DePue gets an education
DEPUE—“It’s a spring! It’s fresh water! Look, see that?” DePue resident Bob Ponce said Wednesday as he poked a stick into a fist-sized fissure along the northwest shore of Lake DePue.
Sure enough, clear water bubbled up from the fissure. It swirled in the sand, and then trickled downhill into the murky waters of Lake DePue.
According to Illinois Environmental Protection Agency specialist Rich Lange, Ponce’s discovery is a “natural groundwater seep” – one of dozens the IEPA has mapped along the edges of Lake DePue.
The fissures, or ‘seeps,’ bubble with water from natural sources that flow beneath DePue. Some of those sources, Lange said, have the potential to carry heavy metals and other pollutants from DePue’s abandoned New Jersey Zinc Superfund site, directly into Lake DePue.
“I wouldn’t consider those lakeside seeps to be drinking water, but from testing we’ve done, none of them are particularly screaming,” Lange told the BCR.
Lange’s assessment came during a public availability session hosted Wednesday at DePue VFW by DePue Superfund site owners Exxon-Mobil Corp., CBS Operations Inc., and various state agencies.
Contractors for Exxon and CBS, and state officials like Lange used the sessions to
educate the public on the latest studies on the impact the former New Jersey Zinc smelting site is having on DePue and its lake.
Set up like a professional fair with kiosks manned by health and environmental experts and Superfund cleanup managers, the sessions allowed the public to move about freely. People could review Superfund site maps, public health documents and environmental cleanup plans. Or they could ask questions.
“The most common questions I get are can I eat the (Lake DePue) fish, but I have people ask about soil and water contact,” said IEPA toxicologist Connie Sullinger, whose kiosk had a flow chart showing the different ways contaminants could reach people who use the Lake DePue area for recreation.
Local resident Joe Manrriquez came to the sessions Wednesday to air concerns. Manrriquez canoes on Lake DePue. But he said with silting and low water levels in the summer, his canoe trips are usually short-lived. In fact, it’s so shallow on the east end of the lake that trees have started growing in the water.
“What can we do for the lake? We want it dredged; we want to see it continued to be used for recreation,” Manrriquez said. “Can it happen, you ask them; they say they don’t know.”
Manrriquez said Wednesday’s sessions were packed with facts about site managers’ cleanup plans around the former zinc smelting plant property, but he wants to know whether Lake DePue’s going to turn into a wetland.
“It’s already wetlands. it’s always been one. It just depends on how you define wetlands,” Illinois Department of Natural Resources site manager Mike Recetich said of the lake’s shallowness.
Recetich said all lakes linked to the sediment-laden Illinois River are getting shallower, that it’s a “natural progression.” An environmental contractor at Wednesday’s sessions who asked the BCR not to name him said Lake DePue is silting in at a rate of at least 2 inches a year.
DePue Schools Superintendent Ann Chandler came to the sessions to learn about possible effects the Superfund could have on children in the school district.
“There still haven’t been a lot of studies done in these small towns. What impact does it have on our kids, in terms of illness?” Chandler said.
Chandler said she didn’t get hard answers for that query, but she did pick up a lot of general knowledge about DePue’s Superfund. Which Chandler said helps because she’s a relative newcomer to the community.
Chandler didn’t know DePue’s Superfund covers nearly 3,000 acres, according to the IEPA – and that the site is broken up into five sections, each at a different stage in environmental testing and cleanup.
“I was surprised. I didn’t realize the (Superfund) encompassed that much of an area, and I didn’t realize there was more of it along (Route) 29. I feel much more knowledgeable about what has and hasn’t been done,” Chandler said.
State Sen. Gary Dahl, R-Granville, who was at the sessions Wednesday, said they were worthwhile. But like DePue residents, he wants action taken on Lake DePue.
“I’ve learned most from the residents that came here. Their biggest issue is the lake. It’s been the lifeblood of this town, and it needs to continue to be. I understand peoples’ frustration; there’s a lot of work that’s left to be done,” Dahl said.
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