EPA reduces Lisle cleanup to 2 years

Patiently pointing again and again to several multicolored posters, representatives from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency explained the new technology that will reduce the cleanup time for contaminated soil at Lockformer Co. from as long as two decades to two years.

About 30 Lisle-area residents, some of whom own private wells that have been found to be contaminated with the volatile organic compound trichloroethylene, or TCE, attended the public information program in the Lisle Public Library.

Lockformer, a metal fabricating company, has acknowledged metal degreaser was spilled on its Ogden Avenue plant property while a supplier was filling a 500-gallon storage tank but denies the TCE found in the wells came from there.

“This meeting is very good,” said Alan Havlicek of an unincorporated Woodridge Estates subdivision where some homes were found to have contaminated wells. “We should have been given this level of information months ago.”

Expected to take at least two years, the cleanup will begin this spring as part of an agreement between Lockformer and the federal EPA’s Emergency Response Branch. Lockformer will pay an estimated $2 million to $3 million for the work.

The cleanup will be overseen by state and federal agencies and will include some areas outside the plant on its west side and an area inside the plant beneath a former degreaser pit.

At the outside area, two technologies will be used to remove the TCE from the soil, one for the top layer and another for the layer underneath.

The soil’s top layer has a heavy concentration of clay and will be heated by electricity, which will create steam. Contaminants clinging to the steam will be carried to the surface and then passed through carbon filters before being released into the air. Without the relatively new technology, called electrical resistive heating, the cleanup could have taken an additional 12 to 25 years, according to Steve Faryan, the Emergency Response Branch’s on-site coordinator.

Wells will be drilled simultaneously into the soil’s next layer, which is sand and gravel, he said. Using technology called soil vapor extraction, a vacuum pump in the wells brings the contaminated vapors trapped in that layer to the surface, where they will pass through a carbon filter before being released.

The entire process calls for continuous monitoring of air emissions. A fence with 24-hour guard also will be installed around the cleanup areas, Faryan said. As for the soil inside the plant, the agency still is determining whether Lockformer should use either of those technologies, or excavate and dispose of the soil, he said.

In some parts of the area, the clay layer of soil has 2 million micrograms of TCE per kilogram of soil. By the end of the two years, the proportion should be down to about 8,900 micrograms of TCE per kilogram of soil, the goal Faryan’s group has set to remove any immediate health threat.

The state EPA will likely demand that Lockformer continue until the clay layer’s contamination reaches a lower standard closer to 60 micrograms of TCE, said state EPA’s project manager Stan Komperda.

“I have told Lockformer when it has reached the USEPA’s objective, it will not have reached the IEPA’s objectives and that it would behoove the company to keep cleaning the soil because otherwise our agency will just be coming back and ordering them to do so,” Komperda said.

If Lockformer refuses, the agency’s order would have to go through the courts, he said.

Although the soil contamination has been found in the first two layers in the areas pinpointed, Lockformer is being required to add monitoring wells on the southern edge of its property. The agencies want to see if the TCE has sunk down further at that location, possibly to the bedrock, said Brian Voss, project engineer for Roy F. Weston Inc. environmental engineering firm. The Vernon Hills firm is the federal EPA’s subcontractor on the project.