East Chicago Residents Oppose Canal Dredging Dump Facility

A low-income, minority community says it’s fed up with carrying the burden of legacy toxic waste.

East Chicago residents gave state and federal environmental officials an earful at an informational meeting Thursday night, pushing back against U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ plans to store more toxic sediment dredged from the Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal at a disposal facility at 3500 Indianapolis Blvd.

State and federal officials said they have yet to sign off on the permit and are still reviewing public comments received on the project earlier this year, though the public comment period is over.

“We are absolutely, vehemently opposed to any higher levels of any contaminants. We are fed up with the assault of toxic contamination on our city, our neighborhoods and our people,” shouted the Rev. Cheryl Rivera, with the Northwest Indiana Federation of Interfaith Organizations.

“Take it somewhere else. It is absolutely environmental racism. That’s exactly what it is … The answer is no. N-O,” she said.

The 30 or so community members sitting in the East Chicago Public Library meeting room met Rivera’s comments with applause.

Cancer-causing chemicals

Since 2012, dredged sediment from the harbor and canal containing toxic polychlorinated biphenyls – or PCBs — and other pollutants has been placed in an existing confined disposal facility at 3500 Indianapolis Blvd. Prior to 2012, the waterway had not been dredged since 1972.

But now the Army Corps is seeking special permission from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to permanently store more of the toxic PCB-containing sediment.

EPA Project Manager Jean Greensley said contaminated toxic sediment is now sitting in an uncontained, open waterway. The goal is to prevent the sediment from flowing into Lake Michigan and to make commercial navigation more safe and efficient in the Indiana Harbor Canal, she said.

Army Corps officials are seeking approval to store an estimated maximum volume of 60,000 cubic yards of sediment that contains a PCB concentration greater than 50 parts per million at 3500 Indianapolis Blvd.

Representatives from the U.S. EPA and IDEM at Thursday night’s information meeting outlined many of the project’s protective measures —containment walls, air and water monitoring and more. But residents weren’t having it, arguing someone should find a way to properly remove and clean the sediment.

“What I’m hearing tonight is people getting up and saying it’s all hunky-dory, safe and good to go,” exclaimed Larry Davis, a local environmental activist with a long history of fighting pollution and industry in the city. “Stop telling us half-truths.”

William O’Neal, of the 600 block of West 140th Street and who lives about a half mile from the site, asked whether airborne contaminants were a concern.

Greensley said a decant structure, along with extraction wells, will allow the Army Corps to pump or extract water levels from two separate 45-acre cells on site to ensure the contaminants are properly covered with enough water.

‘Live where we live’

Many in the room Thursday expressed frustration, pointing to an erosion of trust with state and federal environmental officials. They cited the decades-long delay in cleaning up the city’s lead- and arsenic-contaminated USS Lead Superfund site — located about 3 miles southeast of this facility.

Students from the former Carrie Gosch Elementary School have been attending school at a building not far from the disposal facility since last summer. Families were evacuated due to high levels of lead and arsenic found in the soil at the nearby West Calumet public housing complex.

Tara Adams, one of the more than 1,000 individuals forced to leave West Calumet, repeatedly questioned if EPA and IDEM officials would personally live or allow their children to live near the facility.

“Would you put this in your town? This has been going through for too long. I understand the legacy (of pollution) left here, where my children have to go to school. You don’t live where we live, sleep where we sleep,” Adams said.

The facility site property is owned by the East Chicago Waterway Management District, but the facility would be operated and managed by the Army Corps of Engineers, said George Ritchotte, environmental manager for industrial waste with IDEM’s Office of Land Quality.

Pat Rodriguez, board member for the city’s waterway management district, pleaded with EPA officials to protect residents from harm.

‘Protect us’

“EPA stands for Environmental Protection Agency. And we have a bunch of citizens here asking you to protect us, protecting us by denying the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ permit. That’s what we’re asking for. We don’t have to pay for the sins of our fathers,” Rodriguez said.

After the meeting, Rodriguez said he was speaking as a private citizen at the meeting and not on behalf of the board.

EPA spokesman Rafael Gonzalez said the public comment period has already ended for the facility but that he would take residents’ message back to the agency staff. It will not be part of the official public record.

Thomas Frank, environmental activist and former director of the Indiana Harbor Shipping Canal, said EPA must consider the city’s status as an environmental justice community — meaning a predominantly low-income, minority community disproportionately affected by industry pollution.

“It has to be part of their framework,” he said.

Source: nwi.com