Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 12, 2012
Posted on: http://envfpn.advisen.com
For months, several companies have clashed over the source of groundwater pollution that threatens wells that supply drinking water to the city of St. Charles. The dispute has now boiled over into the courts.
A group of companies sued Ameren Corp. in federal court this week, naming the utility’s electric substation on Huster Road just south of Highway 370 as a source of the contamination.
The companies include Pfizer Inc., Mallinckrodt LLC, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. and Findett Real Estate Corp., all of which are connected to a separate environmental cleanup at a Superfund site just south of the substation.
The companies in September agreed at the request of the Environmental Protection Agency to protect St. Charles’ Elm Point Wellfield from contamination. And they believe Ameren, which was invited to join the settlement, should be forced to do the same.
“The group filed suit to compel Ameren to accept responsibility,” Nancy Keyser, a spokeswoman for the plaintiffs.
An Ameren spokeswoman declined comment on Tuesday afternoon, saying the company had not seen the lawsuit.
Groundwater monitoring in 2009 showed the toxic chemical 1,2-dichloroethene (DCE) present in one of the city’s wells. The same chemical was detected in sampling of another well in each of the final three quarters of 2010.
All of the samples from city wells were at levels below allowable levels for drinking water. But tests from nearby monitoring wells associated with the Superfund site revealed higher levels of DCE in February 2011, as well as the presence of benzene and vinyl chloride.
So far, the city has suspended use of one of the groundwater wells and curtailed use of another, according to a June EPA memo to Ameren. But so far, only low levels of contaminants have been detected, and the agency doesn’t believe there’s an imminent threat to the city’s drinking water supply.
“We just want to make sure there doesn’t become one,” EPA spokesman Chris Whitley said.
St. Charles City Councilman Michael Klinghammer, a member of the city’s public works board, said local officials have been aware of the groundwater contamination in the area for about a decade. And so far, he said, it hasn’t posed a threat to drinking water supplies.
“We’ve never had any of these chemicals show up in the water at our treatment plant,” he said. “If they did, they know how to handle it.”
St. Charles gets as much as half of its water from five ground wells, and it purchases the rest from the city of St. Louis.
Klinghammer said the well that was shut down about a year ago wasn’t significant, and that the city is aware of ongoing work to determine the nature and extent of the groundwater contamination.
City officials will now watch as parties potentially responsible for the groundwater pollution do battle in court.
On one side of the suit, filed Monday, are the companies responsible for the Hayford Bridge Road Superfund site, a former Findett Service Co. manufacturing plant where hazardous substances, including volatile organic compounds and PCBs, were leaked and spilled. Cleanup activities at the site have been ongoing since 1988.
On the other side is Ameren, the state’s largest electric utility, which used various solvents containing toxic chemicals at the St. Charles substation dating back to the 1960s.
The EPA, too, will be an interested spectator. But the agency isn’t worried about attributing blame.
“It’s EPA’s position that the sources of contamination are from both the (Hayford Bridge Road) site and the Ameren property,” Whitley said.