Altavista PCB Deadline Is This Spring

Altavista officials have tabled the issue of PCBs until a later date– even as a DEQ deadline looms. The contamination in the town’s wastewater treatment plant’s emergency overflow pond has been a recurring topic of conversation since the problem was discovered in 2000. Altavista has been in a volunteer remediation program through the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality for several years; and the state agency is looking for the town to resolve the issue by spring. Sources say scientists and researchers who have been testing methods in the pond have not yet released their finding to Town Council. PCBs were used as insulating fluids and coolants in transformers, electric motors and other products. Sludge last went into the pond in 1973. Congress banned their production in 1979.