The Angel Superfund Conspiracy

By Jeffrey S. Munic

&nbsp There are more than 1,200 Superfund sites on the EPA's National Priority List, and for each of these sites, there is a story. Associated with the worst US waste sites are tales of heartbreak; tales of corporate carelessness, negligence, and greed; tales of illness; and sometimes tales of death. Usually a version of those tales is contrived for the public and another version remains untold - known only to corporate insiders, their legal counsel, and their environmental consultants. This book reveals an untold story.

&nbsp Jim Stern is a rookie environmental engineer, who is compelled to uncover a conspiracy by Tetralex Corporation, a military defense contractor. With the aid of organized crime, Tetralex is deceiving the EPA and the public, while a pool of toxic chemicals collects beneath neighboring homes causing illness and death. Stern must outwit Tetralex and avoid being killed by the Mafia to expose the deadly clandestine plot..

&nbsp Nearby, John Tavish, an irate community member turned eco-terrorist, lost his daughter to cancer as a result of the toxic chemicals lurking beneath his home. Tavish is building a basement laboratory to manufacture the chemicals that will allow him to exact his revenge, but he needs to act swiftly before going mad from the chemical exposure.

&nbsp The Angel Superfund Conspiracy will immerse you deeply into the world of environmental engineering exploring hazardous waste site issues from the unique perspectives of the corporate polluters, their lawyers, and their consultants. It is a story that only an insider could tell.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 24, 2011
• ISBN: 9781467054416

Jeffrey S. Munic

Jeffrey Munic is a practicing chemical engineer working in the oil and gas pipeline industry. He has more than 20 years of experience as an environmental consultant working for prestigious engineering firms. He has consulted for both industry and government regulators on high-profile hazardous waste sites and was frequently writing about complex environmental issue for lawyers, regulators, industrial clients, and the citizens groups. He is also a licensed professional engineer and a project management professional. Often the projects involved issues of much broader social impact. Writing this novel sprang from a natural desire to make the technical issues more interesting and accessible to a broader audience. This book was written as a labor of love. Jeffrey grew up in Brooklyn, which explains his perfect English and laid-back attitude. He went to college at MIT and spent 11 years living in the Boston area. He currently lives in Southern California with his beautiful wife and two amazing sons. Recently, he gave up playing adult novice ice hockey after playing for about six years; possibly, that will be the topic for another novel.

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© 2011 by Jeffrey S. Munic. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 10/13/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4670-5443-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4670-5442-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4670-5441-6 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011917989

Printed in the United States of America

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Chapter 1

The Training

Chapter 2

The Client Meeting

Chapter 3

Leo the Lion v. Corporate America

Chapter 4

Love that Dirty Water

Chapter 5

The Angel and the Superfund

Chapter 6

The Basement Laboratory

Chapter 7

Seductions and Revelations

Chapter 8

Substantiation

Chapter 9

Dangerous Encounters

Chapter 10

The Hot Tap

Chapter 11

Conflagration

Chapter 12

Misinformation Gathering

Chapter 13

Bodies in Paradise

Chapter 14

Moving On

Author’s Notes

Author Biography

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

The Training

Look Ma, the little boy said, spacemen playing basketball.

Sarah Crenshaw smiled at her four-year-old son before turning around. She was about to tell him that there are no spacemen in this hotel or maybe she would have told him that spacemen don’t know how to play basketball. But, she turned towards the basketball court; and there they were—two teams, of five people each, playing an outdoor game of full-court basketball in complete Level C personal protective equipment.

They did look like men and women from outer space. They were all wearing white Tyvek suits taped at the wrists and ankles with silver duct tape. It wasn’t so much the Tyvek suits, the thick black neoprene gloves, or the yellow rubber boots that made these basketball players seem so unusual; it was the respiratory gear. She could hear the heavy breathing from their full-face respirators. Only portions of their faces were visible through the hard, clear plastic face shields surrounded by thick black rubber. Each face piece contained two cartridges sticking out the bottom left and bottom right sides of the mask. The cartridges were imprinted with purple and yellow stripes to denote protection from both organic vapors and particulate matter.

It was a hot July day in Norwood, Massachusetts; and she could feel the heat coming off the blacktop of the outdoor basketball court. It was too humid a day to be playing full-court basketball in a Tyvek suit and a respirator. There were puddles of perspiration building up inside the players’ impermeable white suits.

Excuse me, sir, the curious mom said to the guy on the sideline who appeared to be in charge. My son would like to know what’s going on here.

Hank Finnigan stopped focusing on his air-monitoring devices and turned to look at the young woman and her son. The woman was in her mid-thirties with straight black hair. She wore a light summer dress and sandals. The boy wore dark blue shorts and a yellow tank top.

It’s a training course, Hank said. These students are being trained to work at hazardous waste sites. The basketball game teaches them just how strenuous it is to work in these outfits.

Yeah, look at how much they are all sweating, she said. I think the chubby guy playing forward is about to pass out.

Finnigan yelled out to his weary students, OK, everyone. Let’s pack it up and get back to an air-conditioned classroom. Remember to use proper decontamination procedures as you walk through the decon zone. Don’t forget to wipe down your respirators with rubbing alcohol and drink plenty of water.

The basketball court was surrounded with bright yellow caution tape with the word hazard written on it in capitalized black letters. The tape created an exclusion zone. The only way to get off the court without crossing over the yellow caution tape was to go between two rows of bright orange cones.

In the area between the cones there were large aluminum wash basins and big scrub brushes. The students filed one-by-one through the designated decontamination zone. They tried to remove each piece of protective clothing in the specific order that they were taught. The idea was for them to take off the dirty clothing without contaminating themselves or the remaining clean clothing. Two students manned the decon line and assisted the other students in cleaning off the imaginary hazardous substances. The pair of student decon workers were the last to leave the area after they decontaminated themselves.

Finnigan then led all thirty-two students and the two other instructors back to the classroom. It was exhausting teaching forty hours of class in four, ten-hour days even with the assistance of two other instructors. The forty hours was the amount of training that OSHA required for people to work on hazardous waste sites. Nevertheless, this was certainly easier and safer than his previous job. Prior to starting his own company, Hazworker Training Incorporated, Finnigan worked as an emergency response team leader for the Environmental Protection Agency.

He was forty-one years old, and he’d had enough of cleaning up chemical spills and putting out fires on burning railway cars. The OSHA regulations and the booming hazardous waste clean up industry had created business opportunities training people to work on hazardous waste sites. It was time for Finnigan to capitalize on his years of emergency response work.

It was the summer of 1987, and every small water-well drilling company was now an environmental drilling company. The workers cleaning out septic tanks were now calling themselves environmental disposal companies. However, Hank’s best customers were the consultants, mostly engineers and geologists in their twenties and thirties. These young men and women were inundated with work, and environmental consulting companies could not hire or train quickly enough.

* * *

It was 3:00 in the afternoon on the third day of the training. The analyzers were lined up on a brown folding table in the front of the room. The LEDs flashed, and bells rang indicating simulated alarm conditions. Finnigan was discussing calibration procedures for explosimeters. In this lesson, he covered the theory of operation, the method of use, and calibration procedures for a variety of instruments from oxygen analyzers to dragger tube samplers.

Jim Stern was sitting in the back of the classroom trying to focus his attention on the lesson. He was still sweaty from playing basketball an hour ago. Jim had been fairly attentive thus far; but at this point, his mind kept wandering off. He began fantasizing about how he was going to make love that night to Virginia, his new girlfriend. Jim probably would have paid more attention to the lesson on personal protective equipment had he known that years later he would be running toward a cloud of toxic vapor emanating from a missile assembly plant that was about to explode.

Jim had just graduated in June with a Master’s Degree in Environmental Engineering from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He was on the swim team in college, and he still had a thin build with muscular shoulders and legs. When he received a job offer from SNG Consultants in the Boston area, he moved there immediately following graduation.

Jim had just started dating Virginia a few weeks earlier and the relationship was still torrid. At the age of twenty-four, Jim had a healthy sexual appetite, which is sufficient to explain why amorous thoughts overtook the lesson on the theoretical aspects of using a portable gas chromatograph. He was remembering what it was like the previous night to feel her soft warm lips and was fantasizing about the shape and movement of her body when the instructor, who decided that it was time for a ten-minute break, interrupted his erotic daydreams.

* * *

Nicole drove her blue Toyota sedan into the Northeast Petroleum gas station and asked the full-service attendant to fill up the tank with regular. She had just gotten off work from her job as an assistant branch manager at a nearby bank. Her navy blue linen skirt and nylons seemed too formal for her surroundings, and she was thinking about changing into shorts and a tee shirt when she got home.

She walked over to the service station building to use the payphone to call her boyfriend. While she was waiting for him to answer the phone, she pulled a cigarette out from her purse. Nicole habitually smoked while she talked on the phone. She lit the cigarette and tossed the smoldering match onto the ground next to the building. As she spoke with her boyfriend, she turned her head to watch the attendant filling her car with regular unleaded.

A small flame developed along the crack in the asphalt. As the asphalt melted, the crack widened; and more gasoline vapors emanated from below the ground. A clear flame with blue flickering at its center quickly grew in size, and it left a black residue on the white outer wall of the service station. Nicole didn’t notice that her skirt had caught fire until she could feel her leg burning.

Screaming, I’m on fire. she threw down the phone and ran away from the burning building towards a small grassy area that was off to the side of the gas station building.

The attendant yelled, Hey, drop and roll… drop and roll! She fell to the ground and began rolling around cursing and screaming. He ran over with the bucket of liquid used to clean car windshields and threw it on her burning skirt. Then he stomped on the smoldering dress with his boots. Another customer called 911 on the phone in the small service station office. Upon hearing the screaming, the station’s car mechanic came out of the garage to see a wall of flames on the outside of the building. He grabbed a water hose and put out the fire.

Nine minutes later, the ambulance arrived; a fire truck came along with it. The paramedics rushed to Nichole who was still sitting on the ground obviously in pain.

You’re gonna be OK.

No. The dress is ruined.

Let me take a look at that leg. The nylon has melted.

Don’t touch me.

Really, it is going to be OK.

Why don’t you just get me to a hospital?

Are you able to walk?

Yeah, help me up.

The paramedics helped Nicole into the ambulance and took her to the hospital. As a result of melted black nylon, the worst burns were on her thighs. The owner of the gas station arrived just in time to see the ambulance leave. A short while later, the local fire chief arrived and announced that, by order of the Fire Department, the gas station was officially shut down.

Before he left, the last thing that the fire chief said to the station owner was Get yourself a good lawyer and a good environmental consultant.

* * *

Jim had big plans for the evening. They had dinner at Legal Seafood Restaurant in Kendall Square where he really enjoyed his blackened swordfish and clam chowder. Afterwards, they walked from Cambridge to Boston across the Longfellow Bridge and took a slow moonlit walk on the Esplanade. Jim recognized the Longfellow Bridge with its granite block piers and abutments from the television program Spencer for Hire, which unlike Cheers, was actually filmed in Boston.

Virginia was a beautiful woman and Jim thought that she looked particularly sexy that night. She had a soft oval face and light brown medium-length hair. Virginia wore a black dress with trendy black leather boots and a gold necklace. Her subtle perfume smelled like roses. She did, however, have a tendency to overdo her makeup. That evening she was wearing deep violet eye shadow and red lipstick.

While holding hands and chatting, the couple walked along the Charles River Esplanade. It was a warm night with a gentle breeze coming off the Charles River. They stopped to kiss on a scenic footbridge near the Hatch Shell. Jim got a little too overwrought and she had to restrain him from heavy petting on a cloistered park bench. They finished their circular walk around a section of the river, known to joggers as a river route, by crossing over the Harvard Bridge and returning along the Cambridge side of the river to Kendall Square.

They stopped to kiss again on the Harvard Bridge necking with a romantic view of Boston. Being an engineer, he also noticed that surprisingly the bridge had its own unit of measure for length, smoots. The concrete pedestrian walkway was painted with markings in ten-smoot intervals. At the end of the bridge, the painted sidewalk indicated that the total length of the bridge was 364.4 smoots plus/minus one ear. Although not familiar with the fraternity prank, Jim figured correctly that this must be some strange local system of measurement.

They reached his car, and Jim drove back from Cambridge. Once they got back to her place, they sat down next to each other on her couch. Naturally, Virginia wanted to talk. She wanted to know how he felt about his family, his career, and his past relationships.

Jim, let’s just talk for a while.

That’s a nice black dress that you are wearing. How do you get it to look so sleek?

I was thinking that we would talk about you. Do you have any brothers or sisters?

So, I guess we are not going to discuss your undergarments.

No, probably not. Maybe you should sit on the other side of the couch for while.

Once Virginia could get him to sit on the other side of the couch and focus on the conversation, she was able to extract a bit of personal information from him. Jim’s father was an alcoholic and was occasionally verbally abusive. His parents got divorced when he was seven years old. When Jim’s mother died from a brain tumor when he was twelve, he went to live with his Uncle Ted and Aunt Marla. His aunt and uncle were not very well off financially but did what they could to give him a home and education.

Jim was always very analytical and mechanically inclined. He learned to play chess at the age of five and was soon competing with adults. As a kid he joined the model rocket club and would spend hour building models from balsa wood and cardboard cylinders. While other kids were riding their bikes and skateboards, he was building special ramps for other kids to use for jumps.

With his meager inheritance money and several part-time jobs, Jim was able to pay for college. He worked as a dishwasher in a restaurant and did telemarketing for an environmental group. Although he figured out how to get by with very little money, he dreamt of a more affluent life. It was while trying to persuade people to donate money to save old-growth forests in Oregon that he discovered his calling—environmental engineering. Jim Stern decided that he was going to find a way to save the environment and also make a decent wage.

His first love was a girl he met in college by the name of Lauren. They had dated for about nine months. The relationship ended badly when Jim found out that she was cheating on him with a guy in school who they both knew. He had dated several other girls for short periods of time, but Virginia got the feeling that they never really compared to his first love. She talked briefly about her relationship with her previous boyfriend, Brad.

After several hours of conversation, Virginia felt like she was really getting to know him. He seemed like a sweet boy and she liked his sincerity. A little uncomfortable talking about himself, he was not the type