Landfill leaks hazardous material

LOWELL, Ind. -- The state did not test to see whether a closed landfill containing 500 barrels of hazardous waste was leaking anything into the ground, according to an Indiana Department of Environmental Management memo.\nWord of the 500 barrels of hazardous waste was "enough to scare the hell out of you," Lake County Commissioner Gerry Scheub said. \nThe Times of Munster obtained the memo by an IDEM official and reported the news Wednesday. The landfill is located about 20 miles south of Gary between Lowell and U.S. 41.\nDuring a controversy in the late 1990s about the Feddeler landfill, the state conducted some testing of the wells. But the agency stopped its testing years ago, and the company that owned the dump, R&M Enterprises, claimed to have no money to pay its outstanding fines of $54,750, much less to monitor the groundwater.\nA state-required bond meant to ensure continued testing and proper closure of the site turned out to be no good, and the state itself doesn't have the money to do the monitoring, said Bruce Palin, IDEM's deputy assistant commissioner for its Office of Land Quality.\nPalin said he wrote the memo discussing the hazardous waste after the director of the Lake County Solid Waste Management District asked about cleaning up the site.\nIn an Aug. 14 memo, Palin said a staff summary documented there were 500 barrels of hazardous waste, along with pesticides, paint thinner, resins and a variety of chemicals at the site.\n"I have staff looking, trying to track down the source of the information," Palin said Wednesday.\nHe said he has been familiar with the site since the mid-1970s and did not recall reports of hazardous waste being dumped there.\n"There's all kinds of different levels of documentation that can exist in our files," Palin said. "How reliable that documentation is depends on what it is. ... I've asked to find the actual documents so I can make a better assessment of the situation."\nPalin said the barrels of hazardous waste might have been dumped in the 1950s or 1960s, before the site came under regulation and eventual designation as a landfill that could only accept construction and demolition debris.\nHe said some residents in the area spoke of late-night dumping of barrels at the site in the late 1990s.\n"We were never able to find concrete evidence of that," he said.\nPalin said a state inspector checked the site a couple of months ago and found no evidence of material leaching from the landfill.\nScheub expressed anger at the situation.\n"It's a known fact there's hazardous waste in there," he said. "Nobody is responsible for cleaning it up. They are just letting it sit there. IDEM doesn't have enough people to do the job, and that's one of our biggest complaints," Scheub said.