By Sarah Reese
Residents in East Chicago’s Calumet neighborhood have asked a federal judge to give them a say regarding an agreement reached in 2014 for an environmental cleanup of the Superfund site encompassing their homes.
The Department of Justice and the Indiana attorney general’s office in fall 2014 announced they had reached a $26 million settlement with Atlantic Richfield and DuPont — and companies or successors to companies responsible for the pollution — for a cleanup in zones 1 and 3 of the Superfund site.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chose a cleanup plan for zones 1, 2 and 3 in its record of decision in 2012, but zone 2 — the middle part of the neighborhood — was left out of the consent decree…
In addition to Northwestern’s Environmental Law Clinic, attorneys at Goldberg Kohn and the University of Chicago Law School’s Abrams Environmental Law Clinic are representing Calumet residents.
In the motion, attorneys accused the EPA of minimizing and ignoring public health concerns at the site and cleaning up only a limited number of properties. They argue the EPA did this, despite knowing for years about severe and widespread contamination, using flawed analysis methods to develop cleanup plans and improperly changing cleanup plans.
News about the contamination has left several residents seeking to intervene unable to sell their homes, the motion said…