Excavation done at old dump
The Akron Beacon Journal
AKRON - A major milestone has been reached in the $60 million cleanup of a toxic-waste dump in northern Summit County.
The contractor, EQ Industrial Services Inc. of Wayne, Mich., has hauled away in excess of 225,000 tons of contaminated soil and debris from two parcels off Hines Hill Road in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
The work to stabilize the dump that was owned and operated by the Krejci family took two years to complete.
The two tracts, together covering 47 acres, are on opposite sites off Hines Hill Road in Boston and Northfield Center townships. The sites are separated by Interstate 271.
The contractor will soon test soils to determine whether they meet all remediation standards, the National Park Service said.
Any areas that fail to comply with toxic limits will require additional excavation work, starting next spring.
Once the site passes all testing, grading, planting of grass and final restoration plans will be developed.
Site activities until next spring will be limited to soil testing, water-quality monitoring and sediment/erosion control, the park service said.
Before it closed in 1980, the dump took in solvents, paint waste, industrial sludge, pesticides and herbicides.
The soil was contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polyaromatic hydrocarbons, dioxins-furans, benzene, arsenic and toxic heavy metals.
This phase of the cleanup, costing $30 million, is being largely paid for and managed by the Ford Motor Co.
Ford and General Motors Corp. both dumped material there from their Cleveland-area auto plants in the 1950s and 1960s.
The work supervised by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation required the removal of 12 inches or less of contaminated soil in some areas and up to 25 feet of tainted soil in other areas.
Most of the contaminated soil was determined to be nonhazardous waste and went to Ohio landfills. The more severely contaminated waste was hauled to a licensed dump outside of Detroit.
The dump was run by the Krejci family from 1948 to 1980 and was acquired by the park in 1985. Park officials thought it simply was an old junkyard.
Then in 1986, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found 5,000 leaking drums.
The federal government spent $30 million on the initial Krejci surface cleanup. The government later reached a $20 million settlement with six companies: 3M, Chrysler, Waste Management, Kewanee Industries Inc., Chevron USA Inc. and Federal Metals, all of which had dumped there.
Officials have said that there is no evidence that the contamination has polluted streams or moved off the site.
The site was the first toxic-waste dump in the national park system.
Information on the cleanup is available at http://www.nps.gov/cuva/parknews/krejci.htm.
