DePue challenges risk assessments

DEPUE — The village of DePue believes assessments of risks to the health of area residents and to the land from the extreme contamination of Lake DePue were inadequate.

Counsel for the village sent a second response to the Illinois EPA last week regarding comments by the that agency on reports by environmental and toxicology experts concerning the assessments. The letter lists the numerous shortcomings in both the Superfund-related Human Health Risk Assessment and Baseline Ecological Risk Assessment, conducted for ExxonMobil and CBS Corporations, that were not adequately addressed in the previous IEPA response. Village President Eric Bryant said the assessments involved Lake DePue sediments and the adjacent floodplain low land areas.

Bryant said it was troubling that both assessments, conducted for ExxonMobil and CBS, found no meaningful ecological and human health risks.

“It is well known that the zinc smelter operation alone discharged some 50 toxic metals and substances 24/7, from coal combustion for 50 years and from roasted zinc ore for 70 years, into the air around DePue,” he said.

Bryant said the smelter also discharged contaminated process water directly into Lake DePue for 70 years. In addition, seepage to the lake from the “so-called” slag pile of coal and zinc ore cinders and other toxic materials continued until just recently.

The village’s letter to the IEPA highlighted what it considered to be several major deficiencies. According to Nancy Loeb, counsel to DePue and director of the Environmental Law Clinic at Northwestern University’s Bluhm Legal Clinic, who coordinated evaluations of the assessments and responses to the IEPA, the risk assessments continue to underestimate the risks posed to human health and the environment.

First, the assessments incorrectly considered exposure of individuals to toxins. For example, the risk assessments do not consider the total exposure of someone who is exposed to toxins in the lake from both work and leisure activities. The assessments also ignore people who have lived in DePue their entire lives and have been exposed to the lake in a wide variety of ways such as fishing, boating and wading throughout their lives. 

Second, the village believes the assessments do not adequately address risks to organisms currently living in the lake or the loss of aquatic life because of the contamination. Current aquatic life in the lake is extremely limited and only those few species able to survive the high levels of toxicants in the lake exist there today. In addition, the assessments are particularly inadequate in their treatment of organisms which are crucial to the overall ecological health of the lake.