PCB cleanup plans ready to be unveiled

Cleanup plans for the remaining PCB sites in Bloomington and Monroe County have been reached after years of negotiation, and they will be shared with the public this week at two meetings.

Remediation at each of the three sites is detailed in a nearly 2.5-inch thick document that needs local approval before being submitted to U.S. District Court for review.

Besides a final cleanup plan, the document also calls for a payment of $9.6 million to the U.S. government to cover PCB work costs and damages to natural resources. The money would be paid by CBS, which was held liable for damages caused by the Westinghouse Electric Corp. when it operated a capacitor plant in Bloomington.

The figure includes $1.88 million for damages to natural resources in the area.

John Langley, deputy utilities director for the city of Bloomington, called the proposed remedies at the last three sites a significant step in the decades-long PCB affair. Langley has been the city government point person on PCBs — polychlorinated biphenyls — since the early 1980s.

The chemicals — banned in the 1970s — are associated with health and environmental problems. Cleanup and removal of PCB hotspots from six dump sites started in the 1990s; additional work still is needed at Lemon Lane Landfill, Bennett’s Dump and Neal’s Landfill.

The plan, if approved, will amend the original PCB consent decree from August 1985. The decree binds together four government agencies as plaintiffs: the city of Bloomington, the state of Indiana, Monroe County and the United States of America. The defendant is CBS Corp., a successor owner of Westinghouse.

Among actions proposed for Lemon Lane Landfill are the following: designing and operating a collection system to capture water from nearby springs and pump it to the landfill’s treatment plant; removing contaminated soil; installing a new treatment plant discharge line from the plant to a culvert; treating up to 1,000 gallons per minute to a level of .3 ppb (parts per billion) PCBs.

In fact, CBS will take over and operate the water treatment plant at the Lemon Lane Landfill 20 days after the amendment goes into effect.

City of Bloomington Utilities has helped fund the treatment at the plant since 2004, splitting the cost with the other parties. The monthly cost of treatment is $11,000-$15,000. The city would not be reimbursed for that cost under the terms of the agreement.

The amendment is the culmination of years of negotiations between the parties about future work and monitoring at the sites, one of which is owned by the city — the Lemon Lane Landfill. The other two, Neal’s Landfill and Bennett’s Dump, are in Monroe County but are privately owned.

“I think it’s almost the end. I don’t know if we’ll ever be done monitoring PCBs in Bloomington, Indiana,” Langley said.

Mike Baker also has been involved with PCB cleanup issues for a long time, and he said he’s comfortable with this latest round of cleanup proposals.

Baker is a former president of the Coalition Opposed to PCB Ash in Monroe County. The citizens group stopped meeting last year but will continue to post updates on its Web site. The group was formed to stop the building and operation of an incinerator to take care of PCBs, as called for in the 1985 consent decree.

Baker said it’s tough to call the remedies final because PCBs will remain in the ground at some of the sites, but that there is very little risk to the public.

He said it’s been a long process, but that a lot has been learned over the years that resulted in a better remedy.

“There’s been a lot of unfactored costs that the community has borne financially and emotionally since it started,” Baker said.

He praised Tom Alcamo, remedial project manager for the EPA in Chicago, who oversees the local PCB projects and has shared much of the information now in the amendment at public PCB meetings.

County attorney William Steger said the county is comfortable with the proposed work to finish up each of the three remaining sites.

“Yes, we very much hope it will be a last step,” said county attorney William Steger.

But he called the PCB remediation and monitoring a work in progress.

“This is something that is still going to take a lot of work, and years of monitoring afterward,” he said.

In fact, the agreement gives the government the right to reopen the agreement at any time to ensure that the remediation is working.