Feedback sought for site of former housing complex
Public hearing set for future use of land that’s undergoing cleanup
A grassy field, a few roads and some thin trees are all that remain of a former East Chicago public housing development.
The West Calumet Housing Complex, which housed more than 1,000 people at a time, had been built on ground that, later testing showed, had been heavily contaminated with lead and arsenic from a nearby lead processing plant.
Mayor Anthony Copeland ordered the residents to leave in 2016 because of health hazards from the contaminated soil, and the East Chicago Housing Authority had the buildings torn down by the end of 2018.
Within a few years, though, a warehouse and logistics center could be built on that land.
The future use of that approximately 50-acre site will be the subject of a public meeting and hearing in East Chicago on May 21.
And from now until June 3, people may submit their comments to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has been overseeing the cleanup of neighborhoods around the former USS Lead site in East Chicago.
East Chicago Common Council member Terence Hill, who represents the district that includes the USS Lead Superfund site, looks forward to the new development at the former housing complex.
“I think it will be a plus for the community,” he said. “It’s going be a state-of-the-art warehouse. No smokestacks. It’s not going to contaminate us.”
“It’s going to be jobs,” he said of the proposed development. “It’s going to be good for the neighborhood.
He said trucks going to and from the warehouse will use 151st Street and Railroad Avenue, not the narrow residential streets.
A lifelong resident of the district, Hill saw the housing complex going up in the early 1970s and saw it being demolished in 2018.
The U.S. Smelter and Lead Refinery, commonly called USS Lead, had operated a smelting and refining plant at 5300 Kennedy Ave., just south of the Calumet neighborhood, from 1906 until 1985.
Residents in the Calumet neighborhood, between Chicago Avenue, Parrish Avenue, 151st Street and the Indiana Harbor Canal, had complained about pollution from the plant, and the EPA began investigating.
The entire neighborhood was declared an EPA Superfund site — the designation for the most heavily polluted areas in the country — in 2009, after which the EPA developed a plan to clean up the contaminated soils.
Since then, the EPA has overseen cleanup activities at 803 homes, several parks, part of a utility corridor and the schoolyard of the former Carrie Gosch School, next to the former West Calumet Housing
Complex.
When West Calumet was demolished, Copeland said new housing would be built at the site after the soil was cleaned up.
But soil cleanup for residential development in that area would have required removing soil to four feet deep and replacing it with clean soil.
Cleanup for commercial and industrial development requires less soil removal.
East Chicago changed course a few years ago and opted for commercial and industrial development.
The EPA is seeking comments now on the proposed agreement with Industrial Development Advantage of East Chicago, which would buy the land formerly occupied by the housing complex.
The EPA is also proposing to enter a settlement agreement with the companies responsible for the pollution, requiring them to pay $18 million for past soil cleanup costs and to assure that they would pay for the soil cleanup at the proposed warehouse site.
After the public comment period ends, the EPA, the Indiana Department of Environmental
Management and the U.S. Department of Justice will review the comments.
The agency also seeking comments on its proposed Explanation of Significant Differences (ESD), confirming that the EPA has met conditions established in its 2020 Record of Decision Amendment.
Comments on all those agreements can be submitted in the following ways:
Online at www. regulations.gov.
EPA online comment form: www.epa.gov/ uss-lead-superfund-site.
Email: rodriguez-charles@epa. gov.
Mail: Charles Rodriguez, U.S. EPA Region 5, Mail Code RE-19J, 77 W. Jackson Blvd., Chicago, IL 60604.
Phone: 312-353-6284 (leave a voice message after the prompt).
The EPA will answer questions on the proposed settlements at a public meeting and hearing from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. May 21 at the old Carrie Gosch School auditorium, 455 E. 148th St., East Chicago.