Carnotite Reduction Company Site Community Meeting

From 1916 to 1921, the Carnotite Reduction Company (Carnotite) operated an elemental radium separation and refining facility in Chicago in the vicinity of 2600 S. Inglehart Place, a street that no longer exists, which later became the former Michael Reese Hospital Site.

In 1979, the State of IL Department of Health, Division of Radiological Health in cooperation with the EPA, conducted a radiological surface survey & concluded that the contamination didn’t pose an immediate health hazard.

Deputy Commissioner of Environmental Health and Safety Management Kimberly Worthington is going over a broad overview of the $31 million bond and TIF funded remediation. https://t.co/QtN1uP398Z

Ram Ramasamy, a Project Manager with the City of Chicago, is talking to about the contractor doing the remediation, F.H.Paschen. F.H. Paschen has retained Arcadis and Tecnica Environmental Services to assist with the environmental aspect and earthwork portion of the project. https://t.co/koQo66ihSG

Kris Schnoes, an environmental scientist at Tetra Tech Inc is talking about the site itself. The 26thst Metra station will be temporarily shut down while radiological material is packed into sealed bags and then sent to labs in Texas.

Where does radioactive waste eventually go?

Schnoes says that they’ll have several types of air monitoring instruments to monitor dust along the perimeter of the site, based on national ambient air quality, and within the site to monitor the air for the workers. If dust is observed, work will cease.

Water misting will be the primary control. Other soil that is not radioactive, called overburden, will be bagged and stockipiled for testing as well.

https://t.co/f1gP61i8Dc

People will get an alarm on their phone if they sign up for alerts if the air quality detects any chemicals in excedence. https://t.co/AJ762Qrqw8

Schnoes says, “You can call 311 if you see dust or something and want an inspector to come out.”

Someone in the chat asks, “What is the routing for transporting the debris from the excavation? Will the routing be near schools and hospitals?”

4th Ward Aldr Sophia King isn’t at the meeting due to a schedule conflict, but her chief of staff Prentice Butler is here to answer that question. There’s an elementary school that was closed a number of years ago, and Dunbar HS, two blocks away. https://t.co/GbP9jz70We

Someone in the chat asks, “what kind of measurements should we implement at home? seal windows, dust frequently, etc and at what hours will the excavation will take place?”

The last part of the question is answered; working hours, Monday through Friday, but the last part is not clearly answered.

Mary Decker, an elderly resident of Prairie Shores Apartments on 28th and King Drive is concerned about the dust. She says her building, one of 5 totaling 1,675 units, have single panned windows that were installed in the 1960s.

She asks if there have been any discussions around constructing a circus tent to completely seal in the dust. Schnoes answers that those structures are typically used when the soil contains volatile contaminants, and in the past when she worked on a site with a tent that had…

…pressurized air that controlled the dust, it was much different than this site. She says as long as you control the dust in this situation, you don’t need to take these extreme measures.

She also says that the Carnotite Chicago website will have live updates on air quality and recommendations for local residents.

What do residents who don’t have access to the internet do?

Someone on the call asks more directly: How dangerous is the dust we’re talking about? Is breathing it, standing near it, getting it on your clothes like getting an x-ray? Or is it like being exposed to a nuclear weapon?

Glenn Huber, owner of Stan A. Huber Consultants Inc, says, “I don’t have the time to completely explain, but let’s just say it’s like getting an x-ray.” His company was contracted to provide radiation monitoring for the City of Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT)…

…during excavation for the installation of a ComEd utility conduit and pole at the Former Carnotite Reduction
Company site.

Q: The highest concentration that’s in there, how long wld someone have to be exposed to it to be effected by it?
A: there’s a difference between proximity, like being a worker, or the public. We don’t want to be ingesting soil.

“We have monitoring in place to see that we’re within the guidelines.”

Why do I feel like these are not real answers?

Another member of the public on the call asks if the city has notified a senior citizen building near by, and after a bit of shuffling, Schnoes says yes, they were flyered and door knocked prior to this meeting.

Here is a slide of the timeline of the remediation process and the community outreach plan. https://t.co/gaztZ5ydac

I type a question into the chat: Why, after almost a century of contamination, is the city remediating the soil now? Schnoes answers that the regulatory agencies are requiring it, and that all the steps they had to take to get to this point took several years.

“It’s been a lot of sampling and making plans, figuring out what to do.”

But the city has owned this land since 2009 when it was prepping for its failed 2016 Olympic bid. And in 2017, the city chose a team of real estate firms to redevelop the land through a program called GRIT, the Global Research Innovation & Tourism district (GRIT).

And plans for a megadevelopment on that superfund site, as well as the former site of the Michael Reese Hospital, have been forming ever since.
https://www.hpherald.com/news/business/plan-for-michael-reese-includes-business-commercial-and-community-development-groundbreaking-eyed-for-next-year/article_6fa8fa44-8f19-11ea-8991-ab41e74dbfb2.html

The Assets, Information and Services city workers invite members of the public to submit more questions or comments to the contact information provided in the slide below. https://t.co/O9Ohl2NxQw

With that, I’m signing off. Keep following @CHIdocumenters and @city_bureau for more news stories like this.