EPA SETS OUT KEM-PEST PLAN

JACKSON -- The Environmental Protection Agency will demolish a former pesticide formulation building on the Kem-Pest Laboratories Superfund site but leave behind most of its basement.

A remediation plan outlined Monday calls for removal of about a fourth of an inch of materials from the surfaces of the walls and floors of the building and washing of metal surfaces with high-pressure water to remove contaminants, demolition of the building, and shipment of the debris and materials off site for incineration or placement in landfills.

Any water generated on the site during the cleanup would be collected and treated on site. Monitoring wells have been set up on site to check for contamination in groundwater.

The site is about three miles north of Cape Girardeau between Highway 177 and the Mississippi River. Pesticides were produced at the site from about 1964 to 1977, producing chemical wastes that were disposed of in a lagoon on site. The lagoon was backfilled with clay in 1981.

Steven L. Sanders, EPA project manager for the Kem-Pest site, and Sandra Broglio, a geological engineer for Black and Veatch Special Projects Corp., the contractor which will clean up the site, met Monday with the Cape Girardeau County Commission to discuss the plan.

While Broglio and Sanders were outlining the plan, Elizabeth Knote, whose family owns the property, told commissioners the basement of the building will not be demolished.

Sanders said the concrete walls of the basement will be removed to three feet below grade and the remaining structure will be buried under "clean" soil.

Once the process is complete, he said, the basement will no longer be capable of holding water.

Complete removal of the basement would be cost-prohibitive, Sanders said, and may not be necessary.

"The only risk from the basement, as the EPA sees it, is as a source of continued groundwater contamination," he said. Tests so far show the basement "doesn't seem to be a source of contamination," he said.

But commissioners and Knote are concerned about who will be responsible for any future remediation at the site if the basement is left in place and more contamination is found.

"We want that responsibility to stay wherever it is now," said Commissioner Joe Gambill.

The EPA is required by law to test for contamination every five years after site cleanups are completed, Sanders said.

"If five years down the road testing shows there's a problem, will that be your expense" to clean up the site? asked Commissioner Larry Bock.

"At this point I'd probably say yes, since we're cleaning it up," Sanders said. "We don't anticipate any problem with the basement or we would be tearing it out."

"It seems like if there's contamination here and here, how do we know there's not contamination here?" asked Presiding Commissioner Gerald Jones.

The remaining basement structure, which is under only a portion of the formulation building, will be buried, Sanders said.

"People aren't going to dig three feet below and start eating from the basement," he said.

"We think that the EPA is cutting corners and we just think this is not an appropriate response," Knote said. "If you're going to demolish the building, you may as well take the basement with it."

Sanders said the EPA might decide to knock out the walls and break up the flooring of the basement.

Greg Branum, a member of U.S. Rep. Bill Emerson's staff, attended the commission meeting. Branum said: "I expect we'll ask the EPA to do a total removal. This would allow the site to be used for purposes without question."

Don Van Dyke, an environmental specialist for the Missouri Department of Natural Resources' Hazardous Waste Division, said the state and the EPA are still discussing whether the basement should be removed. The results of those tests will determine if the state wants the basement removed, he said.

He said samples were removed from the basement's concrete walls and flooring to determine whether they contained contaminants.

Van Dyke said he hoped to have the results of those tests late Monday.

Several officials from the city of Cape Girardeau were also at Monday's meeting to learn more about the project and find out if the site and the surrounding area can be developed in the future.

Knote said she had been told by the state that the property would remain on the state's hazardous-waste-site registry while the basement is in place. Placement on that registry could limit how the property could be used for future development.

"Right now it's all depending on those sample results as to what the state's stand is going to be," Van Dyke said.

The first phase of the cleanup was completed in 1992, when about 5,000 cubic yards of soil from the lagoon and the area surrounding the building were removed by the Army Corps of Engineers.

"We just want this to be over with," Knote said.

The Knote family and the EPA were in litigation over cleanup of the site. The Knotes originally charged that the EPA would violate the cleanup agreement by demolishing the building without showing data justifying the action.

As part of the agreement between the Knotes and the EPA, the Knotes agreed to pay more than $400,000 toward the cost of cleaning up the site. Total cost of the cleanup is projected at $2 million.