Burn Pit News
“ST. LOUIS ATTENTION COMING: Contaminated Velsicol Burn Pit site to get cleanup funding,” Morning Sun (Alma), January 22, 2022
By Greg Nelson gnelson@medianewsgroup.com
When anyone thinks of contaminated properties in St. Louis the 52acre former Velsicol Chemical Co. plant site, where remediation has been ongoing for a number of years, immediately comes to mind.
However, there’s another smaller parcel across the Pine River that’s also in need of remediation.
Known as the Velsicol Burn Pit, the five-acre piece of land is located in an out-of-bounds area at the Hidden Oaks Golf Course where at one time the company dumped and incinerated a variety of toxic waste products.
It now appears that small tract of land, which has already been designated a Superfund site and is on the National Priority List, will also be getting more attention from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA recently announced a $1 billion investment from the bipartisan infrastructure law to begin cleanup and clear a backlog of 49 previously unfunded Superfund sites across the United States. Four of those are in Michigan including the Velsicol Burn Pit.
According to the EPA’s “contaminant list” there are more than 25 toxic chemicals buried on the site that could adversely impact the soil and groundwater, including DDT, benzene, mercury, magnesium and lead.
It’s estimated that remediation of the Burn Pit will cost $25 million and take several years to complete.
The EPA signed a “Record of Decision” for cleanup of the site in 2015, but a lack of funding has slowed progress.
The current plan is excavation and off-site disposal of ash piles left over from the previous operation, building an access road, hooking up nine homes to the city’s water supply and using a thermal treatment process to heat and vaporize buried pollutants, which is also being done in the remediation of the main plant property.
Design plans for the required work were completed previously while awaiting for funding to be approved.
“For more than 100 years, the upper Midwest was the nation’s industrial center, said EPA Region 5 Administrator Debra Shore, who was appointed to the post in October. “The bipartisan infrastructure law will fund stalled cleanups at seven Superfund sites in Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Indiana and accelerate our efforts to restore and revitalize communities here in the Midwest. This is the
biggest investment in cleaning up Superfund sites that we’ve seen in a very long time.”
The other three Michigan sites to receive funding are in St. Clair Shores, Mancelona and Charlevoix.
Normally the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy pays 10 percent of ongoing cleanup and maintenance work at federal Superfund sites but the $1 billion from the infrastructure law does not require a similar match.
The law also reinstates a tax on chemical and petroleum industries that is earmarked for Superfund site remediation projects. The levy will provide an additional $3.5 billion on top of the initial $1 billion investment for immediate environmental cleanup activities, and about $14.5 billion in revenue over the next decade.