Still, life goes on in and around many Superfund sites, just has it has here in an area about two miles long and a mile wide, a locale that touches parts of McCook Field and Old North Dayton.
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“There isn’t a magic wand to wave over this to make it go away in a short amount of time,” Erik Hardin, an EPA project manager, said in an interview Wednesday. “Any clean-up option that we have looked at takes some time.”
Groundwater beneath the auto parts plant — today owned and operated by German manufacturer MAHLE — is contaminated with volatile organic compounds, including the solvent trichloroethene, or TCE.
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Residents and the public will talk about the EPA’s next steps at a 6 p.m. Sept. 20 meeting at Kiser Elementary School, 1401 Leo St.
The primary risk to homes and businesses is from vapor intrusion, Hardin said. Contamination from groundwater becomes a vapor and can accumulate in soil beneath buildings at dangerous levels, he said.
Many homes around the plant have had monitoring systems set up. Those systems have fans that are meant to blow the dangerous vapors away from homes and businesses.
“That is something that has been investigated and mitigated for 10-plus years at the site,” Hardin said. “We believe that at least the vast majority of folks who had issues have had systems put on.”
The contaminated groundwater is not drinking water. The contamination is not moving towards wellfields up to the north, and it’s not making its way to those wellfields, Hardin said. And municipal drinking water is treated anyway, he noted.
But the EPA wants to expand its examination of vapor intrusion. To do that, the EPA needs written permission of property owners who live or work in the vicinity of the plume.
The proposal also involves a process the EPA calls “air sparging,” injecting air into contaminated groundwater to strip harmful chemicals from the vapor. These gases would then travel into air spaces in the soil above the water table where they could be captured by vacuum wells, sent through a treatment system, then released into the air.
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Since January, the EPA has been testing the process on a smaller scale, and the agency believes it will yield results.
People can attend the Sept. 20 hearing and submit a written or verbal statement. They can mail statements to Heriberto Leon, EPA (mail code SI-6J), 77 W. Jackson Blvd., Chicago, IL, 60604.
They can also email comments to leon.heriberto@epa.gov or fax them to (312) 697-2754.
The EPA wants comments postmarked or received by Oct. 5.
For more information, go to https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/cursites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0510164
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