HAMMOND | In an apparent turnabout, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management will be assisting the Little Calumet River Basin Commission in determining the degree of petroleum contamination discovered in the path of the federal levee construction.
Contractors hired by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers found the contaminated soil last month in river bottom materials west of Kennedy Avenue and north of the river behind the Wendy's restaurant.
The Corps alerted the Little Cal commission to the findings and asked the commission to have the contaminated soil removed as required under the Local Cooperative Agreement signed by the commission and the Corps in 1990.
Lynne Whelan, public affairs officer for the Corps, said the commission had been advised to seek additional sampling, which may find the cost to the commission would be less than the quoted $562,000. The estimate did not include trucking costs, which also could be prohibitive to the financially-strapped commission.
In a memo provided to the commission, Jennifer Miller, chief of the Corps' environmental engineering team, speculates the source of the contamination was a Shell gas station that was decommissioned in 1987. Any leakage from the station, which had been located at 7902 Kennedy Ave., would have tended to migrate to the river, according to Miller.
Miller indicates in her memo that IDEM expressed no interest in the matter beyond the Corps' proposal to properly dispose of the material disturbed by the flood control project.
In a memo to fellow officials dated Oct. 2, Little Cal Commissioner Robert Huffman said IDEM had been contacted and seemed uninterested in helping.
"There needs to be a response from the government," Huffman said Tuesday. "In this case, it needs to be IDEM. I don't think we can build our levee until it's removed."
Since the record rainfall of Sept. 13 and 14, the commission has been under heavy pressure by local, state and federal officials to complete the long-running federal flood control project. The site where the contaminated soil was found is in an uncompleted area of the project in the vicinity of the Indiana Welcome Center and several hotels and restaurants that were severely flooded last month.
Tuesday afternoon, newly seated Little Cal Commissioner Ron AcAhron, deputy director of Indiana Department of Natural Resources, released the following comment:
"I was very disappointed when I received the copy of the letter from the Corps that raised the contaminated soil issue, as were other members of the Commission -- a project that is facing funding issues doesn't need half million dollar plus surprise bills," he said. "The Commission has quickly followed up with IDEM and IDEM will be providing assistance in determining the actual extent of the problem and cleanup options. I do not believe the issue will delay the project and am pleased at the positive response we have received from IDEM."
