clevelandwatercrib.jpeg

Cleveland's familiar water crib, located three miles from shore, is one of four water intake sites used by the Water Department to obtain drinking water, but it is not the water intake under threat by a two-square-mile mass of polluted sediment.

(Lisa DeJong/Plain Dealer file photo)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A mass of toxic sediment lying on the bottom of Lake Erie about nine miles offshore is raising alarms at the Ohio EPA and the City Water Department as tests show it migrating dangerously close to an intake pipe that supplies the city's drinking water.

The two-square-mile blob contains poisonous material dredged from the Cuyahoga River shipping channel and dumped untreated into the lake during the years prior to the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972.

Recent tests of the sediment, located in a section of lake bottom known as Area 1, found alarmingly high concentrations of PCBs and PAHs -- both highly toxic pollutants and 100 percent fatal to aquatic organisms such as worms, crustaceans and insects that live in the soil and provide vital food for fish.

EPA Director Craig Butler sent a letter this week to Brigadier General Richard Kaiser, head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Great Lakes division, warning of the potential dangers of Area 1 and seeking action to remediate the toxic plot.

"Area 1 is within approximately five miles of a water intake for the city of Cleveland," Butler wrote in the letter dated Tuesday. "Sampling data in and around Area 1 clearly shows the ability of these sediments to migrate and further shows the sediment migrating in the direction of the water intake."

An Army Corps spokesman said the general had received an unofficial copy of the letter, "and we'll be discussing it with the Ohio EPA as they requested."

A battery of tests earlier this month showed no evidence of PCBs or PAHs in the raw lake water or treated drinking water, Butler said, although the city will continue testing for the rest of this year and next year.

Cleveland Water Department spokesman Jason Wood said Friday that the city has enhanced its monitoring of Area 1, and is prepared to respond if the toxic mass comes into contact with the water intake pipe.

"Based on our monitoring, we are aware of the migration of dredged materials towards the raw water intake for our Nottingham Treatment Plant -- one of four treatment plants in the Cleveland Water system," Wood said.

Wood would not provide the exact location of the water intake site due to homeland security concerns. The familiar bright orange crib, located three miles offshore from Edgewater Park, is not the threatened intake, Wood said.

"We want to assure our customers that their drinking water is safe. To date, our raw water sampling has indicated no cause for concern for our customers," Wood said. "If elevated levels of contaminants are detected in the raw water, our conventional treatment process is designed to reduce any potential risk to our customers."

The tainted water treatments would involve the application of increased amounts of chemicals, said Scott Moegling, the department's water quality manager.

"At the end of the process, I don't foresee any long-term effects on our water quality," Moegling said. "We could certainly treat it."

The EPA, meanwhile, will run additional tests to determine the rate and extent of the sediment migration in Area 1, Butler added.

Kurt Princic, district chief of the EPA's Northeast District Office, said Area 1 is the historic dumping ground for sediment dredged from the Cuyahoga River at a time when it was best known for catching on fire and was used as a dumping ground for industrial toxic waste. The dredged sediment has been stored in lakefront containment dikes since the enactment of strict water pollution regulations contained in the Clean Water Act.

More than four decades later, the river's dirty legacy continues to haunt Lake Erie at Area 1. Storms and currents have caused the tainted dirt to expand and creep toward the southeast.

"We have both tested the material -- the Army Corps more than us -- and we've both found elevated levels of PCBs and PAHs much higher than elsewhere in Lake Erie," Princic said.

News of the toxic hot spot comes as the Army Corps continues to clash with the EPA and the Port of Cleveland over the proper disposal of dredged sediment from the shipping channel. The Army Corps says their tests reveal the sediment is clean enough for open-lake dumping. The EPA and Port have challenged those findings, citing continued high levels of PCBs, PAHs and other pollutants in their soil samples.

One of the Army Corps' proposals calls for using the dredged sediment as a cap to be dumped on top of Area 1 -- a plan the EPA rejects.

"They can't just cover it up," Butler said during a meeting with reporters earlier this week. "It's a concern. As long as that material is there and it's still moving the Corps will be required to remove it. They cannot add new PCB-laden materials there."

Princic added: "It's a considerably large area, which is why we need to further evaluate this site so we can truly understand the potential impact to the lake."

PAHs -- an acronym for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons -- are organic compounds found in fossil fuels, especially coal tar-based pavement sealcoats. They cause cancer and mutations.

Polychlorinated biphenyls, known as PCBs, have been banned in the U.S. since 1979, but persist in the environment where they remain a health hazard. PCBs were widely used in coolant fluids and machine lubricants prior to being outlawed.

Since the early 1970s, all of the dredged material from the shipping channel has been stored in lakefront dikes. One of the first confinement areas -- Dike 14 -- is now an 88-acre park, the Cleveland Lakefront Nature Preserve. The remaining dikes have sufficient space to store dredged sediment for decades, said Port of Cleveland President and CEO Will Friedman.

Last May, the Army Corps made a similar proposal to dump dredged sediment on top of Area 1, but was blocked by the EPA, which obtained an injunction from U.S. District Judge Donald Nugent.

In his order, Nugent concurred with the EPA that "the levels of cancer-causing PCBs in the water would be too high, despite the Corps claiming otherwise, if the sediment was dumped" in the open lake.

"Forcing the State to permit the introduction of pollutants into Lake Erie in order to guarantee the continued navigability to the Cleveland Harbor is deleterious not only to Ohio but would clearly negatively affect the general public interest," the judge wrote.

Last month, the EPA declined to grant the Army Corps a certificate that would have allowed open-lake dumping. If the Army Corps refuses to comply, Butler said he would ask Nugent for another injunction.

"At that point we will go back to the judge," Butler said. "I expect we'll have to work our way through the court system again, and the judge will tell us who is right."