By JIM BUTLER
$130 million.
That’s the approximate difference in costs of proposed cleanup-restoration plans offered for the 2012 Dresser Industries subsurface toxic release.
Baker Hughes, now Dresser’s parent company, in court-ordered filings this month, proposes as the Most Feasible Plan the use of intensive chemical applications and localized soil vapor extraction.
It previously noted its approach should put total cost for cleanup at about $30 million, including $24 million already spent.
Plaintiffs have until October 5 to object. Their previously proposed MFP has an estimated price tag of $165.6 million. It involves close to 50,000 chemical injection points in the path and vicinity of the underground plume of TCE and PCE.
The timetable was set in April by U.S. District Judge David C. Joseph, who expressed his resolve to reach a denouement relatively soon in the case.
LADEQ has until December 7 to review the two sides’ responses.
Joseph will then schedule hearings, to be followed by his ordering a plan and requiring deposit with the court of the estimated cost.
Court records and DEQ samplings show the primary impact zone to be Aurora Park Subdivision located northeast of the now-closed plant.
Other locales specified are properties in and spanning the US Hwy 167-LA 3225 (commonly referred to as Tioga Road) corridor and interspersed rural and residential tracts directly in the path of the plume’s migration north.