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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Tuesday sought to refute the Ohio EPA's claims that a toxic mass of sediment in Lake Erie is threatening one of Cleveland's drinking water intakes. The iconic orange crib, located three miles from shore, is not the intake site at issue.

(Gus Chan/Plain Dealer file photo)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - The head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Great Lakes Division late Tuesday issued a news release denying a report by the Ohio EPA that a mass of toxic sediment on the bottom of Lake Erie poses any threat to the city's drinking water.

"No credible scientific evidence supports the hypothesis that a 'toxic blob' is migrating towards Cleveland's water intakes," Brigadier General Richard Kaiser said in the news release.

Kaiser sent a simultaneous letter to EPA Director Craig Butler reiterating that claim, and adding that the Army Corps "continues to advocate for a collaborative, science based discussion" on how to address the two-square mile mass of toxic sediment about nine miles from Cleveland's shoreline and five miles from a water intake site.

Butler had not seen the letter and was not immediately available for comment Tuesday night, said EPA spokeswoman Heidi Greismer.

In an interview with The Plain Dealer last week, Butler said the polluted sediment, located in a region known as Area 1, contains poisonous material dredged from the Cuyahoga River shipping channel and dumped untreated into the lake prior to the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972.

Recent tests of the sediment, Butler said, found dangerously high levels of the pollutants PCBs and PAHs, and that the sediment had migrated over the years to the southeast and in the direction of a water intake for the city's Nottingham Treatment Plant.

A spokesman for the Cleveland Water Department said last week that tests have shown no evidence of PCBs or PAHs in the raw lake water or treated drinking water, and that the city's drinking water remains safe.

Kaiser said in the letter to Butler that the EPA's and the city's concerns were unfounded.

"Based on our thorough evaluation of sediment data and the location and characteristics of Area 1, we firmly believe that the lake bottom sediment in this area is not migrating nor does it pose a risk to Cleveland's drinking water now or in the future."

Kaiser said the Army Corps would not characterize or address "contaminants of unknown sources on the lake bottom, but would support any efforts by the EPA to investigate the source of the contaminants and build a science-based understanding of their impacts."

"The US Army Corps of Engineers is fully committed to working with the Ohio EPA and other state and federal agencies to ensure that headline never becomes a reality," Kaiser said.

Butler told The Plain Dealer that recent tests of the sediment found it to be 100 percent fatal to aquatic organisms such as worms, crustaceans and insects that live in the soil and provide vital food for fish.

In a letter sent to Kaiser last week, Butler said it was the Army Corps' responsibility to address a cleanup of Area 1, and to refrain from making the site worse by capping the site with additional PCB-laden sediment dredged from Cleveland Harbor this year, as the Army Corps had proposed.

"They can't just cover it up," Butler told The Plain Dealer. "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."

Since the early 1970s, all of the dredged material from the shipping channel has been stored in lakefront containment dikes.

The Army Corps maintains the dredged sediment is now sufficiently clean to dispose of in the open lake.

Butler has vowed to seek a federal court injunction to block the Army Corps if the agency insists on open lake disposal.