AVX might target air base

John Gilbertson, AVX Corp.'s chief executive officer, said Thursday his company will not seek money from residents of a neighborhood where the manufacturer has contaminated groundwater with a toxic chemical.

Instead, AVX might go after the military to share in the environmental cleanup costs, Gilbertson indicated during a morning conference call with stock analysts.

The company reversed its decision regarding residents nine days after initial court filings asked a judge to hold those property owners responsible for some of the testing and cleanup costs.

The reversal followed a series of reports in The Sun News this week in which environmental law experts expressed surprise at AVX's legal tactic.

AVX filed additional court documents later Thursday stating the company "does not seek to recover from innocent individual property owners."

Thursday's court filing, however, also asks a judge to declare that none of the residents' property has been damaged and those residents are not entitled to any compensation from AVX.

Gilbertson said Thursday the military might share some of the blame for groundwater contamination in the Myrtle Beach neighborhood.

The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control says AVX is the source of high levels of trichloroethylene, or TCE, in the groundwater of a 10-block neighborhood northeast of AVX.

TCE, a degreaser, has been linked with cancer and other health problems, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Gilbertson said Thursday his company's lawsuit is not "against anyone in the area, homeowners and such."

"The only thing that lawsuit says is if there are other people who have added TCE to the area, that they would be included in any action going forward," Gilbertson said.

Court documents AVX filed last week specifically named five homeowners that the electronics manufacturer wanted a judge to hold responsible for cleanup and other costs.

That federal court filing also seeks money from Horry Land Co., which owns property adjacent to AVX.

Surfside Beach lawyer Gene Connell, who represents the five homeowners, had called the AVX court filing an unconscionable scare tactic.

Gilbertson addressed the contamination issue at the end of Thursday's conference call, in which AVX announced a double-digit increase in sales of its electronic components and earnings of $37 million during the previous three months.

Gilbertson abruptly ended the conference call after briefly discussing the contamination. He would not take follow-up questions from The Sun News.

Gilbertson said his company's lawsuit is related to a report in The Sun News in the 1990s that showed there was TCE contamination on the former Myrtle Beach Air Force Base.

"As you are aware [from] your articles that you wrote in the 1990s regarding the air base, which is right next to us, [the military] used that in large quantities," Gilbertson said in response to a question from The Sun News during the conference call.

AVX's court filing does not mention the military or the air base as being among the entities the manufacturer is suing over contamination cleanup costs.

Dick Souza, former Myrtle Beach site manager for the Air Force Real Property Agency, said the military did not use TCE near the AVX property and could not be the source of any groundwater contamination in the neighborhood northeast of AVX.

"I'm not aware of anything that could have come from the air base in their [AVX's] direction," said Souza, who helped oversee environmental cleanup for the military.

DHEC says the air base is not a source of contamination in the Myrtle Beach neighborhood, which is between Beaver Road and Kings Highway.

"Based on the information and evidence we have so far, we do not believe that TCE contamination that we know about on the Air Force base property is contributing to the situation at and near the AVX property," said DHEC spokesman Thom Berry.

AVX used TCE for decades, and the chemical compound is one of the most common and persistent contaminants in groundwater nationwide.