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Tuesday, March 09, 2004

Environment - Evansville site nominated to Superfund list

"The U.S. EPA has proposed adding 45 blocks of the Jacobsville neighborhood to its Superfund National Priorities List of hazardous waste sites." This according to a story today in the Evansville Courier & Press. More:

About 500 people live in the affected area, which EPA says has dangerously high levels of lead in the soil. The neighborhood includes Deaconess Hospital and several other businesses.

Cleanup efforts won't begin soon. EPA officials said they will now study cleanup options and develop cost estimates. Those options will be presented
to the public during a comment period. * * *

The neighborhood is the former home of the Evansville Plating Works, which was an environmental problem for the city for years before it was razed by EPA last year.

But the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, in a 2001 assessment of the neighborhood, did not designate Evansville Plating as a source of the soil contamination.

The state agency identified four other possible contributors, all of them factories closed for decades.

They include:

— Blount Plow Works, which operated from the 1880s to the 1940s as a manufacturer of horse-driven plows. The plow works operated a foundry. Buehler's Buy Low, 200 N. Main St., now stands where the foundry once operated.

— Advance Stove Works, which operated from the turn of the century to the 1950s. It was a manufacturer of stoves and also operated a foundry. That site is now occupied by Benthall Brothers at Read and Division streets. — Newton-Kelsay, which operated from the turn of the century to the 1950s. That site manufactured hames, part of a harness for animals. McDonald's, 20 N. Main St., now stands on the site. — Sharpes Shot Works, which operated from 1878 to an unknown date, manufactured lead shot for guns. That site is now owned by Deaconess Hospital.

IDEM believes soil in the surrounding area became contaminated through airborne emissions from those four plants. Superfund responses are broken into two different types, according to Mick Hans, Superfund spokesman for Region Five, which includes Indiana. The cleanup of Evansville Plating was an emergency response to an imminent threat, he said. Hans said because the site still existed, it needed immediate response. The proposed cleanup of the surrounding blocks would be a longer-term and more expensive response aimed at the whole neighborhood.

Here is the 8-page Proposed National Priorities List posted in the Monday, March 8, 2004 Federal Register (45 FR 10647-10653). The new additions begin on the bottom of the 7th page.

See also this related story in today's NY Times that begins:

Citing budgetary concerns, the Bush administration has proposed new toxic waste sites for the Superfund program at a much slower rate than previous administrations, a practice criticized by state environmental officials who say it masks the true demand for cleanup in the country.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 9, 2004 07:36 AM
Posted to Environmental Issues