North Carolina names four assessment
contractors
Four state-lead contractors will conduct
assessment and remediation activities at contamination sites
certified into the North Carolina
Drycleaning Solvent Cleanup Program.
The contractors, announced by John Powers,
director of the program at a meeting of the DSCA stakeholders
group in September, are ENSR Corporation in Raleigh, MACTEC
Inc. in Greensboro, Metcalf & Eddy in Raleigh, and Shield
Engineering Inc. of Charlotte.
Powers said the contractors would
immediately be assigned work at several high priority sites in
North Carolina.
With the official hiring of state-lead
contractors, the DSCA Program will begin phasing out its
interim practice of reimbursing non-state-lead contractors for
prioritization assessment work. Since beginning prioritization
assessments in 2002, the DSCA office has let drycleaners choose
any qualified environmental consultant for this work.
Sites that already have prioritization
assessment contracts with non-state lead contractors can
continue program reimbursement under the existing contracts.
Assessments at new sites will be assigned to state-lead
contractors by the DSCA.
The prioritization assessments are limited
to determining the general risk profile of sites entering the
program. Results are used to determine how quickly the program
will begin funding full-scale assessment and remediation.
DSCA officials told the North Carolina
Association of Launderers and Cleaners that drycleaners
entering the program may request a specific contractor to
conduct their site’s assessment.
The program will attempt to accommodate
the request if the proposed contractor is due to be assigned
another site. However, the DSCA decision concerning contractor
selection will be final .
The program will pay state-lead
contractors directly for assessment and remediation work and
then bill petitioners for costs not in excess of the applicable
deductible or copay. Costs will not be billed to petitioners
until they are incurred.
The DSCA staff is also working on adding
more state-lead contractors to the program. Technical issues
that need to be resolved before more contractors can be
solicited include determining the impact of a second request
for contractor proposals on the existing state-lead contractor
pool.
Program officials hope to have additional
contractors in place sometime during the spring of 2005. A
request for proposals from new contractors should be issued in
the near future.
The DSCA has also finished work on a
comprehensive site assessment and remediation agreement form
that will govern assessment and remediation at sites after the
prioritization assessment phase.
The new form will let the program use a
single contract for the entire assessment and remediation
process. Before finalizing the agreement, the program staff
accepted several suggested changes recommended by NCALC and
aimed at clarifying the rights and obligations of the parties.
NCALC and the DSCA Program are in the
process of creating a new committee of the DSCA Stakeholders
Group to evaluate a variety of technical issues that are
arising as the program continues to grow. The committee will be
making periodic recommendations to the Stakeholders Group and
program staff.
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