EPA update on Pines contamination reset

Focus is project time line

By Alicia Ebaugh

Staff Writer

Published: Thursday, March 11, 2010 4:18 AM CST

PINES — An update from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on the investigation of contamination from the Yard 520 landfill has been rescheduled for Tuesday.

The public meeting is at 6:30 p.m. at Dunes Baptist Church, 4486 W. U.S. 20. Tim Drexler, EPA project manager for the Yard 520 Superfund Alternative site remediation, said the meeting is meant to be an update for residents on the project’s time line.

A final version was just received of the first important document on the remediation process: the remedial investigation report, Drexler said. The remedial investigation is meant to describe how many contaminants are present from fly ash at the Yard 520 landfill and where those contaminants may be headed.

However, the EPA’s review of that document probably will not be finished by Tuesday, Drexler said. He said he has to make sure all edits he requested were done, and write a supplement to the report, if necessary. But officials will talk generally about the report’s contents, he said, as well as about the ecological and human health-risk assessments now in progress.

It has been more than a year since the agencies hosted a public meeting like this on the issue, Drexler said. The last meeting in February was canceled due to bad weather.

The contamination in question is believed to have come from coal ash dumped there. The ash also was used as filler for yards and roads in the town in the 1970s. Brown Inc., a local contracting firm, owns the landfill, and trucks from its subsidiaries hauled the ash there from NIPSCO’s Bailly and Michigan City power plants.

NIPSCO disposed of 1.5 million tons of coal ash waste there more than 25 years. The landfill was shut down in 2003 after high levels of boron, molybdenum and arsenic were detected in residents’ well water. Now, NIPSCO and Brown Inc. are working with the EPA to study the Superfund Alternative site and provide a cleanup.

The EPA supervises the effort with input from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and a group of Pines residents known as People in Need of Environmental Safety.

Residents will have plenty of issues to discuss at the meeting. A recent study by a former EPA radiation expert, Larry Jensen, measured radioactive levels in the area and found them to be more than twice what is naturally present in at least 15 locations around the town.

Long-term, chronic exposure to low levels of radiation can cause cancer and DNA mutations, according to the EPA.

Jensen also said radium levels in the coal ash inside Yard 520 exceed EPA requirements for its removal from the site, based on his experience.

“If my interpretation is correct, the material should be removed no matter where it is, if you assume the same material in Pines is the same as in the landfill,” said Jensen, who worked on two Superfund sites in the Chicago area in his 21 years with the EPA.

While measuring radiation, at least three places were found where the landfill was leaking contaminated water. An IDEM inspector has asked Brown to fix the leaks.