Before pressure impregnation of preservative into the debarked and "framed," or formed, wood products, naturally-occurring moisture and resin were removed from the Southern Yellow Pine using a steam/vacuum process (6). In this process, the wood was placed in treater cylinders and heated using steam from the facility's wood-fired boiler (6). Condensate formed in the cylinders during the heating cycle was continuously drained to a condenser hot well, then to a primary oil/water separator via a process drain system (6). At the end of the heating cycle, the cylinders were vented, and a vacuum was applied. Liquids in the wood, which were either vaporized and removed by the vacuum system or removed from the wood by internally-generated steam, settled to the bottom of the cylinders (6). These liquids then were pumped to the primary oil/water separator at the conclusion of the vacuum cycle (6). The vacuum system at ETC was a steam ejector jet attached to an elevated, direct-contact, barometric condenser (6). Vapors from the treater cylinders condensed, mixed with the condenser cooling water, and were gravity-fed from the condenser 35 feet in the air to the condenser hot well, and then to the oil/water separator (6). Following the heating/vacuum cycle, the wood preservative was impregnated into the wood under pressure (6). After the impregnation cycle, the pressure was reduced in the treating cylinders, and the wood products were removed from the cylinders on trams used to transport the wood stock (6). Following pressure reduction, excess wood preservative was allowed to drain from the treated products along drip tracks before on-site storage in the nine treated-wood-storage areas (6). ETC took few environmental precautions, discharging spent creosote and PCP-laden waste into unlined holding ponds on site and into unlabeled drums (2)(3). The treatment cylinders (pressure cookers used to saturate the wood with pentachlorophenol and other chemicals) would sometimes fly open, releasing hundreds of gallons of the toxic solution; workers were sent to pump out creosote and pentachlorophenol which had pooled in yards north of the plant after heavy rains flooded the waste ponds and to distribute sand over the contaminated areas (3). Contaminated wastewater and runoff from the former treatment area were the primary wastes managed at the facility (6). In the early years of operation, all wastewater was sent to an unlined impoundment located in the northeastern part of the site (6).