EPA may dig wells to monitor water

Muskego NOW

You'll find more news, sports, photos and opinions about Muskego on MyMuskegoNOW.com.

You'll find more news, sports, photos and opinions about Muskego on MyMuskegoNOW.com.

Muskego - Additional groundwater monitoring wells might be placed between an old waste dump on the west edge of the city and a public well a mile away to ensure the water supply does not become contaminated with chemicals that have leaked from the site, federal environmental officials said Friday.

Proposed changes to an ongoing cleanup plan for the former Muskego Sanitary Landfill also include evaluating the effectiveness of a system designed to extract and treat contaminated groundwater beneath one section of the dump, and whether the system should be extended to other sections.

The closed 56-acre landfill is north of Janesville Road, east of Crowbar Drive and south of Wauer Lane.

Representatives of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Natural Resources will attend a public meeting Thursday to discuss proposed changes to cleanup and monitoring plans with residents. The meeting will be held at the Muskego Public Library, S73-W16663 Janesville Road. Meeting times are 2 to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m.

In recent years, small amounts of the toxic chemical vinyl chloride have been detected in groundwater east, southeast and south of the landfill.

A clay cap was placed over the site in the early 1990s to prevent rain from seeping into the dump and flushing chemicals away from the site. Contaminated liquids leaking out of the bottom of the landfill are collected and removed, under the existing cleanup plan.

The city's well No. 7 is about one mile east of the site at Muskego County Park on Janesville Road. No pollutants from the old landfill have been detected in the municipal well, according to Donald Bruce, an official with the EPA's Superfund program in the Chicago regional office.

"We do not expect contaminants to reach the well," Bruce said.

As a precaution, the city's protection plan for well No. 7 will be amended to include the specific steps to be taken if vinyl chloride or other landfill chemicals are detected in nearby monitoring wells.

Well No. 7 is checked once a month for vinyl chloride and a long list of other possible contaminants, Muskego Public Utilities Superintendent Scott Kloskowski said.

For information on the former landfill and its cleanup history, go to the EPA website: www.epa.gov/region5/sites/muskego.

In the mid-1950s, the city issued a permit to a former landowner to operate a waste disposal facility at the site, which encompasses a former waste dump, animal carcass rendering plant and gravel pit.

The old gravel pit was used by a metal drum salvage company that dumped oil and paint waste there. It was closed in 1977.

Waste-filled drums and municipal waste were dumped adjacent to the old rendering plant site.

The waste dump, acquired by Waste Management Inc. in 1971, operated until 1980.

Beginning in 1991, the EPA ordered a series of cleanups at the property. By 2000, nearly 80 nearby homes and businesses with private wells were hooked up to the municipal water supply to prevent exposure to contaminants in groundwater.

To date, Waste Management and about 50 corporations that used the landfill, known as the Remediation Group, have spent more than $16 million on cleanup activities, monitoring wells and connecting private properties to the municipal water supply, a Waste Management spokeswoman said.