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Old dump
complicates
cleanup of asbestos
Chicago Tribune -
9/11
A Superfund
cleanup project to remove asbestos-contaminated sand and soil from
Waukegan's lakefront has gone $1.7 million over budget and two
months over schedule after workers found more asbestos than
expected.The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency expects to
finish the project in the next two weeks at the 3-acre site near
the former Johns Manville Co. plant.
Bottles and
rusted metal that were also dug up suggest the site might have
been used as a dump, which could mean more cleanup will be needed,
state officials said.
"They ran
into what appears to be an old municipal or random dump,"
said Cliff Gould, a regional manager for the Illinois
Environmental Protection Agency. "And the question now
becomes: What should be done about this?"
Gould said he
will decide in the next month whether more testing and groundwater
sampling is required to determine if the site has been cleaned
adequately. If the results warrant it, "we might have to dig
it up" again, he said.
Even if tests
show a large amount of buried garbage, the best choice for the
environment might be to leave it buried, Gould said.
When the cleanup
began in May, officials thought it would cost $750,000 and take 45
days. Instead it has taken four months and cost $2.5 million, they
said.
To find asbestos,
workers sectioned off the site into a grid of 42, 100-square-foot
sections. Preliminary tests showed 17 sections had to be excavated
down to 3 feet because of asbestos. The soil was shipped to a
landfill in Wisconsin.
As digging
continued, contractors found more asbestos that extended beyond
the targeted areas. Eventually, 30 sections had to be excavated.
"We've
probably taken out four times more than we initially thought, more
than 46,000 tons," said Brad Benning, site coordinator for
the U.S. EPA.
"I don't
think we had a choice. We kept seeing [asbestos in the soil] and
went after it."
The material that
contained asbestos--discarded shingles and cement pipes--came from
the Manville plant and was used to build a large berm as a
backstop for a shooting range. Built in 1959, the range was later
bulldozed.
In 1971 the EPA
declared asbestos a hazardous pollutant that can cause several
diseases, including lung cancer and asbestosis, when asbestos
fibers lodge in airways and lung tissue.
The site is near
a popular fishing pier that has been closed for the cleanup.
The pier could
reopen later this month after a smaller asbestos cleanup project
being done by the adjacent Midwest Generation power plant is
completed.
The Illinois
Dunesland Preservation Society, a local group, believe a more
extensive clean-up is needed.
"It's what
they're leaving behind that's the issue now," said Paul
Kakuris, the group's president. "It's not really a cleanup.
It's a partial cleanup."
Kakuris has
peppered the state and federal environmental agencies with letters
and calls this summer trying to get them to take a closer look at
the site.
The Dunesland
group is credited with helping to uncover the asbestos problem
four years ago when its members traced pieces of asbestos washing
up along the shoreline back to the beachfront site.
The U.S. EPA did
more testing on the site and reported finding the garbage.
"I think
they need to go out and do comprehensive testing for all
contaminants there," Kakuris said.
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