Due to extensive flood damage, FEMA tasked EPA to collect and manage household hazardous wastes (HHW), white goods, e-goods, and to place orphaned haz-mat containers and asbestos on curbsides.  In addition EPA will be providing air monitoring/sampling support throughout the operational theater.  During the week of July 25th, it was determined that vermiculite insulation (aka "Zonolite" or "Zonolite Attic Insulation" or "ZAI") is present in some of the older homes and neighborhoods.  Consequently, this asbestos bearing material has been appearing in the curbside debris piles as home owners return and gut their houses.

Returning property owners continue to bring out HHW and e-wastes for collection.  Orphaned containers continue to be present in all areas but in decreasing numbers (see Operations Section).  Asbestos bearing materials are present in abundance throughout the Minot area.

Recon Teams continue to use the established grid system of Ward and McHenry counties to systematically track and manage the presence of hazardous materials.  Summaries of these assessments can be found on the EPA Field Assessment Viewer (http://react.nvs-inc.com/epasilver/).   

The Operation Section is organized into three branches:

    I.      Processing Pad Branch
                Container Group (Waste Sorting/Bulking)
                White Goods Team (Cleaning/Freon Removal/Mercury Removal)
                START Team (Monitoring/Hazard Categorization/Counting and Reporting)

    II.     Container Collection Branch
                Curbside HHW Collection Group
                Orphaned Container Collection (Land) Group (open access collection)
                Orphaned Container Collection (Remote) Group (river and difficult access collection)
                Recon Team

    III.    Asbestos Collection Branch
                Bag Collection Group (collected bagged asbestos material)
                Excavation Group (excavate debris piles)
                Vac Group (vacuum loose piles of ZAI)
                Recon Team

Process Pad Branch (OSC Peronard)   The Pad crews continue to sort and bulk the incoming streams of HHW and orphaned containers.  To date, over 80,000 containers have been collected and processed at the Collection Pad.  Bulked loads of flammables, paints, gasoline, oil, oxidizers, pesticides, caustics, acids, and batteries are ready for off-site shipment.  The first loads of flammables (fuel blending) and latex paints (recycling) are scheduled to be shipped off-site on Tuesday, August 23, 2011.  Every effort is being made to find reuse and recycling options for the waste streams generated from EPA's operations in Minot.  The START Team continues to conduct hazard categorization testing on the 1,200+ containers (1-85 gallons in size) of unknown materials accumulated to date.  The Region 8 "Level A Truck," which houses a mobile GC/MS unit and a fume hood has been brought in to assist the identification effort.  The White Goods Team has cleaned over 1,500 refrigerators and processed over 2,500 inert white goods to date.  Freon and/or mercury switches have been removed from over 340 refrigerators.  The 340 + processed refrigerators, along with all the inert white goods, have been turned over to the city of Minot for scrap-metal recycling. 

Asbestos Collection Branch (OSC McComb)  The asbestos Recon Team continues to find ZAI materials heavily distributed throughout the debris piles from older homes and neighborhoods in Minot.  This concentrated distribution forms something akin to an abaculus in adjoining portions of Evacuation Zones 3, 4, 5 and 6 all debris zones.pdf .   The EPA continues a somewhat quixotic attempt to normalize asbestos collection operations. EPA is still  in close coordination with USACE and OSHA in identifying and handling ZAI laden debris.  The asbestos collection teams are roughly following the protocols described in the ZAI Collection Work Plan (ZAI Collection Work Plan.docx).  However, as discussed in the ZAI Collection Status Report -08/18/2011 (ZAI Collection Status Report_08182011.docx) the pace and location of asbestos collection is largely controlled by the pace of the efforts of returning property owners in gutting their homes.  Rapid survey and recon assessments give a very rough estimate of 500-700 which contain ZAI.  Of these, 30-60% have had either no or only partial removal of their interiors.  It has not been uncommon for collection teams to remove a ZAI pile only to find the same property recontaminated by wastes produced by a second interior demolition. To date, the EPA has done removal work on 89 properties with heavy ZAI contamination, with 43 more in the EPA's work queue.  This has resulted in the removal and disposal  of approximately 800 cubic yards of asbestos contaminated debris.  USACE has addressed a larger number of properties with lesser amounts of ZAI materials.  These properties may need follow up assessments to evaluate the need for further asbestos removal.  Also, because of the issue of recontamination mentioned above, it will be prudent to periodically reassess the properties where work has already occurred.  These reassessment procedures are discussed in the ZAI Collection Work Plan.

Container Collection Branch (OSC Banks)  HHW and orphaned containers (OCs) collection efforts continue throughout the area of operation.  The rates of collection for both efforts appear to be slowing down.  With assistance of members of the USCG Strike Team,  a concerted effort is now being made to remove all large tanks and containers (1,000+ gallons) from the Souris riverine corridor.  If possible, orphan tanks and/or containers are returned to their original owner, otherwise they are brought back to the Processing Pad..  A summary of the collection efforts to date, as well as a graphical representation of collection trends can be found at the following link:  Total Count as of 081811.pdf 

A link to a website http://react.nvs-inc.com/EPASilver/ contains a visual summary of all recon, collection, and other information through the area of operation.