Illinois city to help pay for local Superfund site cleanup

Officials in Jacksonville, Ill., are trying to figure out how to help pay the cost for cleaning up a Superfund site in Cape Girardeau.

The issue, discussed in a city council meeting Monday, according to a story in the The Jacksonville Journal-Courier on Tuesday, remains an open one, as city officials are unsure of costs of cleaning up groundwater at the former Missouri Electric Works site at 824 S. Kingshighway.

Superfund is a federal government program established in 1980 aimed at cleaning up abandoned hazardous waste sites.

Between 1954 and 1992, Missouri Electric Works specialized in motor and transformer salvage, repair and sales. In 1984, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency investigation found soil and water in and around the 6.3-acre site was contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, and chlorobenzenes, some of which had seeped into groundwater.

By 1988, the EPA had identified a list of potentially responsible parties, including Jacksonville, which, according to the Courier-Journal story, sold "six or seven transformers" to the company for disposal or salvage.

Ken Eftink, interim city manager for Cape Girardeau, said he remembered the EPA's initial investigation.

"When the problem was first identified, they went after anyone and everyone who ever had a motor there," he said. The Cape Girardeau city government has no liability for the site, he said.

A lawsuit over who would have to pay to clean up the site -- owner Richard Giles died in 1992 -- was resolved, after two appeals, in 1995. The soil cleanup started in 1990 and ending in 2000. A 2004 EPA review indicated the soil had been made safe but that groundwater needed continued monitoring and more decontamination, as do the wetlands.

While federal funds pay about 20 percent of the cost to clean up the sites, the remainder is charged to the site's owners or those who used the facility. Estimates for cleanup costs range from $17 million to $25 million; Jacksonville paid about $57,000 to help clean the soil, according to the Courier-Journal story, but will owe more for work to clean groundwater and the wetlands.

Missouri Electric Works is one of 34 Superfund sites in Missouri. The other Superfund site in Cape Girardeau County, Kem-Pest Laboratories, east of Highway 17 and north of County Road 654, was removed from the national priority list Sept. 20, 2001. Sites are removed when investigators determine no more federal oversight is required.

C.J. Morrill of Morrill Development Co. bought the Missouri Electric Works property at a sheriff's auction last year. In June, the Cape Girardeau City Council approved his special-use permit request to build miniwarehouse units on the site.

He said EPA officials "are very, very good people. They get back with me whenever I call them."

He said the water issues are close to being resolved, with some monitoring wells scheduled to be capped, but expected EPA monitoring to continue "for years."

Jacksonville officials did not respond to Southeast Missourian inquiries.

For more on Superfund issues, visit www.epa.gov/superfund.

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

388-3646

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Pertinent addresses:

840 S. Kingshighway, Cape Girardeau, MO

824 S. Kingshighway, Cape Girardeau, MO

401 Independence St., Cape Girardeau, MO

1200 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C.

200 West Douglas Avenue, Jacksonville, IL