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Monday, May 12, 2008
Environment - "A century's worth of mud dredged from five miles of the Grand Calumet River lies buried" in a nearby CAMU
Gitte Laasby of the Gary Post-Tribune has an instructive story today about corrective action cleanups. Some quotes:
GARY -- Like a steep hill, the sloping, grass-covered walls rise 20 feet into the air on a strip of land east of Bridge Street and north of Interstate 90. Covered with water, the mound looks like a lake from the air. But the peaceful appearance of the structure does not appease Leonard White.A solid waste specialist, White has worked on some of the country's most contaminated sites. He lives and grew up within a mile of the structure, officially known as a corrective action management unit -- a CAMU.
Nearly a century's worth of mud dredged from five miles of the Grand Calumet River lies buried inside the 37-acre structure.
The mud is contaminated with hazardous cancer-causing substances such as PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and oil distillation byproducts like benzene and naphthalene. To White, that means one thing.
"They can call it a CAMU," White said. "I call it a Superfund site."
The unit is lined at the bottom and on the sides with layers of material designed to keep the mud from leaking out. Water covers the top until it's drawn off, cleaned and sent back to the river. Some vegetation has also started growing at the CAMU. * * *
Dorreen Carey, director of environmental affairs with the City of Gary, said even environmentalists, who had wanted the cleanup of the Grand Calumet River for decades, were conflicted about dredging to protect Lake Michigan and the fish in the river because the contaminated sediment would be placed so close to a residential neighborhood.
"There was a lot of comments up front on where that was to be located," Carey said. "It was identified and decided by U.S. Steel and EPA. The city had some, but limited, authority to oppose the project. At the time, because the river, without being dredged, was a negative for the community and the environment, and because when you dredge and contain it within the CAMU you're protecting people from that negative health impact, that was considered a good thing. The actual location of the facility was, without entering into a large protracted lawsuit, really not something the city had control over."
Posted by Marcia Oddi on May 12, 2008 10:54 AM
Posted to Environment