The Army’s blueprint for addressing the former Joliet Arsenal’s remaining soil and ground water contamination has been released in its final draft.
The proposed cleanup plan for the 23,500-acre complex is expected to be signed and given final approval by the end of August, said Mark Pape, of ECG Inc., a consulting firm hired to help prepare the document, which was released Wednesday.
The draft includes a 29-page section summarizing the Army’s response to more than 200 issues raised by the public, but the final document does not deviate from the one presented by the Army in December.
The Army proposes to spend an estimated $86 million over several years to treat soil contaminated with explosives, heavy metals, PCBs and other hazardous material. The cleanup process includes a combination of excavation and a biological method, such as using microbes to eat contaminants.
Incineration of the soil or its removal to another location was ruled out by the Army as not being cost-effective, publicly unacceptable or not in keeping with the goal of fully solving the arsenal’s contamination problems.
Federal law prohibits the Army from transferring the contaminated sites, totaling more than 3,500 acres.
Explosives production was stopped at the arsenal, near Elwood, in 1977 after more than 20 years of operation over parts of four decades. In April 1993, the property was declared excess by the Army.
