Clean Production and Toxics

Lake Superior barrel dump scandal is as murky as ever

A lot has been written about the more than 1,457 barrels of Honeywell’s toxic, and probably radioactive, chemicals that were dumped by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers into Lake Superior near Duluth between 1957 and 1962.

For less than the cost of a dinner out, you can get a good 100-page compilation of news accounts and official reports at the UPS Store on Central Entrance in Duluth. It’s a good read if your stomach can handle governmental graft, military contractor fraud, night-time — mobster-like — “cement shoe treatment” of industrial trash, and blunt bureaucratic dismissals of precautionary alarms.

Still, some key questions remain: what’s in the barrels, and when are they going to be pulled from Lake Superior?

Citizens from across the region want to know why no agency, corporation, or individual has been held accountable for the secret, night-time dumping. They are asking why the full extent of the dumping has never been acknowledged and why the contents of the barrels is still mostly unknown. Ron Swenson, of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s barrels investigation said in November 1994, “the mystery of radioactive waste is still out there.”

The wastes came from the Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant, Minnesota’s largest Superfund site, which at the time was run by Honeywell.

For six years, barrels containing benzene, PCBs, lead, cadmium, barium, chromium and, most likely, radioactive materials, were rolled off barges into the lake at 16 or more places along the north shore. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), this is thought to cover an area 75 square miles in size. One of the identified dump sites is within one mile of Duluth’s drinking water intake.

In February 2007, State Rep. Mike Jaros (D-MN) of Duluth wrote to the congressional delegations of Minnesota and Wisconsin urging that sediment testing be conducted in areas adjacent to the barrels. In March last year, the Save Lake Superior Association resolved unanimously to urge that all of the barrels be removed and safely shipped to a hazardous waste containment site. In June of 2008, the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa won a $603,000 grant to expand its investigation into the location and status of the aging barrels.

This is prudent. Yet, after recovering a mere nine barrels, the agencies responsible for protecting the environment dismissed the threat posed by the toxics. “We don’t believe there’s any short-term threat to human health,” said the MPCA’s Ron Swenson in September 1994. This “think about it later” approach raises more questions than it answers. As Swenson admitted, “What this means in the long term for public health, for the lake’s ecosystem … we still haven’t determined.”

In March 2008, the Minnesota Department of Health issued a formal Health Consultation about the scandal and concluded that the dumping records should be thoroughly researched — an admission that its officials have yet to do so.

As early as 1990, with only a few barrels examined and only 25 percent of the total even located, the Army Corps had already swept its dirt under the rug. Spokesperson Ken Gardner told the Duluth News Tribune, “I’m sure if you got a few feet away from the barrels you wouldn’t find any traces of any of the chemicals … there is no public health threat.”

The Corps might sound “sure,” but it has said for years there was nothing dangerous in the barrels. It even produced affidavits from former workers who swore they put “metal shavings” into the barrels. It told the MPCA in 1976 that there were only seven dump sites. However, Bob Cross of the MPCA’s spills unit told the St. Paul Pioneer in 1992 that a Corps of Engineers supervisor informed him there were at least 16 dump sites.

In February 1995, Herb Bergson, then Mayor of Superior, threatened to sue the Army, the MPCA and Honeywell over a cleanup. No law suit has materialized. Today, only the Red Cliff Band, Rep. Jaros, the Save Lake Superior Association and Nukewatch are confronting the issue directly.

Mayor Bergson complained in 1995 that, “The contents of at least 1,448 barrels are still unknown to the public,” and that “The location of many of the barrels is still unknown.” Thirteen years later, it’s about time for answers.

John LaForge, a native of Duluth, is on the staff of the environmental action group Nukewatch and edits its quarterly newsletter. The group has posted dozens of barrels documents on its website at www. nukewatch.com/barrels. You can contact him at nukewatch@lakeland.ws.

© 2009 Great Lakes News.