State testing site of tainted sludge

MEDORA, Ind. -- State environmental officials are testing soil and water in a southern Indiana town where some residents fear that tainted sludge dumped decades ago by a metal-plating company could be damaging their health.\nThe investigation focuses on whether sludge containing potentially harmful hexavalent chromium was left behind on a farm from which it was supposed to have been removed long ago.\nState inspectors are also looking into whether the chromium-laced sludge was dumped in previously unknown sites, perhaps illegally.\n"We're trying to figure it out by going out to the sites and doing sampling to determine if there is hazardous waste," said Bruce Palin, head of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management's office of land quality.\nThe agency should have a clearer picture within a few weeks, after more extensive soil and water tests are completed, he told The Indianapolis Star for a story Monday.\nResidents in the rural county, which is home to about 42,000 people midway between Indianapolis and Louisville, Ky., fear the chemical found in the sludge could have spread into ditches, ponds, creeks and groundwater.\nHexavalent chromium can lead to severe respiratory problems if inhaled at high levels and cause lung cancer if inhaled over a long period of time. Less is known about the consequences of ingesting the chemical.\nIn the 1970s and early 1980s, sludge collected from the now-closed metal-plating factory in Medora was deposited with the state's permission at a farm northwest of the town where the owner spread the sludge across fields and in more than a dozen specially built lagoons.\nThe state is investigating whether the sludge was inadequately cleared away from the farm after it was ordered removed more than 20 years ago in response to changes in federal law that identified hexavalent chromium as a hazard. Inspectors also are looking into whether there might be at least three -- and possibly more -- previously unknown sites where the sludge was dumped.\nOfficials at White Plains, N.Y.-based ITT Industries, which owned the ITT/United Plastics plant in Medora from 1977 to 1985, said they had no knowledge of any contamination problems off the plant property and would cooperate with the state investigation.\nCompany spokesman Tom Glover said ITT is cleaning up solvent and other contamination at the factory under a voluntary agreement with IDEM. The plant was owned by two other companies after ITT's ownership ended and closed in 1988.\nWhile Palin said preliminary testing does not indicate "an emergency-type situation," area residents, including state Sen. Brent Steele, R-Bedford, are alarmed.\nSteele, whose family owns 210 acres adjacent to the farm where the sludge was disposed, fears that farmers might be plowing contaminated fields, and hunters and children could wander through polluted sites.\n"If you get this in you, what does it do?" Steele asked.\nThe U.S. Geological Survey said normal levels of chromium in soil are up to 2,000 parts per million. Field samples taken by IDEM last month at the farm site showed chromium levels as high as 70,000 ppm, but they didn't measure levels of hexavalent chromium.\nPalin said the site will be retested as part of the agency's investigation. He said he did not believe the chromium would pose a threat unless levels were much higher -- but that does not relieve the concerns of area residents.\n"Everybody knows about it, but nobody wanted to do anything about it," resident Tim Burton said of state regulators. "I still have my doubts that they will follow through"