Poisoned Yards Amid Urban Sprawl

The roar of bulldozers shatters the bucolic quiet of Barber Orchard subdivision, where the splendid view of Balsam Mountain belies the trouble lurking underfoot.

This is the first subdivision in North Carolina--and perhaps the entire country--where pesticide-contaminated soil from bygone agricultural operations is being scraped from 27 homeowners’ yards and replaced with clean fill.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which is supervising the cleanup, has declared it a Superfund site. Federal officials have approved $500,000 to clean up contaminated ground water and drinking wells. In the meantime, residents have been urged not to drink their well water or touch the soil in their yards.

As new housing developments take over what once were farm fields and orchards, the problems facing Barber Orchard are expected to become increasingly common. But many states, including North Carolina, don’t require developers to test soil and water for contaminants before building.

“It’s literally a ticking time bomb,” said Erick Umstead, research director for the private, nonprofit Agricultural Resources Center in Raleigh, which opposes widespread use of pesticides. “There’s probably a lot of other people living in subdivisions with contaminated soil and water.”

“We’ll probably be hearing more of this as time goes on,” said Cynthia Atterholt, who teaches environmental chemistry at nearby Western Carolina University and helped discover the contamination. “It’s happening all over the country.”

Barber Orchard, located in Hayward County about 30 miles from Asheville, was established in 1903. It was one of the state’s oldest, most successful apple orchards. As in most commercial orchards, poisons were used to kill insects, disease and pests.

First, lead arsenate was used, then DDT and DDE, followed by benzene hydrochlorides, or BHCs. In 1977, the last Barber to farm the land sold it to investors who tried to keep the orchard going but failed. In 1988 the land was sold at auction in parcels of nine to 40 acres.

Now nearly three dozen homes sit on the 400-acre former orchard site, their residents drawn by the deep forests and mountain view.

When a resident asked that his well water be tested, the state Department of Agriculture found unacceptable levels of pesticides. More tests showed 32 of 80 wells had levels of DDT, DDE and BHCs above state-accepted limits.

Residents, who have been advised to avoid contact with soil and water, are in shock over the contamination, one neighbor said.

“It’s been extraordinarily difficult,” said the woman, who asked not to be identified. “We’ve lost all our property values, and this is frustrating.

“I’m very concerned because my grandchildren played here before we knew there was a problem. My two daughters-in-law were at my house all the time they were expecting.”

Federal environmental officials say they understand the landowners’ frustrations but add that they are breaking new ground.

“We could be creating a guide for how regulatory agencies are going to handle the problem down the road,” said Steve Spurlin, the on-scene coordinator for the EPA’s Response and Removal branch. “And it’s not just apple orchards. People are building homes in orange groves to cotton fields.”

Some homeowners have moved. Others who owned large tracts suitable for breaking down into smaller lots have watched their holdings decline in value.

Prices for house lots start at $25,000, and most of the homes cost $200,000 and above, with some costing much more, according to local residents.

Umstead said there were plenty of red flags that should have warned officials about potential contamination problems before any building permits were approved.

“All of the agencies, from the EPA to the Department of Agriculture, stuck their heads in the sand,” he said. “Since the 1970s we’ve known these chemicals can leach into the ground water, yet the EPA has done nothing about it.”

Spurlin, who grew up in Haywood County and remembers buying Barber Orchard apples, said no one suspected tests would find contaminants in the soil and in residential wells. “We’re finding constantly elevated arsenic levels across the orchard,” he said.

The EPA’s immediate mission is to clean up 27 yards over the next six to eight months. Some residents will be given water-filtration systems. Undeveloped residential lots are not on the list yet, but they might be handled later if it is determined that they qualify, Spurlin said.

As workers scraped about a foot of soil from one backyard, a layer of clean fill was brought in to replace it.

Next door, a fresh layer of soil covered the yard, seeded and covered with hay and mesh to keep it together until the new grass was ready to sprout.