Iola eventually may be declared a Superfund site by the Environmental Protection Agency in order for more lead-contaminated soil to be removed from several hundred properties.
Don Bahnke, project manager for the EPA, told Iola City Council members Monday that more than 1,700 properties needed to be sampled to determine whether they have unsafe levels of lead or other contaminants.
A similar study in 2006 found more than 130 properties surveyed in Iola — many located near where zinc smelters operated in the early 20th century — had unsafe levels of lead. Those studies were largely voluntary, in which samples were taken from properties only upon the landowner’s request.
Properties that had more than 800 parts per million of lead-soil concentration were remediated by removing at least two feet of topsoil, replaced with “clean” dirt and reseeded with grass.
Roughly 400 other properties had less than 800 ppm of lead, but more than 400 ppm, and should be cleaned up as well. Bahnke said he suspected as many as one-third of the remaining 1,700 properties exceeded the 400 ppm threshold.
IT WAS anticipated there would be some other parties that would help pay for the cleanup other than the federal government, Greg Gunn, EPA branch chief, told the Register.
The companies that operated the smelters would have been the ones responsible — if they existed today. But the successive companies had what Gunn described as “gaps” in ownership, enough that they decided they weren’t financially responsible.
That left EPA no choice, Gunn said, but to attempt to get Iola placed on the National Priorities List — thus, the Superfund declaration — clearing the way for federal funding to pay for the cleanup.
Iola City Council members offered no comment or asked any questions when Bahnke told them of the news.
“We have quite a bit of work to do as far as sampling, and when the sampling is completed, we’ll have quite a bit of cleanup work to do, too,” Bahnke said. “In order to do all this work, of course, it’s going to take money.”
At a cost of $10,000 to $15,000 per property, the total price tag could exceed $10 million, Gunn said. He predicted as many as 1,000 properties could be subject to remediation.
Once on the National Priorities List, Iola would be competing for the $260 million made available annually from the federal government for Superfund projects.
PUTTING Iola on the National Priorities List also will involve a number of public meetings to inform citizens and to get the community’s point of view, Bahnke said. The earliest Iola could be put on the list would be next March.
“Once the site is on the NPL, that would allow us to begin doing a greater investigation and more sampling,” he said, which will precede another round of public hearings.
Gunn said communities where citizens have “direct exposure” to contaminants — Iola’s tainted soil would qualify — would make it more likely the city would qualify for federal funding.
“We understand this is an intrusive project,” Gunn told the Register.
All of the sampling results and public comments will be incorporated into a final remedy, Bahnke said, “which is more than likely going to be more excavation of soil, hauling it off, and back-filling with clean soil.”
AS AN ASIDE, one of the areas not likely to be tested would be the actual properties on which the smelters were located.
“We’re only looking at residential or residential-type properties,” Gunn said, which means industrial sites are not included.
The EPA was aware of Allen County’s consideration of building a hospital on land adjoining East Street, which likely has the highest concentration of lead in the soil in all of Iola.
Plans were being shaped to see if federal assistance could be used to help remediate the property there, Gunn said, but those plans were scrapped after hospital trustees decided to locate the hospital elsewhere.
The land may still prove useful, Gunn said.
“All the contaminated soil we remove from the other properties has to go somewhere,” he said. “We could put it there, stabilize the dirt, then cap it.”
