Company to submit cleanup report

The next step is assembly of a report that will detail cleanup options and costs.
By NORMAN LEIGH
VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU
SALEM -- Another chapter in the long saga of the former Nease Chemical Co. may unfold soon with a report on the polluted site's impact on humans and wildlife.
The endangerment assessment, a tool in an effort to clean up the contaminated location, is expected to be submitted to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency in the next few weeks by Reutgers Organics Corp.
The State College, Pa., company owns the Nease site, northwest of Salem in Perry Township along state Route 14, and is participating in the cleanup.
OEPA officials will review the assessment, which will take about a month, explained Kara Allison, an agency spokeswoman.
Available to public: If the agency is satisfied with the document, it will approve it and make it available for public viewing at Salem Public Library and Lepper Library in Lisbon, Allison said.
Work on the endangerment assessment began about three years ago. The document is taking so long to complete because of the complexity of the process and the number of revisions the OEPA required, Allison explained.
Completion of the endangerment assessment will clear Reutgers for the next step in the cleanup process -- assembly of another report called a feasibility study.
That document will offer a list of cleanup options and their cost. State and federal authorities are expected to choose one of these and order it to be implemented in the next few years.
The first draft of the feasibility study is due 90 days after the endangerment assessment is approved.
What prompted it: The subject of all this scrutiny is a 44-acre parcel that in 1983 was declared a Superfund site by the federal government, targeting it for cleanup.
The aim of state and federal environmental officials is to eventually rid the former chemical company site of mirex, a pesticide produced by the Nease plant before it closed in 1973.
Mirex may cause cancer if people have extended contact with it.
Environmental officials have predicted the Nease site cleanup will cost millions.
State and federal agencies already have determined that Reutgers should help pay for at least part of the cleanup.
The federal Superfund program also may contribute funds for the cleanup. No local money will have to be spent on the effort.
The Nease site has been in the news recently as the result of a lawsuit filed earlier this month in Columbiana County Common Pleas Court by Salem.
The city is suing a Sandusky law firm in connection with dispersal of an $18 million federal court settlement reached in fall 1999.