CLEANUP OF SUPERFUND SITE MAY START SOON

Cleanup of PCB-contaminated soil at the Missouri Electric Works site could begin next month and be completed by the end of the year, EPA officials said Tuesday.

It will involve excavation of an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 tons of soil at the site of the former motor and transformer repair business at 824 S. Kingshighway and neighboring commercial properties. Those properties include Cape Carpet and Morrill Construction.

EPA officials said an effort will be made to minimize the disruption caused by excavation of soil on the properties adjacent to the site.

But the work, expected to cost $3 million to $3.5 million, won't be the last chapter in the cleanup effort, said EPA official Pauletta France-Isetts. She said there is some evidence of ground-water contamination on the 6.4-acre site. PCB (polychlorinated biphenyls) contamination has been found in three mud-filled, underground caves at the site.

Once the soil is cleaned up, a ground-water study will be done. The study could cost $2 million.

France-Isetts said she doesn't know when the EPA will be finished with the Cape Girardeau Superfund site. But she said monitoring wells for the ground-water study won't be installed until after the soil has been cleaned up so that heavy excavation equipment won't disturb the costly wells.

France-Isetts said a monitoring well costs over $100,000. She said a number of them would have to be installed for the ground-water study.

France-Isetts, who works out of the EPA's regional office in Kansas City, Kan., is the project manager for the Superfund site.

The EPA will hold an informal, informational session in Cape Girardeau on Feb. 23 to discuss the soil cleanup effort. The session will be held from 4-7 p.m. at the Victorian Inn.

Representatives will be on hand from the EPA, the cleanup contractor, and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. The agency is part of the Centers for Disease Control.

Staff from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources and the Missouri Department of Health also have been invited.

Williams Environmental Services Inc. of Stone Mountain, Ga., will do the cleanup work.

France-Isetts said the contractor first must take soil samples and do survey work in preparation for the actual excavation and treatment of the soil. The actual soil work likely won't get under way until June or July, she said.

The soil will be excavated and then treated via equipment that will be set up on site. The soil will be fed into a heating chamber. The soil will be heated to separate the PCBs from the soil. The contaminated vapors then will be put through a second heating chamber and heated to break apart the PCB molecules. Cleaned steam will be emitted, France-Isetts said.

The EPA first began investigating the polluted site 15 years ago after the Missouri Department of Natural Resources discovered that transformer oil had leaked out of some of the 55-gallon drums that were then stored on the property.

EPA investigators found PCBs in concentrations of 21,000 parts per million in the soil. The soil will be cleaned so that the concentration of PCBs will be less than 2 parts per million.

That soil or uncontaminated soil from another location will be used to fill the excavated area, France-Isetts said.

The property ultimately could be reused, she said.

The cost of the cleanup work is being borne largely by so-called potential responsible parties, customers who did business with Missouri Electric Works.

Nearly 140 potential responsible parties combined have put between $4 million and $5 million into a trust to help fund the cleanup.

The remaining 42 potential responsible parties are those who were the biggest customers of the former Missouri Electric Works. They are managing the project and paying a part of the cleanup cost.

The EPA will reimburse them for up to 20 percent of the cleanup cost.