By Walter F. Roche Jr.
An outside expert says state officials were were more than likely wrong when they concluded that orange plumes emanating from a Greene County chemical plant in February were harmless clusters of water vapor.
In a letter sent to the state Department of Environment and Conservationm Howard Gephart, the expert, said it was far more likely the plumes were caused by excess nitrogen escaping from the US Nitrogen LLC facility in Midway.
Gephart of Air Resource Specialists wrote that the TDEC conclusions were "unconvincing" and "not consistent with the available evidence and historical knowledge about orange colored plumes."
Gephart, who has served as an expert for Park Overall, an opponent of US Nitrogen's operations, said water vapor would produce plumes with "an array of colors" not a single color.
Instead, he continued, orange plumes were historically associated with nitric acid emissions.
Noting that nitric acid is a known product of US Nitrogen's, Gephart wrote that TDEC officials appear to have failed to recognize the likliehood of nitrogen being the cause of the orange plumes.
"I find that it is much more likely that the orange colored plumes observed at the USN facility on Feb.15 was associated with nitric acid and were not caused by llight refracting through water vapor as stated by USN," Gephart concluded.
The orange plumes were observed by Overall on Feb. 15. She and Brock Wampler, another area resident, filed complaints with TDEC, but the agency almost immediately began to downplay the incident.
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