EAST CHICAGO — The EPA said Friday it will begin removing soil at a minimum of 20 properties in an area of the Calumet neighborhood where funding for a Superfund cleanup of lead and arsenic contamination had not previously been identified.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in a statement Friday it began testing properties in the area known as zone 2 this summer and has now taken soil samples from 136 of the 590 properties in that area. The federal agency said it will complete soil sampling this year and that 384 property owners had signed access agreements as of Friday. The EPA said it plans to continue cleaning up any remaining properties in 2017.
Many residents in zone 2 felt left out because a 2014 consent decree covered only zones 1 and 3. DuPont and Atlantic Richfield, successors to companies responsible for contamination in those areas, reached a $26 million settlement with the federal government and state of Indiana. Department of Justice and Indiana attorney general's officials previously said it has not yet been determined who will ultimately pay for a cleanup in zone 2. The EPA said Friday that negotiations with potentially responsible parties have not yet started, and it would be premature to predict when such negotiations might begin.
Debbie Chizewer, Montgomery Foundation environmental law fellow at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law’s Environmental Law Clinic, said zone 2 residents were left out of the consent decree "without explanation or justification."
"The Superfund law allows EPA to clean up now and seek reimbursement later, particularly in cases like this when public health concerns demand a cleanup," she said.
The EPA said Friday it can begin cleanup work in zone 2 and recoup costs later.
Zone 2 is bounded by East Chicago Avenue to the north, 151st Street to the south, McCook Avenue to the west, and the Elgin & Joliet and Eastern Railway to the east and includes a segment just north of Carrie Gosch Elementary School and west of McCook. Zone 3 is bounded by East Chicago Avenue to the north, East 149th Place to the south, the E&J and Eastern Railway to the west and Parrish Avenue to the east.
Excavation, demolition planned
The EPA previously has said it plans to move forward with excavation work this fall at 19 properties in East Calumet, which is known as zone 3. The EPA targeted those properties for cleanup because they had the highest levels of lead among the 411 properties sampled in that zone. The EPA plans to excavate additional properties in the zone this year and next. There are a total of 463 properties in zone 3, according to the EPA.
The EPA has shelved plans for excavation this year in zone 1, which includes the West Calumet Housing Complex and Carrie Gosch Elementary School, since the city moved to demolish the 346-unit public housing complex. More than 1,000 people in the complex, including about 680 children, have been told by local and federal officials they must move. The complex was constructed in the footprint of a long-ago-demolished lead factory built in 1912 by International Smelting & Refining Co., a subsidiary of the Anaconda Copper Co. Lead levels as high as 91,100 parts per million, or 227 times the 400 ppm standard set by the EPA for cleanup of residential areas at the site, were found in the soil at the south end of the complex.
Arsenic is a carcinogen. Children and pregnant women are particularly at risk when exposed to lead. Lead exposure, even at low levels, can cause irreversible behavioral and intelligence problems, abdominal pain, weakness, and kidney and brain damage, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Pregnant women and other adults can experience stillbirth, miscarriage and infertility.
The EPA selected a remediation plan in 2012 for all three zones that calls for removal of up to 2 feet, placement of a protective barrier atop any remaining contaminated soils and replacement with clean soil. The agency previously removed soil at a limited number of properties across all three zones that tested above its standards during a remedial investigation conducted from 2008 to 2011.
Residents in zones 2 and 3 will be allowed to remain in their homes during excavation this year, the EPA said.
Residents at properties where the EPA took samples in August 2016 will begin to learn about sampling results in early October, the agency said. The EPA began soil sampling at the south end of zone 2, because the area is "closest to the former USS Lead factory."
The former USS Lead facility was first proposed for the Superfund list in 1992, and its owner began a cleanup in 1993 under the EPA's Resource Conservation and Recovery Act program in 1993. Health studies in the 1990s raised concerns about the residential areas to the north of USS Lead, and the former USS Lead factory and the Calumet neighborhood were added to the Superfund's National Priorities List in April 2009.
Chizewer said Friday it's not surprising that the EPA has now found 20 more highly contaminated properties in zone 2.
"You cannot find contamination if you do not look for it," she said. "Between 2008-2011, EPA relied on its removal authority to clean 13 highly contaminated properties in the southern portion of zone 2. Yet, in the 2008-2011 time period, EPA did not use those findings to justify expanded testing in the southern portion of zone 2."
The EPA previously responded to similar questions about zone 1, even though it knew as early as 1997 of the former International lead factory at that site, by saying its goal during the remedial investigation was to get a broad picture of contamination across all three zones.