Michigan City News Dispatch

Michigan City News Dispatch

'It's still in the ground'

Pines residents still not certain of coal ash’s effects

Alicia Ebaugh

Staff Writer

Saturday, December 19, 2009

PINES - Year after year, toxic chemicals from coal ash dumped in the town of Pines spread under residents' feet. What it has done to their surroundings, their children, themselves, the residents of Pines are still unsure.

All they can do is wait.

"They gave us money and water, but it's still all in the ground," said Ed Campion, who moved to Pines in 1976 with his wife, Elaine. "We can't get away from it."

Between 1975 and 2001, Northern Indiana Public Service Co. disposed of 1.5 million tons of coal ash waste in Yard 520. It sits just inside the town limits, near the juncture of U.S. 20 and U.S. 520, the state's shortest highway. Brown Inc., a local contracting firm, owned the landfill, and trucks from its subsidiaries hauled the coal ash there from NIPSCO's Bailly and Michigan City power plants.

The landfill was shut down after high levels of boron, molybdenum and arsenic were detected in residents' well water. Those contaminants, all found in coal ash, were slowly seeping into the groundwater and possibly collecting in the soil.

The Pines groundwater plume, as it's called by the Environmental Protection Agency, was designated a Superfund Alternative site in 2003. The contaminated groundwater is thought to be creeping north from the town toward Lake Michigan. Now Pines' future - and maybe even that of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore - rests on the outcome of an investigation into the risks the residents and land face from coal ash pollution and what can be done to correct them.

The first part of this is a remedial investigation, which will describe how much of these contaminants are present and where they may be headed. Expected to come to a close at the beginning of 2010, it will set the stage for the rest of the project. But it's only the first piece of the puzzle, and it's been a long time coming.

"Sometimes it just seems like NIPSCO and Brown (Inc.) are running the clock out and waiting for us to give up, but we won't. We can't. There's too much at stake," said Paul Kysel, vice president of People in Need of Environmental Safety, a resident group that tracks the issue.

Yard 520 isn't the only place the coal ash ended up. Trucks full of it were used to build and fill roads throughout the town, even used in place of dirt to even out land for homeowners.

"Now look at it. Nothing will even grow on it," said Campion, whose home sits just 40 feet from one of the largest in-town deposits of coal ash - his backyard. Since no one seemed to object to the coal ash in the years after he moved to the Pines, he thought it would be all right if he used what is called bottom ash, the sludgy remains left at the bottom of coal combustion chambers, to fill in the swampy parts of his half block of land along East Johns Avenue.

Campion scrapes his foot along the top of the ground, and the microthin layer of moss and grass immediately gives way. Underneath is just bottom ash, which holds little nutrients for growth. It also holds no roots. Even the thick roots of seemingly sturdy volunteer trees spread outward along the ground's surface instead of delving into the soil.

"I can push one of them trees down right now if I want to," he said. And, even at 63 years old with severe arthritis, he can.

This is the land on which the Campions' nine children ate, played and slept. They all drank the water from their well, which may have harbored an ever-growing amount of contaminants. Indiana Department of Environmental Management records as far back as 1985 show unsafe levels of arsenic, chromium and lead in the water of monitoring wells surrounding the landfill.

But even though theirs was one of about 270 homes to receive city water service as part of a consent order with the EPA, they'll likely never know what their water contained - their well was never tested. Neither were many other residents' wells, said Jan Nona, a founding member of the P.I.N.E.S. group.

"Instead of testing all of our wells, NIPSCO and Brown just decided to give everyone in certain parts of the town water service, and others didn't get it," Nona said.

Heading up the work at the Pines groundwater plume is international engineering and consulting firm AECOM - paid by NIPSCO and Brown Inc., which are the potentially responsible parties in the coal ash contamination. That is typical of Superfund Alternative sites, where those who claim potential responsibility for the pollution sign consent orders to pay for the work that needs to be done, said Tim Drexler, Environmental Protection Agency project manager. Close to 70 percent of the EPA's listed site projects in the region are led by the people or companies responsible for the pollution, he said.

"This way, taxpayers aren't paying for the work and it doesn't drain our funds," Drexler said. "The whole idea of (the Superfund Alternative designation) is to move along a resolution and get cleanup done."

The P.I.N.E.S. group didn't get to participate in that decision, Kysel said, because they weren't recognized as an "interested party" until after the consent orders were signed, after all the work plans were already written.

"We got so caught up in fighting the fight, we haven't really thought about how the EPA determined it was in their interest, or in the public's interest, to do it this way," he said.

Communities generally don't have any say on how a site is listed, Drexler said. Superfund Alternative sites are not put on the National Priorities List, which contains areas with known or threatened releases of hazardous substances, pollutants or contaminants throughout the United States and its territories. Because of this, Kysel said NIPSCO is able to maintain its credit rating, and the designation won't affect its insurance or borrowing power.

"There is financial gain for NIPSCO to keep it this way," he said.

While those things are true, NIPSCO spokesman Nick Meyer said the potentially responsible parties signed the consent orders because they wanted to participate in the cleanup.

All reports generated by AECOM go through a review process with the EPA, Drexler said, as well as with the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, the National Park Service and a consultant for P.I.N.E.S. This process takes a lot of time; for instance, two revisions to the remedial investigation have taken more than 18 months, with each group's scientists providing their own input.

Both Kysel and Charles Norris, principal scientist with GeoHydro, the firm hired by the P.I.N.E.S. group to interpret the scientific jargon and lengthy reports generated during the investigation, say AECOM has held up the process by continually submitting "erroneous data."

"They submitted the first draft, and our consultants sent them more than 20 pages of comments. The EPA echoed those comments," Kysel said. "Yet when the second draft came back, it was basically the same thing."

Kysel is convinced its because NIPSCO and Brown Inc. want to be found liable for as little damage as possible. But Meyer said NIPSCO and Brown Inc. have made all the changes so far that the EPA has ordered.

"We have done nothing to delay the process, so to speak," he said. "We feel this has been an open, collaborative process. It's all about implementing a remediation plan to reduce environmental impact going forward."

Results from this investigation won't be made public until it is finalized because all drafts are considered confidential, Drexler said. But 13 pages of his final corrections, sent Nov. 3 to AECOM, call into question the extent of damage to the groundwater, environment and residents claimed in the report, as well as its sources (see Final Corrections).

"Obviously the work product wouldn't be the same if we produced it," Drexler said. "But this is a cooperative effort. If in the end we don't agree with what they produce, (the EPA) will write a supplement to the investigation so the conclusions are valid."

It will be very interesting to see what AECOM does with this, Kysel said.

"All these changes are things our consultant and the National Park Service have been pushing for since Day 1," he said. "We're just supposed to be reporting back to the community in layman's terms what's going on, but we've been forced to take an activist role. We're asking questions, pushing back, criticizing every step of the process. We have to."

Nearly 40 homes in town were not hooked up to city water, Nona said, which was done for 270 homes at NIPSCO and Brown Inc.'s expense at the beginning of this project in 2004 and 2005. The wells of homes that were not included were not deemed to be at risk of contamination, even if they were only a short distance from homes that were, she said. But most of these homes, like that of David and Shirley McColpin, still receive shipments of bottled water every other week in 5-gallon jugs, paid for by NIPSCO and Brown Inc. The companies have spent $3.6 million so far on the water hookups and continued supply of bottled water, Meyer said.

"That bottled water is just a precautionary measure until the investigations are complete," he said.

The McColpins live a half block west of Birch Street, which was used as a "cut off" point in town for city water.

"We've basically accepted it for what it is," said Shirley McColpin. "There's only so much you can do, but there are a lot of things that don't make sense about what's going on here. This is one of them."

Their well was tested twice before they started receiving bottled water, McColpin said, but she was never told the results. Still, she is hopeful the companies will do the "right thing" in taking care of the pollution they created.

"I'm satisfied that they've done all they can do and trust that they'll take our health into consideration in the future," she said.

However, even if NIPSCO and Brown Inc. are found to have irreversibly impacted Pines' residents and their environment through the Superfund Alternative process, it would be difficult to take the companies to court. A civil suit brought against the companies by nearly 100 Pines residents seeking compensation for damages and possible health issues was resolved by a monetary settlement in May 2007. The amount of money paid out in the La Porte County suit was confidential, Meyer said, and residents signed contracts prohibiting them from speaking about it. Those residents are also prohibited from seeking any more compensation for damages in the future.

The McColpins, Campions and Nona were all plaintiffs in that civil suit.

"Was it worth it? No," Nona said. "I signed on because of a moral obligation to protect my community, I helped find people who would be affected by this. I didn't even want their dumb money. If they had any idea how much money I've spent on copy paper, postage and gas on this ... let's just say there's been little profit."

It makes no difference, she said, because the coal ash is still in the ground - and it will likely keep releasing contaminants for years to come.

Final Corrections

A selection of the Environmental Protection Agency's final corrections to the remedial investigation at the Pines Groundwater Plume Site:

• "You have insufficient evidence that all groundwater flow from area of investigation flows into Brown Ditch system unless you are including wetlands of Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore as part of 'related wetlands' to the ditch system." - There is no evidence right now that groundwater has become contaminated within the IDNL, said project manager Tim Drexler, but there is a question regarding polluted soil. "This is something we expect them to follow up on in the risk assessment," he said.

• "There are sufficient gaps in the monitoring well network." - The EPA wanted AECOM to remove any "absolute language" that contaminants have not and will not be found in certain places, Drexler said. "We haven't made the determination on a need for more wells, but there are not enough of them to say with certainty 'This is where it is all going,'" he said. "It's too early to make statement like that, we're looking for clarification."

• "Data shows that groundwater migrating laterally away from Yard 520 encounters REDOX conditions and/or sorptive materials that remove arsenic...Arsenic concentration is, therefore, increasing in soil at some location." - Iron is likely the element that is removing arsenic from the water, Drexler said, but it is collecting somewhere. They need to find where it is going and the potential risks from an accumulation of it in the soil, he said.

WHAT'S NEXT?

The next step for the Town of Pines, which EPA project manager Tim Drexler said is already underway, is a human health and environmental risk assessment, which measures what problems these identified contaminants can cause and defines "unacceptable risk." For residents, that means the probability of developing cancer. For plants and animals, its whether they will have an adverse affect on species.