached in less than a year.

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Supervisors shaved off a half-million dollars from that settlement in January, 2020, money that went to each beat for roads and bridges with an assurance that a portion of the settlement would also be doled out to the hospital and nursing home for capital improvement projects. During the last year they have made good on that commitment, also allocating  $134,499 for roof work and $246,682 for a generator project.  If you do the math, that leaves roughly $1.8 million dollars remaining from the settlement.

There are critical needs with roads and bridges in the county, especially the Gums Crossing project. Supervisors have exhausted just about every funding source to fund the county’s portion of the project, which has swelled to almost $4 million.

But without the hospital, the $3 million from the settlement would have never come to the county. So the question looms, how much should the hospital receive? Maybe the county and hospital should split the money equally, $1.5 million each. Or maybe the hospital should receive more. It’s a tough question that will have to be answered.