By Andra Bryan Stefanoni
news@joplinglobe.com
PITTSBURG, Kan. — The Environmental Protection Agency is expanding lead testing in Pittsburg to include 223 additional properties, officials confirmed Wednesday.
The second round of testing comes as soil removal is set for 30 properties identified as contaminated in the first phase. That work is set to begin Oct. 26.
Those 30 properties had lead levels higher than the EPA’s “level of concern,” which is 550 parts per million, Beckie Himes, EPA Region 7 community involvement coordinator, said Wednesday.
EPA on-scene coordinator Todd Campbell said the 30 properties to undergo soil removal include some residential properties, four day-care centers and a property zoned as medium industrial.
The highest average reading from the field screening was 2,197 ppm, and it was from one of the former lead smelter properties.
Phase 1 of the testing began last February when city officials mailed testing consent forms to 166 Pittsburg property owners. All of those were within 500 feet of the former Pittsburg Zinc Co. smelter between Locust and Tucker streets and Fifth and Kansas streets.
The smelter closed more than 100 years ago, but officials suspected that possible lead contamination remained, which prompted the testing.
Soil testing then began in mid-March on the properties for which owners had granted access. In addition, they obtained results from local parks, which all were below 200 ppm. At two parks, Lakeside and Lincoln, levels were less than 115 ppm.
The goal of the soil remediation project on the 30 contaminated properties is to remove layers of dirt to a maximum depth of 24 inches in order to remove lead contamination, Himes said.
Crews will then haul contaminated soil to a landfill that is licensed to accept the material. Clean soil will be backfilled and seed/sod will be applied.
Campbell said he’s hopeful the soil removal will be concluded by Christmas, but weather would play a role as it is difficult to dig and remove rain-soaked soil or frozen soil.
“If we can get three to four properties done per week, weather permitting, that’s our goal,” he said. “Contamination is limited to one or two areas of each yard. We’re not looking at big huge areas of excavation. There is only one property that had more than two cells on the property above 550 (ppm). So it is in and out on a lot of those.”
Meanwhile, city officials are sending out another round of access agreements to 223 property owners — this time for Phase 2, according to Pittsburg’s Director of Public Utilities John Bailey.
Campbell said the EPA recommended the area for sampling and would like to do the work while in town for the Phase 1 soil cleanup for the sake of efficiency and cost.
“We recommended three distinct areas that border the original assessment area because our (GPS) people found roughly 225 to 230 properties that would indicate testing,” Campbell said.
That area is to the north, east and southwest of the former smelter sites, according to an EPA map.
After the samples from the Phase 2 properties are analyzed, EPA staff will provide property owners with an information sheet that will explain what levels of lead, if any, are found and what it means. According to Himes, it takes five to six weeks for a property owner to receive his or her sampling results.
Learn more
A public availability session will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. today at the Schlanger Park Community Building in Pittsburg, Kan., to discuss lead contamination, testing and removal. Representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency, Kansas Department of Health and Environment and the city of Pittsburg, Kan., will be available to answer questions and provide information.
