The clean-up of the Velsicol superfund site in St. Louis is about to move into a new phase.
Crews will begin a project to remove at least 150,000 pounds of contamination from a former burn pit used by the mid-Michigan company for decades.
Jennifer Knoepfle is a project manager with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She said they’re using a thermal treatment as part of the cleanup.
“We heat up the ground to 100 C (212 F),” said Knoepfle. “It makes things more mobile and we’re able to extract it.”
The thermal treatment system allows heavier oil-like liquid contaminants to be extracted and transported off-site for proper disposal. The heaters also vaporize contaminants in the groundwater into gases. This steam will then be transported — via piping along a newly constructed temporary pontoon bridge across the Pine River — to the vapor treatment system located at the sister Velsicol Superfund site, also known as the Former Plant site.
Velsicol produced polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs), cattle feed additives, and various other chemicals at the former Michigan Chemical Corporation plant in St. Louis.
In the 1970s, the company ignited a major health scare. There was a mix-up involving a cattle feed supplement and a flame retardant chemical. The tainted feed was fed to animals across Michigan. When the error was discovered, all the cattle that ate tainted feed in the state were culled.
The Velsicol site in St. Louis is one of the costliest superfund sites in U.S. history. And the price continues to rise.
“This particular piece of this project will cost $33 million,” said Debra Shore, the administrator for EPA Region Five, which includes Michigan. “That’s a huge injection into the local economy and will result in cleaner, healthier place for people to live.”
The burn pit project is expected to take 12 months to complete, but could be extended.
There is additional work that needs to done on the site. It will likely be years before the clean-up is complete.
