The Gary Post-Tribune has a lengthly story today on the contamination of water wells in the Town of Pines, titled "Arsenic, boron, lead, manganese." (Unfortunately, the Tribune takes down its stories at the end of each day, so few of you will have a chance to read it.) Some quotes about the history of the area:
More than two decades ago, ash ponds at NIPSCO’s Michigan City generating station were overflowing with coal ash, a waste product from burning coal in power plants. Roughly 1 million tons of the waste was moved to Brown’s Yard 520 in the Pines. “The ash ponds were intended to be temporary holding areas for ash as permitted by IDEM,” said NIPSCO spokeswoman Regina Biddings in an e-mail.An earlier ILB entry on this topic was published Feb. 10 - scroll down to read it.Jeff Stant, a coal consultant for the Clean Air Task Force, has another theory. Testing in the late 1970s and early 1980s at the Michigan City plant revealed arsenic levels at 500 times today’s EPA standard, Stant said. Stant said his figures come from a 1988 report presented to Congress by the EPA. “They started dumping it out in nearby hamlets,” Stant said. “I definitely suspect Beverly Shores got a good bit of it, too. It appears they were just engaging in a shell game.”
The waste was transported to the Pines with the permission of IDEM, Biddings said.
It wasn’t until 1983 that Yard 520 was licensed by the state to receive power plant waste. Before that, regulations for the waste didn’t exist, said Amy Hartsock, public information officer for IDEM. IDEM itself wasn’t formed until the mid-1980s. Prior to then, the Indiana Department of Health oversaw environmental issues, Hartsock said.
NIPSCO also rids itself annually of 200,000 tons of fly ash to the concrete industry, Biddings said.
Besides the landfill, low areas of the community were filled in with fly ash. To complicate matters, the ash material is in back yards, under driveways, and forms the base of roads snaking through the town. The ash was dumped there at a time before regulations and before people knew what the ash could do.
“Prior to 1974, people were taking their garbage to the dump and setting it on fire. Our methods of disposal weren’t really sanitary,” said Bruce Palin, deputy assistant commissioner for IDEM’s office of land quality. “Industrial waste didn’t get a lot of attention until later,” he said. “They had this ash; it looked like black sand. It was innocuous looking. They said, 'This makes great fill because it’s similar in consistency to sand there.’”
State and federal environmental officials discovered on the Brown property deposits of ash that pre-dated the permitting process. That ash was not within the boundaries of the landfill, Palin said. “At the time we issued the permit in 1983, I don’t believe we were aware of this ash material at the boundaries of the property,” Palin said. “Monitoring wells on site weren’t established to monitor (the) other ash area,” he said.
[Update 2/16/04] Today's Indianapolis Star's top story is headlined "Indiana lets feds deal with mercury: Critics decry lack of action by state to cut emissions." A quote:
Indiana power plants released 5,728 pounds of mercury into the air in 2001, the fourth-highest amount in the United States, according to the most recent federal emissions figures.[Update 2/17/04] The Indianapolis Star has this editorial today titled "Don't wait to attack mercury pollution." A quote:But state officials say the responsibility for curbing those emissions should fall on the federal government's shoulders, not the state's.
"We really have been focused on participating in the development of a national policy," said Janet McCabe, assistant commissioner for the office of air quality at the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently proposed new rules that would cut mercury emissions 29 percent by 2007 and 70 percent by 2018. But environmental groups and some states say the regulations won't do enough to reduce the toxic pollutant and are likely to face legal challenges, which could delay implementation.
Indiana is one of those worst cases, ranking fourth in the amount of mercury emissions, thanks mainly to its reliance on coal-fired power plants for generating electricity. Yet the Indiana Department of Environmental Management says it will content itself with contributing to the Bush administration's development of a national policy. Now in its proposal stages, that policy has been criticized by environmental groups and some states as taking too long to reduce a toxic chemical linked to brain, kidney and fetal damage. Even when finalized, it is expected to be delayed in implementation by legal challenges.Posted by Marcia Oddi at February 15, 2004 07:59 PM