[Southsider2k12]

This is the latest from the EPA on the Pines.

EPA’s recommended cleanup plan for contaminated groundwater and soil is outlined in the attached fact sheet which was also sent in the postal mail over a week ago. As a reminder, our comment period on the plan runs through Friday, July 15 and a public meeting to explain the plan, answer your questions and accept your comments is scheduled for 6:30 p.m., Wednesday, June 8 at the Clarion Hotel in Michigan City. In the meantime, please check out: http://www.epa.gov/superfund/town-pines-groundwater. Technical documents pertaining to the project can be found under the heading “Administrative Records” in the lower right-hand corner of the web page.



We won’t make a final decision until all of the comments have been reviewed. If you would like additional information, please feel free to contact me or Project Manager Erik Hardin at hardin.erik@epa.gov or 800-621-8431, Ext. 62402.

[Southsider2k12]

https://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/epa-mak...8714f32312.html

he United States Environmental Protection Agency is making a renewed effort to secure permission for soil sampling from Town of Pines landowners whose properties may be affected by toxic coal ash.

The agency's push comes as some local residents have raised concerns that the EPA's planned cleanup efforts will not be extensive enough, owing to faulty data on the "background" level of contaminants in the area. The agency says it will investigate the claim.

Around four dozen Town of Pines residents gathered at Michigan City's City Council chambers on Thursday for the first public meeting on the topic held by the EPA since 2016.

Roughly 400 land parcels in the small lakeside community still need to be checked for potentially dangerous concentrations of arsenic, thallium, lead and other heavy metals, EPA community involvement coordinator Kirsten Safakas told attendees. Exposure to high levels of toxic heavy metals in soil — which can enter the body through inhalation, skin contact or consuming tainted produce — can cause cancer, nervous system disorders and other health problems.

[Southsider2k12]

https://www.wboi.org/2024-07-19/epa-require...Sfg9hUTXsQW6s8Q

The Environmental Protection Agency said the standard for cleaning up coal ash in the Town of Pines will now be a little more strict. In March, the environmental group Earthjustice pointed out flaws in the data used to set that standard. But activists say some flaws still remain — and that means the soil will still be unsafe.

Coal ash contains high levels of toxic heavy metals, which can cause cancer and heart disease. Coal ash from the northern Indiana utility NIPSCO was used as construction fill in hundreds of properties in the Town of Pines.

Erik Hardin is the EPA’s remedial project manager for the Town of Pines Superfund site. At a public meeting on Thursday, he said when NIPSCO tested the area’s soil to find out how much toxic heavy metals naturally occur there, it included a sample with coal ash in it — making those levels look abnormally high.

“It should have been tossed out. So we removed it and recalculated the background concentration with that sample removed," Hardin said.

Now, Hardin said now those standards are stricter than before. The limit for arsenic went from 30 parts per million to 25 ppm and thallium went from 1.9 ppm to 1.6 ppm. The agency also halved the limit for lead based on recent changes to EPA's residential cleanup levels for lead, unrelated to the Town of Pines Superfund site.

NIPSCO will have to offer to clean up properties with soil that have levels above the new limits. Though it's unclear if the EPA will retest residents' yards.

Though it's good the EPA removed one flawed sample, Lisa Evans with Earthjustice said the limit for arsenic is still nearly twice as high as it should be. She said other outliers in the data need to be removed too.

"This impacts the safety of the folks yards, the safety of their grandkids, the safety of the food they grow. You know, this is an important decision," Evans said.

[Southsider2k12]

https://www.indystar.com/story/news/environ...up/73502047007/

Federal officials are looking into a northern Indiana utility’s cleanup plan that left residents exposed to potentially cancer-causing chemicals for nearly a decade, despite being told the threat was mitigated.

An IndyStar investigation found the soil analysis the plan was based on was flawed, resulting in a failure to remove dangerous concentrations of coal ash at several locations in the Town of Pines, a Superfund pollution site just a stone's throw from Lake Michigan.

“How the heck did this happen?” asked Mark Hutson, an advisor to the Pines community for several years as part of the Superfund process. “Absolutely this has very real-world implications for residents.”

The investigation traced the error to a NIPSCO-hired consultant with ties to the coal ash industry and a history of dismissing the potentially harmful risks of the toxic waste. She included what should have been an invalid sample in the report and that skewed several important numbers — a seemingly small misstep that an attorney working with residents said has had major consequences.