Upset by the failure of Nicor Gas to provide accurate information about mercury contamination, state and county prosecutors sued the firm Tuesday seeking potentially millions of dollars in fines and a court-monitored cleanup of the toxic chemical spilled during the replacement of gas regulators in 200,000 homes.
Contending that Nicor and two contractors it hired have violated environmental laws and endangered public health, the lawsuit seeks a speedy cleanup at affected homes as well as wide ranging court oversight of the companies as they go about it. It also asks the court to order a host of other requirements to protect public safety and finance repairs to homes.
At a Tuesday news conference, environmental officials and prosecutors stopped just short of accusing Nicor officials of being untruthful in disclosures to them, noting the company had on several occasions provided inaccurate information about the scope of the contamination.
“This is a growing problem, not a narrowing problem,” said Illinois Atty. Gen. Jim Ryan, who noted that Nicor’s initial disclosure about the problem said it was confined to just 53 homes.
Tom Skinner, director of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, said that Nicor recently assured state officials that gas regulators containing mercury had been disposed of properly. But state and federal investigators since then have found dozens of the regulators improperly disposed of. “Obviously, that raises some red flags,” Skinner said.
According to allegations made in the lawsuit and by public officials, Nicor hired two contractors to remove the mercury-filled regulators; the regulators contained more mercury than the company has previously acknowledged; and there is mercury contamination at as many as four Nicor service centers and five junkyards where the regulators were sold for scrap.
In a statement released Tuesday, Nicor pledged swift action to contain and clean up the problem, but said it was “disappointed” by the lawsuit.
“Nicor is disappointed that a civil suit has been filed today by state and county authorities related to the mercury situation,” the statement said. “We have been cooperating fully with these authorities and relying on their expertise and efforts to assist us in the development and implementation of our review program.
“We intend to continue to cooperate with all agencies involved. Our primary concern is to act as quickly as possible to inspect all customer premises that may be affected and take appropriate steps to restore them where traces of mercury are found in order to give our customers the peace of mind they deserve.”
Though Nicor hasn’t installed the mercury-filled regulators in homes since 1961, the company for more than a decade has been removing the regulators as well as the gas meters they are attached to from the inside of homes. The units are then relocated outside, enabling Nicor workers to read meters without entering homes.
As of Thursday, Nicor had screened 348 homes with 52 testing positive for mercury, according to the lawsuit, which also said 31 remain contaminated. But Nicor spokesman Craig Whyte said that as of Tuesday, 571 homes had been screened and 64 tested positive for mercury. He said cleanup is under way in 39 of those homes.
Most of the replacement of regulators in homes that were recently screened was done by a Pennsylvania-based firm, Henkels & McCoy Inc., which was also named as a defendant in the lawsuit. Steven Theis, Henkels’ corporate director for safety, health, and environment, said the company had been working with authorities, but he couldn’t respond to allegations in the lawsuit because he hadn’t seen it.
The lawsuit, which was filed by Ryan’s office, Cook County State’s Atty. Richard Devine and DuPage County State’s Atty. Joseph Birkett, alleges that a second contractor as well as Nicor employees were also involved in the removal of the regulators. Also named as a defendant in the lawsuit was Northern Pipeline Construction Co., a Minnesota-based firm. Attempts to reach officials of that firm were unsuccessful.
According to the lawsuit, Northern Pipeline began removing the regulators and gas meters for Nicor in July 1999.
Officials with the attorney general’s office said Tuesday that they expect a court hearing this week on the request for an injunction.
If it were granted, it would require Nicor to:
– immediately notify and screen all homes, junkyards and company service centers affected by the contamination;
– clean up the affected homes and businesses according to a schedule agreed to by prosecutors and environmental officials;
– provide sample results to authorities and daily status reports to government experts;
– provide health screenings to any affected individual;
– cease removing regulators until authorities can be certain they are being disposed of properly;
– underwrite a fund placed with the Cook County Circuit Court clerk’s office to reimburse homeowners for relocation and repairs stemming from contamination problems.
Whyte, the Nicor spokesman, said the company would continue to work with a contamination task force that Ryan’s office has formed. That task force includes representatives of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Devine and Birkett’s offices; the Illinois Commerce Commission, which regulates utilities; and the Illinois Poison Control Center and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
Whyte said that while Nicor has not set aside a special fund from which to reimburse customers, the company has been reimbursing all expenses related to the cleanup and the evacuation of customers.
“We’ve been doing that all along. We have complied with every single thing [sought in the lawsuit] and we will continue to do that,” Whyte said. “There’s really nothing we’re not already doing.”
He said the six-month timetable for testing and the cleanup of some 200,000 homes “is our worst case scenario.”
“We’ll do everything to wrap this up,” Whyte pledged.
Also Tuesday, Phillip Cali, Nicor’s executive vice president of operations, and Stephen Mattson, a lawyer for the energy company, appeared before members of the gas policy committee of the Commerce Commission to answer questions about the contamination and the company’s response to it, said a spokeswoman for the state agency.
Officials said Tuesday that searches Saturday had turned up some regulators and low levels of mercury contamination at two scrapyards in Joliet and Loda.
Inspectors are scheduled to return Wednesday to take soil samples at the Loda site whose owner, Gene Breeden, said in an interview Tuesday that he was never told that the regulators contained mercury. About a dozen regulators were found there.
Tuesday, inspectors also found low levels of contamination at two other junkyards in Ottawa and DeKalb. At the DeKalb site, they also found several regulators.
