After 2 months, cleanup from C6-Zero explosion, fire to start in Marengo

After receiving payment from C6-Zero, the head of an environmental cleanup crew said his team will finally start hauling away contaminated water and testing soil around the Marengo shingle recycling plant that exploded and burned two months ago, forcing evacuations and injuring more than a dozen workers, some severely.

The state, meanwhile, will pay the company up to $834,000 to remove and treat water containing potentially carcinogenic chemicals known as PFAS from a large holding basis near the site. The basin and factory sit less than a mile from the Iowa River.

EcoSource Environmental Director Darren Fife confirmed to the Des Moines Register that C6-Zero's executives had complied with a judge's order that they pay his company by the end of Thursday. The order called for a payment of $334,000 this week and the deposit of another $75,000 in a fund that the cleanup crew can tap as needed.

Fife said he hopes to send workers and tankers to the eastern Iowa factory next week.

Employees will drop handfuls of dirt into bags with meters that read whether diesel vapors and other chemicals are wafting from the soil. The team also will pump about 30,000 gallons of contaminated water out of big, boxy storage containers known as frac tanks, transferring the liquid into tanker trucks that will deliver the product to the Metro Waste Authority in Des Moines for disposal. (Metro Waste Authority spokesperson said EcoSource's request is "currently under review.")

"We are legitimately excited to get this moving and get this site cleaned up," Fife said Friday. "This is something that is very doable. There’s nothing here that is extremely problematic. This should be a clean, straightforward cleanup."

What happened at C6-Zero?

State regulators and Marengo residents have been waiting for the cleanup since Dec. 9, when firefighters from around the region succeeded after more than 16 hours in putting out the massive fire set off by the explosion the day before. The company, which previously received environmental fines in Texas and Colorado, advertised itself as a renewable fuel manufacturer that dissolved asphalt shingles into oil using an undisclosed chemicals solvent.

More:What happened in the massive Marengo explosion and fire? Here's what we know.

Employees have told the Register that C6-Zero executives had been giving investors a tour of the factory on Dec. 8 when a conveyor belt stopped running. Workers tried to fix the conveyor, according to employees, but the machine exploded.

Marengo Police Chief Ben Gray said two workers among the 20 sent to hospitals spent multiple weeks at the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics burn unit.

EcoSource, which is based in Windsor Heights, was summoned to the scene three days after the explosion, Fife said. It pumped water, mostly leftover from the fire fight, into the tankers to prevent future rains from carrying the contamination into a nearby creek. The water also collected in the nearby holding basin.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources ordered C6-Zero to create a cleanup plan by the end of the year and finish the removal of contaminated dirt and water by the end of January ― deadlines the company missed.

More:C6-Zero dodged repeated requests from state before Marengo explosion, Iowa DNR says

The Iowa Attorney General's Office filed for an injunction against the company in early January, a request that Judge Lars Anderson granted Monday. C6-Zero consented to the order, which required the company to pay EcoSource for the work.

Fife said the company issued EcoSource several checks but did not give him clearance to deposit the payments until Thursday. He said he wasn't sure why he needed to wait. C6-Zero founder Howard Brand has been convicted in other states of issuing bad checks

Asked what C6-Zero employees are doing amid Ecosource's cleanup, company spokesperson Mark Corallo said he could not comment on "internal business matters."

"C6-Zero’s focus is ensuring cleanup is completed in a timely manner and that we adhere to and meet the requirements of the order," he said in an email. "And we are meeting the requirements of the order."

What will EcoSource do on site?

Besides sampling the soil around the factory and hauling away contaminated liquid, Fife said EcoSource workers will drill wells to sample water underground. They will send samples to a lab owned by EuroFins Test America, which will analyze the water for hundreds of potential contaminants.

Fife said he is unsure whether C6-Zero's chemicals seeped into the ground, adding that the community is lucky that the explosion occurred during the winter, when the ground is cold and compacted.

"It might mean that the contaminants haven’t gotten into the ground all that much yet," he said. "We need to verify that."

He declined to say how EcoSource would treat contaminated groundwater. The company would choose from multiple options based on what kind of chemicals it finds, how much of those chemicals are in the water, how deep underground the water is and what type of soil lays above the water.

As for contaminated soil, Fife said the team will simply scoop the dirt with excavators and haul it away for treatment. While employees need to test it for chemicals, he said the first steps of the cleanup are obvious.

"Most of (the contamination) is just very visually apparent," he said. "That will be the focus, the things that we can see immediately."

More: The Chinese spy balloon flew across the Midwest. Did it pass over Iowa?

And after that part of the C6-Zero clean up?

In his order Monday, Anderson wrote that C6-Zero must give the DNR a list of all the chemicals inside the factory at the time of the explosion.

He also wrote that the company must give the DNR a "Remedial Action Plan" by March 3. Fife said that report would be an updated guide for how to clean up the area after EcoSource's initial work.

Tyler Jett covers jobs and the economy for the Des Moines Register. Reach him at tjett@registermedia.com, 515-284-8215, or on Twitter at @LetsJett.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: C6-Zero fire cleanup to start next week in Marengo, Iowa