The federal government has yet to get permission from more than 50 property owners for a project to remove contaminated soil from an Evansville neighborhood starting next month.
The $5 million cleanup scheduled to begin in March in the city's Jacobsville neighborhood is expected to take four to five years. A contractor will remove lead- and arsenic-contaminated soil in the yards of about 350 homes and replace it with clean soil. The tainted soil will be disposed of at a regulated landfill.
However, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which is overseeing the Superfund project, has yet to get access agreements from 52 of the property owners, said Dave Novak, community involvement coordinator for the agency. Sixteen property owners have denied permission, he told the Evansville Courier & Press for a story Thursday.
"For the most part, these are properties for which we haven't found the owners or they are vacant lots. Some are in foreclosure," said Mary Tierney, the EPA's project manager for Jacobsville.
She said a project manager for contractor Environmental Restoration of St. Louis is expected to visit Evansville as early as next week.
EPA contractors cleaned up 83 of the neighborhood's most contaminated yards in 2008 using $900,000 in emergency funding.
The cleanup involves carefully removing the contaminated topsoil down to about 12 inches and replacing it with clean soil. Any bushes, flowers or fences removed or damaged will be replaced, and the clean soil will be seeded or covered with sod. Cleanups of individual properties should take one to two days and will be done block by block, Tierney said. The EPA is looking for landscapers to assist in restoring the excavated yards.
The agency also is seeking disposal sites for the removed soil and a location in the neighborhood from which to stage the cleanup, Tierney said.
A proposed third phase of the cleanup would affect up to 4,000 properties. Tierney said that work could begin as early as 2011, depending on funding.
The original cleanup area was placed on the Superfund's waiting list in 2004, but additional soil testing found the contamination was more widespread.
The contamination is believed to have come from air pollution from several industries located in the neighborhood during the early 1900s.
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