April 3, 2003 

By Michael Puente / Post-Tribune staff writer

EAST CHICAGO — Area activists are criticizing city and state officials for not providing more data on the potential for severe health problems to children and the elderly once a project to dredge a heavily polluted waterway here begins in two years.

One member of the group, Betty Balanoff, a longtime environmental activist from Hammond, says government officials have ignored pleas to take a closer look at the potential for health problems.

Balanoff is among those critical of a plan to store up to 4.6 million cubic yards of toxic muck now at the bottom of the Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal near homes and schools.

A confined disposal facility (CDF) is now in the early stages of development on the former ECI site just 800 yards north of East Chicago Central High School and West Side Junior High School.

While some safeguards have been put in place to monitor potential hazardous airborne pollutants in neighborhoods, there is not a plan in place to have health professionals interpret the information, according to Balanoff.

“How do you know when people get sick? (Government officials) are not doctors. Who is going to tell us?” Balanoff says. “We need a meeting of the minds concerning the doctors who test this stuff in the laboratories with those who deal with the pollutants.”

Balanoff made her comments at a Tuesday night meeting with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is lead agency in designing the CDF and will also soon decide what system will be used to dredge the canal.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management are also part of the project.

Balanoff was upset that only two city officials attended the meeting.

She said Mayor Robert Pastrick, his special assistant Tim Raykovich, who is also the city’s Health Director, and Pat Dixon-Darden, head of the city’s Health Department, failed to the attend.

Eight of the city’s nine City Council members also did not attend the meeting, nor did candidates seeking office in the May primary.

Don Koliboski, D-1st, was the lone City Council member who attended the meeting.

“This is the number one issue for people in my district,” says Koliboski, whose district includes the area of the proposed CDF. “I’m dumfounded. This is an important issue.”

Koliboski said he doesn’t know why other city officials did not attend the meeting, but believes that they are concerned, including the mayor.

Christine Brooks, head of the East Chicago Waterway Management District, the project’s local sponsor, attended the meeting. Brooks said she has requested city health officials to attend meetings, along with state health officials.

Neither Raykovich nor Dixon-Darden could be reached for comment.

The waterway district is trying to fund a $50,000 independent review of the EPA’s risk assessment on the potential health affects from the stored sediments.

A group from Michigan State University are also looking deeper at the dredging project, which is scheduled to begin in two years and last for 30 years. The actual dredging method has yet to be decided but could be made by early summer.