Residential Cleanup Nearly Complete At NL Industries-Taracorp Site

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 5 and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers today announced that cleanup of residential areas near the NL Industries-Taracorp Superfund site in Granite City, IL will be complete by the end of May.

Adjacent to the residential areas, the site is in a heavily industrialized section of Granite City. From 1903 to 1983, several companies—including Hoyt Metal, United Lead, NL Industries-Taracorp, and St. Louis Lead Recyclers—conducted various metal refining, fabricating, and processing activities at the site.

A cleanup of the 16-acre site and the nearby 14-acre main industrial property, including capping of a 250,000-ton hazardous slag pile, was completed in September 1999.

The residential area's cleanup included removal of lead-contaminated soil from about 1,500 residential yards impacted by smelter stack emissions in Granite City, Madison, and Venice. Cleanup work, with oversight by the Army Corps, began in 1994 and will wrap up in the next few weeks.

The $63 million project includes about $33 million to be recovered from NL Industries. About $30 million was contributed by NL Industries following a settlement. This contribution included a portion of the cleanup costs ($20.6 million), payment of past EPA costs ($8.9 million), a $400,000 cash penalty, certain ongoing maintenance costs, and a $2 million supplemental project to identify and address lead-paint contamination in communities near the site.

The project included a 1998 partnership with DePaul University in Chicago, under the Superfund Jobs Training Initiative, in which 25 minority residents received environmental skills training. Several of the graduates were hired to work on the residential yard cleanup.

One final step remains: final design and installation of a ground-water cleanup system for the main industrial site, if tests results show it to be necessary. Work is on schedule for completion by the end of September 2000. Once the system is approved by EPA, the NL Teracorp-Industries site will be formally designated as a completed site. Currently, 685 of the approximately 1,300 sites on EPA's National Priorities List have attained completion status.

Site documents are available for review at Granite City City Hall, City Clerk's Office, 2000 Edison Ave.

Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Edited by Kate Goff