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NEWS RELEASE
Dec. 28, 2005
Contacts:
Bob O’Brien, project manager, DERR (801) 536-4166
Donna Kemp Spangler, public information officer, DEQ (801) 536-4484
(Salt Lake City, Utah) – The Utah Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Environmental Response and Remediation (DERR) has completed cleanup work on two 15-acre sites contaminated by cement kiln waste that was deposited during manufacturing by the former Portland Cement Plant in Salt Lake City, later purchased by Lone Star Industries.
The $3.3 million project involved the removal of 40,000 tons of cement kiln dust that contained heavy metals, including arsenic, lead, chromium, cadmium and molybdenum. The first site is located at 9300 West and 600 North, about one mile south of the Great Salt Lake, and the other at 2500 West Center St. in North Salt Lake, near the Jordan River in Davis County.
The latest cleanup work is the culmination of a $32 million Superfund project conducted between 1993 and 1998 on 71 acres near 1000 South Redwood Road in Salt Lake City. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency placed the site on the Superfund National Priorities List (NPL) in June 1986 because of its environmental risk to nearby industrial and residential areas. The cleanup of the additional two 15-acre parcels completes the process.
“This ties up the loose ends of contamination left behind in the Salt Lake Valley from Portland Cement and Lone Star Industries,” said Bob O’Brien, project manager for DERR. “These two sites weren’t part of the NPL because they weren’t considered enough of a risk due to their remote locations. But we were finally able to address these so-called orphan sites.”
DEQ initiated the most recent project from money left over from the Superfund account, which was funded in part by a 1995 bankruptcy settlement with Lone Star Industries.
In January of 2005, DERR entered into a contract with Envirocon of Missoula, Mo. to do the cleanup work for $3.3 million. It took nine months to complete the project. Chromium-bearing bricks discarded on the sites were disposed at a hazardous landfill in Tooele County and the cement kiln dust disposed at the Salt Lake County landfill, as well as the Tooele County facility. A combined 30 acres of property has been seeded and restored and now can be put to productive use.
“We plan within the next year to do some groundwater sampling beneath the area to determine if there is any impact to the groundwater. Although we don’t expect that to be the case,” O’Brien said.
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