Stan Shultz, an engineer for Veterans Worldwide, rides through Iola in his Ford F-250 surveying the many yards soon to bear a sign with the company?s logo attached to it. Veterans Worldwide has been contracted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to clean up residential properties that have tested high for lead or zinc.
Contamination runs deep. It?s hard to believe just a foot under some of the nicest yards in Iola the soil could look like charcoal, Shultz said.
In the early 1900s, Iola was a hotbed for zinc and lead smelting plants. Though the plants have long been demolished, soil contamination remains.
According to Shultz, back in the 1880s representatives from Iola?s industries convinced those in Miami and Picher, Okla., as well as Baxter Springs and Joplin, to transport their ore to Iola via the railroad. Iola smelted ore from the 1880s until the 1920s in four smelting plants.
?It takes a lot of heat to get the lead out of ore. So you have smokestacks and inside those smokestacks you had slag (stony waste matter separated from metals during the smelting of ore), which they gave away to people. And people built up their land around their houses with that slag, and they probably built up the railroad bed with it as well,? Shultz said.
Veterans Worldwide has set up shop at 221 S. Jefferson, a spot where they will reside for at least the next four years. The company will replace contaminated soil in 1,066 yards during that time. The start-to-finish time for each yard runs approximately five months.
The company purchased a 100-acre farm whose rich soil they will use to replace the contaminated soil. They dig up the earth on the farm and run it through a grinder that makes the soil much finer. The company plans on eventually turning that spot into a large pond or lake when the project is completed.
The decontamination process involves extracting the contaminated soil, then covering the area with the clean top soil. The company then covers the area with sod and waters it for four months so the new grass takes root.
Some of the cleanup jobs are easy, requiring removal of only one foot below the surface to remove the contaminated soil. Others are far more difficult.
Take for instance the site where the new school will be located. Shultz estimates that area will have to have up to four feet of soil removed, though Veterans Worldwide has not received the contract for that job.
Nothing goes to waste throughout the process. Even the contaminated soil is given a purpose, as it is hauled off to the landfill and used as cover soil.
Everything is thought out. The company?s dump trucks are old snow plow trucks purchased from the state of Kentucky. By using smaller trucks that hold much less than traditional dump trucks, they cause much less damage to the roads that they frequent.
The company will replace 170 yards in the first calendar year, which begins on Oct. 1. They have already replaced the soil for two yards, but the recent rains have prevented them from laying the sod. The plan is to do 300 yards per year the following three years.
When the company gets moving, they can remove up to 8,000 square feet of soil per day from a property. Signs will start popping up around town indicating which lawns have been dug up and replaced. The sign will show an order number used by water truck drivers so they know what lawns to water and so they can document that they completed the job.
