KEM-PEST SITE CLEANUP MAY BEGIN NEXT SPRING

Cleanup of the Kem-Pest Superfund site north of Cape Girardeau could begin in the spring, an Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman said Tuesday.

"We're kind of thinking perhaps in the spring of next year that we'll actually be on site to start some work, (but) I don't know what work at this point," said Hattie Thomas, community relations coordinator for the EPA's regional office in Kansas City, Kan. "If there's something unforeseen, of course, that would push the date back."

Cleanup of the contaminated former pesticide laboratory site is in the hands of the EPA and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, with the EPA acting as the lead agency. A spokesman with the DNR in Jefferson City said Tuesday the cleanup cost is expected to run about $3.97 million.

Ninety percent of the cost would be picked up by the EPA, said DNR spokesman Scott Holste. Missouri would bear the rest of the cost, he said.

How long the cleanup would take and the amount of manpower that would be involved was unavailable Tuesday from Thomas or Holste. A feasibility study done for the EPA by an engineering firm has estimated that cleanup of the contaminated soil and sediment, only one part of the overall cleanup effort, would take seven to nine months.

The Kem-Pest site is about three miles north of Cape Girardeau, east of Highway 177 on J.D. Street Road. From about 1964 to 1977, Kem-Pest Laboratories formulated pesticides at the site, the federal government has said. The government said the process generated chemical wastes that were disposed of in a lagoon that was back-filled with clay in 1981.

Recently $470,000 in federal and state settlements were paid by the family of Charles E., Ruth R., and Elizabeth A. Knote for pollution of the site. Charles Knote operated the laboratory at the site.

The Knotes now own Cape Chemical Co. and Cape-Kil Pest Control Co., its trade name business, an attorney for Cape Chemical Co. said Monday. Kem-Pest Laboratories was dissolved many years ago, he said.

Thomas said under the cleanup project contaminated soil would be dug up and disposed of at an approved off-site facility. No action, she said, outside of monitoring, would be taken toward ground water at the site.

The building where the pesticides were made would be decontaminated and incinerated off-site, said Thomas.

Holste said the Army Corps of Engineers would subcontract out the excavation work. Both the EPA and the DNR have approved the Corps' design, he said.

Soil from the site, he said, would be disposed of at a hazardous waste landfill that meets Superfund requirements. "At this time there are no commercial hazardous waste landfills in the state," Holste said, "so it would be going out of state."

The federal government has said the Kem-Pest site is about 1,000 feet north of the Mississippi River. Surface runoff water from the site and the on-site lagoon flows through a drainage channel leading into a culvert, from which the water reaches the river. The site and lagoon are in a 500-year flood plain.

Missouri Attorney General William L. Webster announced Monday that the Knotes had paid $30,000 to the state for pollution cleanup and environmental damage. Webster said waste water from Kem-Pest had entered the lagoon. Over time, pesticides and sludge had built up, seeping into the ground water, he said.

"With the Kem-Pest site so close to the Mississippi River and north of the city of Cape Girardeau's water supply intake, Missouri and the federal government had special concerns that this area be contained and cleaned up," Webster said. "If chemically contaminated water were to enter the river, the quality of water supplied to downstream southern states could be adversely affected."