Park cleanup on fast track

Columbus now is doing all the right things to protect residents near a park laced with toxic soil, after getting off to a slow start.

At a community meeting this week, Columbus Public Health officials updated residents on health testing and the cleanup at Saunders Park on the Near East Side. This openness is in itself enormous progress.

The community and Mayor Michael B. Coleman had been kept in the dark for well over a year as recreation officials and their consultants studied the dioxins and heavy metals in soil near soccer fields where kids still were playing. The Dispatch reported the problem in September 2013, alerting the mayor.

Things moved fast after that; though the Recreation and Parks Department is governed by an independent board, the mayor controls the budget and the power.

Coleman ordered the fields closed, games moved and fences erected.

The city then hired remediation consultants to do additional testing and had Columbus Public Health survey residents for related illnesses.

At the Tuesday meeting, neighbors were told that Columbus Public Health will test as many as seven people who live near Saunders Park to see if they have high levels of arsenic, lead, mercury or other contaminants. More testing could follow.

Work also is about to begin on cleaning up the park, by removing a layer of soil over the affected 9 acres of the 14.5 acre park and capping it with clean fill.

The work, to cost more than $1.2 million, should be done by spring 2016.

And the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to determine whether the contaminated properties near the park are candidates for a federal cleanup.

While the city isn’t responsible for the contamination at the park, which is near an old fertilizer-plant site, it is on the hook for cleaning it up and keeping residents safe.

With a prod from the mayor, it is doing so.

Chief judge deserving of important position

Congratulations to Judge Edmund A. Sargus Jr., who ascended this month to chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.

The federal court covers 48 counties, including courts in Cincinnati, Columbus and Dayton, with 15 judges and nine magistrate judges. It hears cases that run from the bizarre — a Beverly Hills woman who claimed she was an Asian heiress coerced to become a crosscountry drug mule — to the constitutionally vital challenges to how Ohio holds elections.

Sargus, 61, calls his role “first among equals,” but this is an important post. The chief judge keeps the court running in an efficient manner. For instance, he’ll oversee filing budgets and reports to the national judiciary. But he also will address the needs of the court, its staff and fellow judges, as well as the public and attorneys. So it’s a job that requires consensusbuilding and good people skills. That’s an area in which the affable Sargus will shine.

Sargus, appointed in 1996 by President Bill Clinton, says he plans to serve until 2019 and will maintain his current caseload.

The last chief judge from Columbus was James L. Graham, who left the position a decade ago.

Good luck to Sargus.