EPA SOLICITS COMMENT ON MEW CLEANUP

Missouri Electric Works customers are being held responsible for the PCB contamination discovered at the South Kingshighway business in 1984.

Officials from the Environmental Protection Agency entertained questions about the contaminated Missouri Electric site Thursday night at the Victorian Inn in Cape Girardeau.

Following a 1984 Missouri Department of Natural Resources inspection, the EPA said PCBs forced the closure of Missouri Electric. The EPA said dangerously high levels of the contaminants were found at the site and needed to be cleaned up.

Several of Missouri Electric's former customers are footing the bill for the cleanup, which could begin in 1996, 12 years after the contamination was discovered.

"The project will cost about $17 million," said Pauletta France-Igatto, project coordinator for the EPA. "We're getting the customers to pay 80 percent of that and the EPA will pay 20 percent."

Tom Siedhoff of Union Electric said his company was one of Missouri Electric's customers. He said UE has agreed to financially help clean up the contaminated site.

"This might be strange for customers to pay for this," Siedhoff said. "But we could either spend the money paying for lawyers to fight it or spend the money to clean up the site."

Siedhoff said UE agreeing to help remove the contaminants was the "prudent thing" to do. He said, according to the law, UE was responsible and the company wants to do its part.

"We want to be a good citizen," he said.

France-Igatto said PCBs are known carcinogens and the soil at Missouri Electric has a high level of the contaminants. She said thanks to a law that assesses responsibility also on the customers of a company which contaminates a site, 175 former customers of Missouri Electric have agreed to help with the clean up. At least 225 customers haven't cooperated with the efforts to clean up the site.

France-Igatto said the EPA wasn't aware of any illnesses caused by the contamination at the Missouri Electric site.

The EPA plans to remove the contaminants by thermal desorption.

According to an EPA document, thermal desorption occurs when soil and the contaminants are steam-heated. The PCB contaminants are vaporized and then vacuumed from the soil. Barrels containing the contaminants can be properly disposed of or further treated, the document said.

Once the clean up process begins, EPA officials said crews might complete the project in a year.