La Salle residents, council demand Carus public meeting

After leading a protest at Carus LLC headquarters April 12 with other residents, La Salle Mayor Jeff Grove said Monday he is meeting with the company’s officials Wednesday at their request, and he has a simple message for them.

“I’m going to say we need to have a meeting with (the residents),” Grove said, indicating an organized town hall with Carus addressing residents’ concerns is the next necessary step, as well as the company moving forward on paying outstanding property damage claims.

La Salle Alderman Bob Thompson said Monday he was sick of Carus Chemical not taking responsibility in the aftermath of the Jan. 11 fire.

He said until Carus is willing to meet with residents and answer residents’ questions, and pay for environmental testing, the city should cut off the company of some municipal responses – barring emergencies. He said Carus owes the city in excess of $53,000 for the additional independent testing the city commissioned when residents found heavy metals in furnace filters and in other environmental tests, after the Environmental Protection Agency and Illinois EPA left town.

Residents, with advisement from environmental experts from the Sierra Club, want further environmental testing to measure the impact of the fire and the chemical plant on a daily basis.

We look forward to scheduling that town hall in the near future.

—  Carus LLC

Prior to Monday’s meeting, Carus issued a news statement indicating a town hall meeting may be forthcoming.

“It is clear that our local residents would like to hear more from us following the warehouse fire on Jan. 11,” the company said.

“Unfortunately, we cannot attend (Monday’s) City Council meeting, but we have reached out to Mayor Grove to schedule time to talk about how we can continue to support and communicate with the community where we live and work. Our goal is to have a dedicated town hall with local residents to hear and discuss their concerns.”

“ ... We look forward to scheduling that town hall in the near future.”

The City Council and residents share the goal of wanting more environmental testing. After replacing air filters, residents still have had tests show signs of heavy metals, which are potentially hazardous. Residents within the previous EPA Superfund site said Monday their soil samples have shown signs of contaminants, noting they have certificates that say their yards were cleaned up of dangerous materials, only to have tests find more metals.

Denise Trabbic-Pointer, a certified hazardous materials manager volunteering her time in La Salle, said Monday in a Zoom call into the meeting, furnace filters gathered by the Sierra Club and community members indicate significant amounts of manganese and other metals that have been airborne. Review of continuous monitoring from the air monitor at La Salle Public Library indicated a significant increase in three-hour averages the day of the fire and slowly increasing levels as Carus brought its processes back online, she said. Pointer indicated those findings should warrant further testing.

Trabbic-Pointer included the information in a letter the Sierra Club drafted to send the EPA and state EPA, in an effort to convince agencies more testing is necessary. The state and federal EPAs said in letters shared at the April 3 La Salle City Council meeting additional testing would not be useful and unable to determine any further impacts to residents.

“The community believes that further testing is required to fill in the gaps that remain in the data from testing performed by IEPA, EPA and IDPH,” Trabbic-Pointer said in the letter. “ ... Some data was not complete, may not be compared to all appropriate criteria and there is no attention to the potential cumulative exposures that homeowners and particularly vulnerable individuals and children, have been exposed to. The inhalation route from metals that remain in furnace ducts and on surfaces in homes is of particular concern.”

U.S. EPA air monitoring the event indicated high levels of particulate, but did not include assessment of airborne metals, which are of significant concern to the community, Trabbic-Pointer said. She said the monitoring was not continuous and results were compared to an OSHA workplace standard that does not appear to be applicable to a residential area.

IEPA surface sampling is limited to a small number of wipe samples that are hard to interpret and the implications of the measurements provided are unclear, Trabbic-Pointer’s letter said. Air filter sampling is more indicative of recent emissions and metals that could have entered the home environment, she said.

There also has been incomplete assessment of the impacts to waterways and communication of testing has been poor, Trabbic-Pointer said. None of the residents have received written communication from the IDPH, which collected those samples.

The Sierra Club will provide the City Council with at least three options for more testing, should Carus or the state or federal agencies not respond to residents’ requests.

La Salle resident Lisa Dyas said hearing the Sierra Club volunteers talk about the air quality measurements from the La Salle Library nearly brought her to tears, because it means the issue may go beyond what was released during the fire. She has a child who has one kidney, and shortly after the fire he developed pneumonia with fluid build up in his lungs. She said doctors have not been able to say what caused the issue, but she knows other neighbors were sick shortly after the fire as well. She is scared to have her son go outdoors.

“I just want reassurance,” Dyas said. “I want someone to tell me my son is safe.”

Mila Kellen Marshall, a clean water advocate and environmental from Sierra Club, said as a trade off for jobs and tax resources several communities across the country have accepted factories and industries with weak state agency oversight. She said the best thing residents can do is continue to voice their concerns under a united front.

“We the people in order to work, live and play need to step and not allow them to use our bodies as filters.”