TIFTON — A Thursday afternoon fire at a warehouse near the SoGreen hazardous waste dump site off Highland Avenue was quickly extinguished, and the barrels and buckets inside were empty, local fire fighters said. An investigator with the State Fire Marshal’s office is expected here Friday.

The warehouse is located at the corner of Highland Avenue and Bermuda Street, across from Greater Macedonia Free Will Baptist Church and Greenwood Cemetery, and near J.T. Reddick Elementary.

Firefighters arrived to find the north end of the building fully engulfed just as school buses and parents were arriving to pick up children from the school. School officials ended the school day a few minutes early. Tift County Sheriff’s deputies closed streets to heavy incoming traffic until the scene could be assessed and the fire extinguished.

The EPA designated the multi-acre site as a Superfund site years ago and the clean-up is ongoing. Fences erected years ago still surround the land behind the warehouse.

The building was locked when firefighters arrived and forced open doors, said Tifton Fire Chief Mike Flippo. Fifty-gallon drums and two- and three-gallon buckets stored inside the warehouse were empty, Flippo said.

Flippo said the Tift County Tax Assessor’s office listed Herman Parramore, Jr., as the owner of the warehouse, but he wasn’t sure Parramore was the current owner.

“We need to know who the owner is so we can talk with him,” Flippo said.

Flippo said late Thursday that he had called the state Environmental Protection Division and was awaiting information from the agency.

Parramore operated the SoGreen Corporation from 1979 to 1987 as a recycling facility for hazardous waste flue dust generated by steel mills.

Apparently, five steel mills paid the corporation to take the waste, generated by electric-arc furnaces and said to have contained zinc, lead, cadmium and chromium, and used it to produce fertilizer. According to an article in the July 4, 1997 Seattle Times, Parramore had a permit to store 500 cubic yards of the toxic waste, but he was actually stockpiling 75,000 cubic yards — and the dust piles weren’t covered as required.

Parramore pleaded guilty to two felony violations of environmental laws.

According to a memorandum dated April 10, 2002 from Jennifer Kaduck, Chief of the Hazardous Waste Management Branch, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Environmental Protection Division, all identified hazardous waste has been removed from the three adjacent SoGreen sites in Tifton. Five steel companies that comprise the SoGreen Generators Group, according to the memo, were contacted and “investigation and remediation” of the groundwater was to begin.

Calls to the EPD for updated information concerning the water clean-up and the warehouse were referred to Kaduck. She did not return them by press time.



To contact reporter Angie Thompson, call 382-4321, ext. 208.