$90 million Ottawa Superfund cleanup reaction to be charted by EPA

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund Program has been cleaning up radium waste in and around Ottawa for almost 30 years, and it’s almost complete.

The biggest and most expensive portion of the project, however, has yet to be tackled.

Nabil Fayoumi is a remedial project manager for the EPA and was a contractor with the EPA when the initial effort began in the early 1990s in Ottawa. He said the cleanup of the final portion – a 17-acre dump site located just outside city limits on the east bank of the Fox River – is expected to remove about 140,000 tons of radium-contaminated soil. It will cost in the neighborhood of $90 million.

The area along Route 6 is south of Hank’s Farm Restaurant, and it is close to the spot under consideration by the city as a site for a future wastewater treatment plant.

This is by far the biggest project I’ve been involved in, and I’ve been involved in the environmental sector since 1993.”

—  Nabil Fayoumi, remedial project manager for the EPA

The work is expected to begin in April or May and take about four years to complete if estimates of the contamination are accurate.

The 15 other sites scattered throughout the city that tested positive for radium 226 either have been cleaned up or have an institutional control in place. The initial residential cleanup removed 35,000 tons of contaminated soil at a cost of $40 million, and subsequent efforts took out 30,000 tons from other areas at an additional cost of $50 million.

“That is somewhat expensive as cleanup sites go,” Fayoumi said. “Anything above $35 million is considered expensive, and we have to go through a review process. This is by far the biggest project I’ve been involved in, and I’ve been involved in the environmental sector since 1993.

“The last area to be cleaned up is the biggest one volume-wise. Also the most expensive. We haven’t cleaned that one up because we didn’t have the money at either the federal level or the state level, but thanks to the bipartisan infrastructure law, we will have the money to clean up this property. … That law is making this possible. Without it, it would likely not be cleaned up in our lifetime.

“Once this area is taken care of, [the Ottawa project] will be 100% complete.”

The areas already cleaned will be monitored, and some will have operational maintenance performed on them.

The radium contamination in the city stems from two now-defunct businesses, Radium Dial Co. between 1918 and 1936, and Luminous Processes Inc. from 1937 to 1978. The companies produced luminous dials for clocks and watches using radium-based paints.

Fayoumi said there are other such sites around the country with a similar radium problem, so the situation in Ottawa is not an uncommon occurrence.

Radium is fairly easy to eliminate with a “dig-and-haul” effort, Fayoumi said, which involves primarily removing contaminated soil until radioactive activity in underground levels drops to within safe standards.

Once removed from the Ottawa site, the soil, based on its radioactivity, will be shipped to remote, less-populous Western states such as Utah and Colorado, enclosed in a cell and buried for the remainder of its radioactive half-life of 4,000 years.

“It feels so good to be so close to the end here in Ottawa,” Fayoumi said.

With Fayoumi for the week was Phil Gurley, the EPA community involvement coordinator for the Office of External Affairs. He has been charged with charting public knowledge and reaction to the cleanup, asking local residents questions about their experiences involving the contaminated sites, how well the EPA kept them informed of the work being done and their impressions of the city in general.

“Every Superfund site I work on, the communities are so different,” Gurley said. “What may be the best way to get information out in one area might be the worst way in another, something as simple as that. We want to keep people informed about when work is going to start, what truck traffic might look like in some areas, things like that. The more information we can get out, the better.”