M-Live Ran Story on Adequate Fundingfor Superfund Clean-up in St. Louis

The story below pointed out finally under the Infrastructure Act passed in 2021 and signed by President Biden that EPA finally has adequate funding to conduct its work in St. Louis.

By Garret Ellison | gellison@mlive.com

ST. LOUIS, MI — Toxic mid-Michigan properties contaminated by Velsicol Chemical Corp. are being transferred to the State Land Bank Authority amid an acceleration in cleanup following an infusion of federal infrastructure law funding.

The land bank is in the final stages of acquiring polluted Velsicol properties in Gratiot County which have been owned for decades by a cleanup trust, according to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE).

The goal is to finish the transfer by January from Le Petomane Inc., a trust that was established in 2002 to administer certain toxic site funding from bankruptcy litigation involving Fruit of the Loom, a former Velsicol corporate parent.

The transfer will put Michigan’s most notorious Superfund site — which spawned a statewide chemical poisoning by contaminating cattle feed in the 1970s — in state hands.

“For us, it made the most sense to go a different route and opt out of this trust,” said Erik Martinson, Velsicol site manager for EGLE. “This is a cost savings approach.”

“If we were to stay with the trust, we were concerned some of the money going into it would be allocated to other sites within that trust,” said Martinson.

The Le Petomane trust funds other former Velsicol cleanup sites in Tennessee, New Jersey and Illinois and “we wanted to make sure all funds and effort were going toward cleaning up the Velsicol Superfund site” in Michigan, said Martinson.

The transfer would include the large 54-acre former chemical plant site along the Pine River in St. Louis, some nearby contaminated parcels south of M-46 and a former Velsicol dump near Breckenridge where low-level radioactive waste was stored and later cleaned up.

“It does not affect the cleanup,” Martinson said.

The cleanup pace is accelerating thanks to a Superfund program funding wave at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from the 2021 infrastructure law.

The Velsicol properties in St. Louis were among several backlogged cleanups the EPA targeted initial infrastructure funding towards in Michigan this year.

This fall, contractors began driving sheet piling along the perimeter of a former oil storage area in the southeast corner of the former Velsicol chemical plant site.

In the spring, crews will begin excavating about 100,000 tons of soil contaminated with oily waste, chlorobenzene, xylene and bromated phosphates from that area.

Across the river, the EPA is readying cleanup at a former burn pit where Velsicol dumped toxic waste and ash from the chemical plant. The pit is located in an out-of-bounds area at the Hidden Oaks Golf Course and the EPA has been securing access easements and connecting utilities to power the cleanup remedy; an “in-situ” treatment that will heat the soil and vaporize buried pollutants like DDT, benzene derivatives and other toxic leftovers.

Tom Alcamo, EPA site manager, said a temporary pontoon bridge will span the river next year and connect the burn pit with an existing treatment system that finished vaporizing 382,000 pounds of contaminants at the plant site last spring.

The burn pit cleanup is estimated to cost about $25 million.

“The bipartisan infrastructure funding has been extremely helpful,” Alcamo said.

Another $6.6 million in state funds will be needed to fund sediment and soil excavations along the Pine River banks downstream of St. Louis, where DDT remains in floodplain areas all the way to the confluence with the Chippewa River near Midland. That could begin next fall, Alcamo said.

Jane (Keon) Jelenek, a leader in the Pine River Superfund Citizen Task Force, said it’s remarkable to see concurrent cleanup actions taking place.

“I’m hopeful it’ll be done in my lifetime,” said Jelenek.

“We’ve had years where nothing happened. It was all talk and reports. No excavation or cleanup at all,” she said. “It’s exciting to know that projects are going to move forward faster because they can do more than one at a time now.”

Jelenek said the citizen task force was initially concerned about the property transfer to the land bank, but became comfortable with it after getting verbal and emailed assurances from the state that the city of St. Louis would not be charged an exorbitant sum to acquire the remediated property.

The city’s goal is to eventually redevelop the riverside plant site into a park with a waterfront boardwalk, fishing platforms, soccer fields and a concert area.

“At this point, we’re content with it, I guess you could say,” Jelenek said. “Our little town has been taken advantage of enough by the agencies.”