Kalamazoo officials say they're not happy about a federal plan for dealing with contaminated soil in the city's Edison neighborhood.
The site is part of an 80-mile-long area included in the Superfund cleanup program. Paper mills that occupied the site for a century left behind 1.5 million yards of soil tainted with toxic PCBs, some of which are already in a local landfill.
The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed spending $36 million to dig up more soil, add it to the landfill and cover it.
MLive.com's Emily Monacelli covered a public meeting held on the cleanup plan last night. Kalamazoo's Mayor, Bobby Hopewell, says the EPA's plan isn't enough:
Kalamazoo Mayor Bobby Hopewell told the crowd the Kalamazoo City Commission would stand behind them and protect them. The waste doesn't belong in a neighborhood, he said. "The bottom line is we stopped them once and we're going to stop them again," Hopewell said of the EPA, referencing a past plan to dump PCB-laden soil from Plainwell on the Allied site. "This is unacceptable," Hopewell said. "It's poison in the middle of the neighborhood. It's unacceptable."
Public Services Director Bruce Merchant says more should be done to protect an aquifer beneath the site that supplies 40 percent of the city's drinking water.
The EPA says removing all contaminated soil and taking it to another landfill would cost $336 million.
