Crews work to clean up creek after chemical spill

SMYRNA, Ga. — High-ranking officials with the Cobb County plant at the center of weekend chemical spill, tell Channel 2 Action News they will do whatever it takes, and spend as much as it takes to figure out why the spill happened and to keep it from happening again.

Hazmat crews worked all day Monday to contain and clean up tens of thousands of gallons of carburetor cleaner from Apollo Technologies that leaked into a nearby Smyrna creek Saturday.%

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Channel 2 investigative reporter Aaron Diamant was out at the scene of the spill Monday, and reported that the water was mostly clear. This was a big difference from the thick white color the creek had turned after the spill.

PLZ Aeroscience bought the nearly 40-year-old plant last December. Company officials say they believe the leak may have been caused by a gasket failure on a mixing tank combined with a breakdown in what it calls a "spill retention system."

"Whatever resources we need to make this better, we're going to put those resources in place," Apollo Technologies COO Geoff Ladue said at a news conference Monday.

After discovering the thick white chemical in the creek in front of his house, Dana McPherson told Channel 2 Action News he raced over to the plant and took pictures inside, including one he says shows a worker hosing the place down as chemicals leaked from the building, sending it all down a drain.

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"I was kind of like, really? I mean, I know that you're an employee, but everybody that works here knows you don't put toxic waste down the drain," McPherson told Diamant.

Federal investigators were back in the neighborhood Monday keeping an eye on the cleanup.

The priority:

"Ensuring that the EPA, along with the state of Georgia, are the ones who determine how clean is clean, and we're doing so from an environmental standpoint, from a community standpoint," said EPA On-site Coordinator Jason Booth.

PLZ Aeroscience has only owned Apollo for about nine months.

Diamant began digging into company’s previous owner, which he found had a very long history of problems, for which the company is still on the hook.

"It's not good. They have some serious issues there," said Georgia Environmental Protection Division Compliance Director Bert Langly.

Langly said the weekend spill that sent nearly a quarter million gallons of hazardous carburetor cleaner into the creek, once again put Apollo under a microscope.

"They're not really environmental professionals like you find with some of the larger facilities, so they have a tendency to let things get themselves in trouble," Langly told Diamant.

By searching federal and state databases online, Diamant found problems at the property that date back decades.

Since 2000, Georgia EPD has slapped the company with nearly $36,000 in fines for everything from air quality violations to bad record keeping.

While federal records show in 2012, the EPA hit Apollo with an $80,000 penalty for multiple violations inducing improper storage of hazardous waste.

A 2014 report commissioned by the company, outlined environmental problems on Apollo’s property going back to 1992.

The report recommended nearly $700,000 in remediation work. EPD told Diamant that Apollo is making progress on those recommendations.

"They've submitted three compliance reports with us, tracking what's going on. They are on the schedules that they have provided to us to get the cleanup accomplished," Langley said.

Both the current owner and the EPA say neighbors are not in any immediate danger, but air and water tests will continue.

The plant will resume operations Tuesday and we're told the tank that leaked will no longer be used.

The company has also hired engineers to inspect all of its equipment.

Cox Media Group