Cleanup Underway at East Chicago Brownfield Site
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowTens of thousands of cubic yards of contaminated soil are being removed from a brownfield site in East Chicago, prepping the land in advance of a one-million-square-foot logistics center.
According to our partners at The Times of Northwest Indiana, the $26.6 million cleanup project, which is on the former DuPont industrial site, began in September.
The newspaper reports the remediation is being handled by Impact Environmental Indiana LLC, which also owns East Chicago Gateway Partners LLC, the developers building the logistics center.
“We are an in-house remediation and development firm,” said Scott Aschoff, principal at Impact Environmental. “That allows an ‘integrated process’ that turns projects around quicker.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says previous investigations revealed the soil contained arsenic, lead, zinc and cadmium. The EPA approved plans for the cleanup project.
The company told the paper it intends to remove 60,000 cubic yards of soil from the 438-acre site. The paper reports 170 of those aces will be turned into a natural area with observation decks to look at the sand dunes along Lake Michigan.
Once remediation is complete, the company hopes to have a concrete pad in place by the spring of 2021 with construction of the warehouse to follow.