Illinois Personal Injury Lawyer Blog

Late last week the Minnesota Department of Health notified several hundred residents of the Como neighborhood that they may be threatened by vapors containing cancer-causing chemicals released from the former General Mills facility on East Hennepin Avenue.   A review of the records shows that General Mills and the State have known about this problem dating back to 1981!  And, believe it or not, General Mills shut off its remedial pumping system 3 years ago.  Now, residents are being told that levels of these cancer-causing chemicals 10 times the State screening standard have been measured in their neighborhood.  They are being asked to allow sampling underneath their homes and are being told that if the chemicals are discovered above “acceptable” levels, General Mills will install sub-slab systems to take care of the problem.  Recent releases from the State concerning the problem can be found here. Critical questions must be answered.  Among others:

• How long has General Mills and the State known of the vapor intrusion threat to these families?
• Why hasn’t the problem been cleaned up?

Late this summer Illinois finally implemented regulations designed to consider the vapor intrusion pathway when looking cleanup of polluted sites within the State.  Like our State’s approach to many issues of critical public concern, the action is a day late and a dollar short. Vapor intrusion refers to the migration of harmful industrial chemicals into the air inside structures, including homes.  Industrial pollution frequently contains toxic levels of “volatile” chemicals.  When that pollution finds its way into the soil and groundwater it migrates from those media through the air and into buildings.  And it collects.  And it exposes inhabitants to those chemicals on a 24/7 basis, even while they’re sleeping (unlike polluted water which only exposes people when they consume it or use it for bathing). The threats presented by vapor migration have been understood for decades.  For more than a decade, we’ve been representing families whose homes have been invaded and are threatened by these chemicals.  Not only are there threats of illness, there is significant damage to the value of their properties.  Who would knowingly buy a home with such a problem?  Who would knowingly sell one without fixing the problem? Effective late July 2013, new Illinois Pollution Control Board regs require that owners of properties who are seeking No Further Remediation letters (NFRs) under the State’s Tiered Approach to Corrective Action program examine the vapor intrusion pathway among the other exposure routes (eg, ingestion) when trying to get an NFR.  The State is supposed to consider this when deciding whether to issue an NFR and on what terms. Illinois is a bit late to this party.  Many other States recognized the significance of this problem years ago.  But most importantly, Illinois’ regs have no application whatsoever to the sites which likely present the greatest threat to families in the State – the ones which have already received NFRs under the vastly inept standards of the past.  There is no requirement under these new regs that such sites be re-examined. One of the first cases we brought on behalf of families was one where hundreds of their homes were supplied with polluted groundwater.  The case came to our attention because the State was on the verge of issuing an NFR to a big company armed with high priced lawyers and consultants.  It was lucky indeed that one of the families who had heard about the NFR process decided to test the well in their home and the cancer-causing chemicals dumped by that company for decades were discovered.  As a result of our lawsuit, an enormous problem was uncovered.  The federal EPA got involved.  Many millions were spent on cleanup.  The families were provided with a clean and safe water supply as well as the funds to install systems to protect themselves from the threat of vapor intrusion. There can be little doubt that there are other such sites where NFRs have been issued without an examination of the vapor intrusion threat.  The regs do nothing to address that sleeping giant. The regs suffer from other inadequacies as well.  Vapor plumes can very difficult to detect and to define.  The harmful gases are much like clouds, or puffs of smoke or steam.  Now you see’em; now you don’t.  They migrate much further than the polluted soil or groundwater they come from and can move in different directions.  They are influenced by factors that are highly variable, such as soil moisture, barometric pressure, geology, and things that facilitate movement, like trenches, sewer pipes, and the like.  For that reason investigation, to be meaningful requires a depth of analysis beyond that required by the regs and beyond that within the technical wheelhouses of most consultants and regulators to be sure. Bottom line: these new regs are not cause for celebration.  They are cause for concern.  And forewarned is forearmed.

Related Posts: What Should You Do if Your Groundwater is Contaminated?, Clean Water Isn’t a Right if You Never Had It, Congratulations to McHenry County, IL, for Disclosing its Groundwater Contamination Problems, Which Chemicals are Most Likely to Contaminate Groundwater?

Our work for contamination victims typically starts out like this: A group of families get “bad news”.  They’re told — often at a community meeting in the basement of a local town hall or church — that their water supply has just been tested, and that dangerous industrial chemicals are in the water they drink and bathe in.  Or maybe that the contamination has slipped inside their homes in a “vapor” form — called “vapor intrusion” — and now it’s been detected in the air they breathe while they’re sleeping at night.  Sometimes, the bad news comes in a certified letter, or the families read about it for the first time in the local newspaper. Sometimes, they are told who the environmental culprit is, sometimes not.  Sometimes, they get a lot of technical blah, blah, blah about how government or the polluter couldn’t possibly have known any earlier that the families were in danger. A bad day for these families, no matter how you slice it. That’s when we get called.  Understandably, these people are shocked, angry, hurt, and feeling betrayed by those whom they had trusted to protect them.  They’re scared, really.  Wouldn’t you be?  So, they want someone who will tell them what’s really going on, and, if necessary, who will fight for them… to fix the problem, or at least try to make things better.  They want some sense of peace and security restored to their homes and neighborhood. They hire us, because this is what we do.  We fight for these families.  We tell them the truth, and enlist the court system to make the polluter clean up and pay for the damage it has done.  And one of the first things we do is we meet with these folks, and start giving them facts in response to their questions.  Questions like:

• What’s the chemical involved here, and how dangerous is it?
• How far has it spread?

How long should it take to clean up toxic chemicals after they are spilled?  A week, a month, a year, 5 years? The answer is: “decades, usually.”  Worse, oftentimes, the answer: is “the chemicals will never be all cleaned up”. It’s scary and sad.  But it’s true. Here’s a recent example of a community in the State of New Jersey, where it has taken 53 years after the spilling— not to clean up the chemicals, mind you, but just to create a plan to try to clean them up: On August 23, 2013, the United States Environmental Protection Agency announced a plan to spend $19 million to clean up chemicals first spilled in 1960 by a now-defunct dry cleaner in Wall Township, New Jersey. [see the full article here.]  After being spilled (and they were spilled probably over three decades), the chemicals were allowed to seep into the ground, infiltrate the groundwater aquifer below, and spread out so that the area of contamination is now one mile wide, and two miles long.  This contamination runs in the groundwater underneath homes and business, and releases a toxic vapor that has slipped into the air of some of those structures, requiring that special systems be installed to try to minimize the impact of the vapors that are invading the homes. Here’s the disturbing chronology, documenting how 53 years went by, and yet all we have today is a plan to clean up: 1960: the dry cleaner likely starts spilling chemicals, probably right out the back door 1990: testing of the water in area wells shows high levels of contamination 1997: the local health department learns of the test results 1999: testing begins for the presence of the toxic chemicals in the municipal water well, and in the air inside homes and businesses 2004: the site is entered on the “Superfund” list, marking it as one of the most contaminated sites in the country 2013:  EPA announces a plan to clean up the chemicals And please understand:  the “planned” clean-up, announced just a few days ago, has yet to start.  After it does start, it will probably go on for 20-25 years or more. And–here’s the truly galling part–there is no way that the clean-up will get all of the contamination out of the environment.  Much of what was spilled is now so deeply embedded below the surface, and in the groundwater, that it will never be “all cleaned up”. It took 39 years after the first chemical spilling for the government to do any testing. It took 14 years after those first tests to develop a plan to clean up the chemicals. 75 years after the chemicals were first spilled, they will still not be “all cleaned up”. As bad as this sounds, it is not just a terrible story.  It is a typical story. Typical.

Related Posts: What Should You Do if Your Groundwater is Contaminated?, Clean Water Isn’t a Right if You Never Had It, Congratulations to McHenry County, IL, for Disclosing its Groundwater Contamination Problems, Which Chemicals are Most Likely to Contaminate Groundwater?