COUNTY SEEKS EPA DETAILS ON KEM-PEST SITE

Cape Girardeau County Commissioners are asking the EPA for clarification on cleanup of the Kem-Pest Superfund site.

Elizabeth Knote, whose family owns the six-acre site, met with commissioners this week to discuss her concerns that the EPA isn't leaving a clean site.

Knote said she found contaminated soil below what used to be the formulation building on the site. She said the soil was found about 15 feet below the surface.

In May, EPA officials agreed to decontaminate and remove the basement of the building as well as the building itself as part of the second phase of the site cleanup. Originally, the agency was going to leave the basement because it was not considered a source of contamination.

From 1965 to 1977, Kem-Pest formulated pesticides on the site. Sewage and wastes were disposed of in a lagoon on the property. The lagoon was backfilled in 1981, but in 1984, the EPA began investigating the site. In 1987, it was placed on the Superfund cleanup list.

The first phase of the site cleanup -- removal and disposal of more than 5,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil -- was completed in 1992.

Knote says tests she had done on the soil show it contains 18 parts per million of heptachlor epoxide, far in excess of what would have required intervention under 1992 standards. She says EPA officials have told her that under standards passed this year, the levels she found are acceptable.

"If they'd used the 1996 levels, they wouldn't even have dug up the lagoon," Knote said.

Steve Kovac, chief of the EPA's Missouri-Kansas remedial branch, said he did not have the results of Knote's soil analysis and couldn't comment on specific numbers.

Kovac did say that crews on the Kem-Pest site found contaminants about 8 feet down, but the concentrations of those chemicals were below the agency's action levels and it was determined there was no further need to excavate.

The basement area will be backfilled, he said, "so those levels of contaminants won't pose any risk to anyone simply because there will be 8 feet of fill on top of it."

Steven Sanders, the Kem-Pest site administrator, was out of town Friday and could not be reached to comment.

Cleanup work is continuing on the site, which is about 3 miles north of Cape Girardeau between Highway 177 and the Mississippi River.

Knote and the commissioners say they are worried about what will happen if the rules change again and the contaminant levels are considered unacceptable.

"If they have a change in Congress they might decide to go back to the old levels again," Knote said.

She said she is also concerned she might not be able to sell the property because of the contaminants, or that the buried contaminants might get into the groundwater.

Associate Commissioner Joe Gambill is getting in touch with the EPA to share the commission's concerns.

"All we're going to do is point out to them that there are some residual chemicals left in the soil that would have been actionable in 1992, and that they promised us a clean site when they were done and we expect that to be the case," he said.