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Meeting Apr. 24, 2002

Maple Park and Victory Heights Advisory Council for the Dutch Boy Site & Former West Pullman Works Site
Wednesday, April 24, 2002, 7:00 P.M.
Edward H. White Academy, 1130 West 122nd Street, Chicago, Illinois

*The following is a Summary of the discussion of the April 24, 2002 Advisory Council meeting. It is not meant to serve as a transcript of the proceedings*

The 32nd meeting of the Maple Park and Victory Heights Advisory Council for the Dutch Boy site and the Former West Pullman Works site, formerly known as International Harvester, was held at the Edward White Elementary School, 1130 South 122nd Street on April 24, 2002 from 7-9p.m. A synopsis of the meeting follows:

  1. Welcome and Introductions
  2. Review of February 13, 2002 meeting summary
  3. Dutch Boy Update
  4. Former West Pullman Works Update
  5. City of Chicago Update
  6. Question & Answer Period
  7. Next meeting date

Contact information

Attendees included:

*Other persons may have attended, but were unable to sign the sign-in sheet.

I. Welcome and Introductions

The facilitator, Janet Pope, opened the meeting, conducted introductions and reviewed the agenda items.

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II. Review of October 17, 2001 meeting summary

There were few corrections made to the February 13, 2002 meeting minutes. Corrections will be made then the minutes will be placed within the information repository.

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III. Dutch Boy Update

Brad Bradley of U.S. EPA, was not at the meeting. Janet Pope will get the updates from Brad.

UPDATE: Brad Bradley met with the Council on May 6, 2002, and answered all their questions and concerns. Brad committed that the U.S. EPA would do the following:

  1. Send out all soil sampling results as soon as possible (within the next few weeks). Apparently only some of the residents have received sampling results for their yard from NL's contractor. Brad will get all of the results out so that people can see where they stand in terms of the need for cleanup.
  2. Get informational flyer to the Council, along with before/after pictures from some of his other lead sites to help them with their efforts to get access from homeowners in the cleanup area who have refused to date. Plan a public forum to announce the cleanup.
  3. Get additional signed access agreements to NL's contractor. A handful of people have signed up for sampling since last fall. This information will be passed on so that these yards can get sampled while the cleanup is underway.

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IV. Former West Pullman Works Update

Gail Walker presented the project update for the Former West Pullman Works site. She explained that since the February 2002 meeting the project team and the Illinois EPA have been developing details to undertake additional field investigation at the site. The additional field work will include the installation of piezometers outside the sewers; monitoring wells in area N to check for PCBs in the groundwater; and investigating the trench on the east side of the site. The project team and the agency will likely take another couple of weeks to finalize the approach to the field activities, and approximately one week will be needed to mobilize to before the work can begin.

Ms. Walker continued, reporting that a passive oil collection system had been installed the week of April 8th at the location of the south sewer. To date, there has not be sufficient oil present to fill the canister. It is anticipated that this collection system will remain in place for a total of four to six weeks.

Questions from the community members included:

Q: How long will the piezometers will remain in place?
Ans: The response depends upon the findings: Iif oil is not detected in approximately one month, the piezometers will be removed. However, if oil does appear the piezometers will remain and additional measures will be employed.

Q: Is there a certain amount of oil that is within acceptable limits?
Ans: The oil is considered “free product” and the standard is that free product will be removed to the extent practible. In summary, oil that can be collected will be removed.

Q: Have all the underground storage tanks been pulled from the site?
Ans: A search was conducted and all identified underground storage tanks have been removed.

Note: Ms. Walker, Renante Marante (Chicago Department of Environment) and Mark Britton (Illinois EPA) responded to the questions to the exent possible at the meeting. Responses to some of the above questions were provided in follow-up telephone calls to the inquiring community members. The essence of the full responses is included in the above summary information.

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V. Chicago Department of Environment Update

1. Amforge Site - City is awaiting IEPA's comments of the City's response to IEPA's previous comments of the City's Tier III risk assessment originally submitted on January 2001. In the coming weeks, the City intends to do additional delineation of the extent of PCB contamination on the central portion of the property. Once the extent has been defined, the City will excavate and remove the PCB contaminated soil offsite for disposal. The Department of Planning (DPD) is still negotiating redevelopment of the property with 2 separate developers.

2. Parcel 12-1 Site (property on southeast corner of 120th and Peoria) - Concrete demolition on hold until DPD finds a developer for the property. The City is focusing its funding on properties in West Pullman that have interested developers in line.

3. Dutchboy Site - The City was informed by USEPA that it will be receiving a formal request for information regarding the City's activities on the property. City is awaiting USEPA letter.

4. Church Property - IEPA requested additional site maps to attach to the NFR letter. City's consultant recently sent the requested site maps to IEPA.

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VI. Question & Answer Period

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VII. Next meeting date

The next meeting will be at 7:00pm on Wednesday, June 12, 2002, at the Edward White Elementary School 1130 West 122nd Street, Chicago

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For more information, please contact:

Brad Bradley, Remedial Project Manager
U.S. EPA
77 West Jackson Boulevard
Chicago, Illinois 60606
(312) 886-4742
bradley.brad@epa.gov

Janet Pope, Community Involvement Coor.
U.S. EPA
77 West Jackson Boulevard
Chicago, Illinois 60606
(312) 353-0628
pope.janet@epa.gov

Renante Marante
City of Department of Environment
30 N. LaSalle
Suite 2500
Chicago, Illinois
(312) 742-0123
rmarante@cityofchicago.org

Mark Britton, Community Relations Coor.
Illinois Environmental Protection Agency
1021 North Grand Avenue East
Springfield, Illinois 62794-9276
(217) 524-7342
mark.britton@epa.state.il.us

Gail Walker, Public Affairs Consultant
Environmental Communications
801 South Plymouth Court
Suite 1002
Chicago, Illinois 60605
(312) 939-7640
envirocom2000@aol.com

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