EAST CHICAGO — The EPA said last week it plans to test four basements in East Calumet to determine if flooding or water seepage has carried any lead or arsenic inside homes within the USS Lead Superfund site.
The federal agency planned the pilot tests in response to concerns brought up by residents, officials said.
“We’re hoping that by collecting those samples, we address those concerns,” said Timothy Drexler, one of the agency’s remedial project managers.
“At least that portion is getting addressed, where before it wasn’t,” Lopez said.
The EPA on Oct. 2 began excavating soil outside homes in East Calumet. It’s the first of three cleanup zones in the residential area, located north of the former USS Lead factory at 5300 Kennedy Ave.
The agency plans to excavate soil at about 18 properties in the area — dubbed zone 3 — and a portion of Riley Park this construction season. That number could change because of resampling, officials said. The 18 homes are being targeted because contamination levels are above the EPA’s emergency cleanup standards of 1,200 ppm for lead and 68 ppm for arsenic.
Some of the re-sampling stems from EPA’s effort to evaluate past sampling efforts, Drexler said.
In cases where the agency previously removed soil, it found areas such as parkways that were left unaddressed, he said. It’s unlikely the area’s low water table and leaching of groundwater could cause recontamination of previously excavated properties, he said.
The agency currently has access to 411 of the 468 properties in zone 3. Cleanup eventually will be completed at 226 homes, the EPA said.
Residents who refuse to grant the EPA access to their properties are not required to explain why, Drexler said.
During the cleanup work, residents are asked to close their doors and windows. Air monitors are placed around the site and near the home’s doors, and at least one worker wears a personal air monitoring device, he said. The device is intended to ensure workers’ safety; they wore gloves as they dug out soil Tuesday at a property in the 4900 block of Euclid Avenue but no masks.
Workers ensure residents always have access to front and back doors, and the EPA fences the work area at night. Residents are asked not to allow children near the area.
More than 100 EPA employees and contractors were on site as of Monday, EPA spokeswoman Rachel Bassler said. Deep cleaning inside homes in the West Calumet Housing Complex is ongoing, and more than 125 residences had been completed as of 3 p.m. Monday, she said. There are 346 units at the complex.
Some of the properties in zone 3 are being remediated solely because of arsenic contamination, Drexler said. That’s how East Calumet differs from the West Calumet Housing Complex, where lead levels in the soil at nearly every property are above what the EPA considers safe for residential use.
Concentrations of lead and arsenic in zone 3 also tend to be greater closer to the surface, indicating the contamination ended up in the soil as a result of emissions from the factories that once operated in the neighborhood and particles carried by the wind.
Still, the EPA has found some properties with contamination at a lower depth, Drexler said. That could indicate contaminated fill was dumped in the area before homes were constructed.
The cleanup at each property is expected to take three to four days, Drexler said. Crews will spend the first day excavating, digging by hand around foundations and any plantings homeowners want to remain. Workers use a small excavator to dig up larger areas.
The agency will take as much time as needed to ensure the restored yard meets the homeowner’s expectations, Drexler said.
“We will spend an hour or hour and a half with the homeowner,” Drexler said. “We go walk front to back, and back to front.”
The agency takes photos and video, and generates maps to ensure each yard will be returned to what it was before excavation, he said.
“We spend a lot of time just to make sure they’re going to be satisfied,” he said.
The EPA will remove soil down to a level where tests show lead and arsenic concentrations are no longer greater than residential use standards of 400 ppm for lead and 26 ppm for arsenic, Drexler said. The agency has determined how deep to dig on each property based on previous sampling.
Previous sampling went down 2 feet. Native sand, which is not considered contaminated, was found at or above that level on the vast majority of properties in zone 3, Drexler said. Soil was found deeper than 2 feet at three properties in zone 3, and the EPA will dig to 2 feet at those sites and take new samples to determine if it needs to go deeper.
The EPA considers soil with lead concentrations greater than 2,400 ppm to be hazardous and basically encases it in cement before removing it to a certified landfill. None of the soil slated for removal in zone 3 has been rated hazardous, Drexler said.
The soil will be replaced with clean fill, including up to 6 inches of topsoil, from two local sources, Drexler said. The agency samples every 1,000 cubic yards of replacement soil, which must have lead and arsenic concentrations that are lower than “background levels.”
For the USS Lead site, topsoil background levels are 21 ppm for lead and 6.7 ppm for arsenic. Backfill must test below 16 ppm for lead and 8.7 ppm for arsenic.
Crews are taking the contaminated dirt to an area at the Chemours Co. site, just north of the Grand Calumet River and east of Kennedy Avenue. The site was once occupied by DuPont, which along with Atlantic Richfield Co. agreed in 2014 to a $26 million settlement for cleanup work at two of three residential cleanup zones.
From the Chemours site, contaminated dirt is being transported to the Newton County Landfill in Brook, which has the certification necessary to receive contaminated soil. DuPont and Atlantic Richfield are overseeing that work, officials said.
The EPA has said it also plans to begin excavating this year in zone 2 — the middle part of the neighborhood not covered by the 2014 consent decree — and recoup costs later. At least 20 properties could be addressed this construction season, but a start date for zone 2 has not yet been announced.