Deadline set by judge
puts bite on area officials
Pressure's on for quick cleanup
by Steve Hinnefeld
November 23, 1997
reprinted with permission of the Sunday Herald-Times, Inc.
A federal judge's order that a Bloomington-area PCB cleanup be completed
in 25 months compresses a lot of earth-moving into a relatively short time.
It also puts pressure on government officials to make sure the cleanup
is done properly.
"Certainly I have that concern," said Dan Hopkins, remedial
project manager with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
"It's going to be up to the EPA and the rest of the parties to do
their absolute best to make sure what they're coming up with is adequate
to protect human health and the environment."
Bloomington Mayor John Fernandez said he welcomes the tight cleanup deadline,
however.
"My administration's position has been we want a speedy cleanup
but, more importantly, we want a comprehensive, thorough cleanup,"
Fernandez said.
"Now, having said that, my experience has been that often there
is unnecessary delay."
To add further to deadline pressure, Hopkins is leaving his position
overseeing the Bloomington cleanup and taking another job with the EPA.
The cleanup is occurring under a 1985 agreement between Westinghouse
Electric Corp. and federal, state, county and city agencies. The agreement
called for incinerating the wastes, but that plan was dropped because of
public opposition.
Westinghouse used PCBs, polychlorinated biphenyls, at its Bloomington
factory until 1977. They have been linked to cancer and other health problems.
U.S. District Judge S. Hugh Dillin imposed the new deadline Tuesday at
a conference in his Indianapolis courtroom.
He said he wants the cleanup finished by January 2000. He also ordered
the parties to complete sampling for PCBs at the five cleanup sites by next
June.
The sampling could provide the key to deciding how much soil, sludge
and refuse must be removed from four area dumps.
And it could help answer the question of whether the judge's cleanup
deadline can be met.
The 1985 agreement estimated about 600,000 cubic yards of PCB-contaminated
material needed to be removed.
That would be tens of thousands of truckloads that Westinghouse would
load up and haul away, possibly to a hazardous waste landfill.
But there will be negotiations over how much of the material must be
removed and how much can stay in place without harming the environment.
"All of that material is not necessarily contaminated," said
Westinghouse spokesman Vaughn Gilbert.
Gilbert said Westinghouse thinks the judge's deadline is tough but not
impossible to meet.
"A lot of things would have to fall into place, but our folks think
that, technically, it's feasible," he said.
Cleanup work is under way at one PCB site, the city's old Winston-Thomas
sewage treatment plant. It could be completed next year.
And the parties know enough about a second site, the Lemon Lane Landfill
on Bloomington's west side, to start work there soon, Hopkins said.
But they need to do more sampling at the other sites - Neal's Landfill
and Bennett's Dump in western Monroe County and Neal's Dump in Owen County.
The parties went to Dillin last week with a schedule that called for
finishing the Winston-Thomas cleanup and getting the Lemon Lane Landfill
cleanup under way by the end of 1998.
"Clearly the schedule we gave to the court did not meet with his
satisfaction," Hopkins said. "Now we really have to knuckle under
and redouble our efforts."
Dillin also appointed a federal magistrate, Kennard Foster, to monitor
the cleanup and resolve disagreements among the parties.
The city had requested that a magistrate be appointed.
Hopkins, meanwhile, will move this week to a new position with the EPA's
regional office in Chicago.
He will be team leader for a group of professionals that attempts to
reduce toxic pollution in the six-state Midwest region.
Hopkins has been remedial project manager for the Bloomington PCB project
for 8+ years. He said he has regrets about leaving the project, "but
from a career standpoint it's the right move." |
