Posted on August 29, 2016
Details were announced Thursday for a $69 million proposed plan to address contaminated sediment at U.S. Steel’s former industrial site in Duluth’s Morgan Park neighborhood.
More than 50 people attended a meeting Thursday to hear about the plan from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Steel for the Spirit Lake area of the St. Louis River. Neighbors of the site spoke during the meeting Thursday and questioned whether they would be impacted by noise and equipment during the two years of proposed cleanup.
The former U.S. Steel Works site and surrounding water is contaminated with lead, copper, zinc and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
“The goal of this remediation is protection of human health and the environment,” said Scott Cieniawski of the EPA
The plan calls for dredging 697,000 cubic yards of material and placing it into three confined disposal facilities onsite and capping 109 acres of contaminated sediment, Cieniawski said. The confined disposal facilities will require long-term monitoring, which he said U.S. Steel will complete according to a plan created with the EPA.
It’s difficult and expensive to completely remove all the contaminated sediment on the site and in surrounding water, and the dredging is targeted for areas with higher contamination levels, he said. Capping the sediment is “highly effective” in reducing exposure, but the drawback is that it requires long-term monitoring, he said. In response to a question about disrupting habitat by dredging and capping, Cieniawski said the result will be a higher-quality habitat.
“That delta area has high-impact sediment on it so it is not a high-quality habitat, and we have the opportunity to make that much better that what it is right now,” he said.
The dredging will create 30 acres of new shallow sheltered bays for wild rice and fish spawning, he said. He added that the 30 acres has previously been open water, and the dredging will be returning it back to its original state.
Once the plan is finalized and the design is completed, construction is expected to take place from January 2018 to December 2019, according to Cieniawski.
Cieniawski said the EPA will attempt to minimize the impact to the neighborhood during construction. There won’t be a need for numerous trucks traveling to and from the area because the dredged material will remain on site, he added.
The project is being funded jointly by U.S. Steel and the EPA’s Great Lakes Legacy Act.
The site is owned by U.S. Steel, with the exception of a rail corridor that travels through the site, which is owned by the city of Duluth. The possibility of public access to the waterfront on the site is being discussed with the city of Duluth, but nothing has been decided, said Mark Raplow of U.S. Steel. The company is also considering selling more than 100 acres of the site to the Duluth Seaway Port Authority for redevelopment, he added.
U.S. Steel and the EPA began their partnership on the project in 2011 and spent two years gathering data before developing and evaluating 12 options for the site, Ruplow said.
For more information on the proposal, visit epa.gov/st-louis-river-bayaoc/spirit-lake-legacy-act-cleanup. The documents are also available to view at the West Duluth Public Library, 5830 Grand Ave.
Public comment on the plan will be accepted until Sept. 25. Comments can be submitted electronically to cieniawski.scott@epa.gov or via mail to Scott Cieniawski, Great Lakes National Program Office (G-17J)-EPA Region 5, 77 W. Jackson Blvd., Chicago, IL 60604.
Source: Duluth News Tribune
