June 4, 2004 

By Tim Zorn / Post-Tribune staff writer

EAST CHICAGO — A public health expert from Chicago will help East Chicago residents understand if, and how, a contaminated-waste dump could affect their health.

But some people still feel uneasy about the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ plan to dredge polluted mud out of the Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal.

“How can we trust the people who decided to put a contaminated dump site in our city?” Alicia Rodriguez asked at a public meeting Wednesday on the project.

The meeting was called by Technical Outreach Services for Communities, a Michigan State University-based program funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to help citizens understand pollution issues.

TOSC director Kirk Riley said Dr. Peter Orris, a University of Illinois-Chicago professor, will report on the health effects of the confined disposal facility (CDF), the place where an estimated 4.6 million cubic yards of contaminated mud will be dumped during the dredging project, according to the Army Corps plan.

Opponents of the Army Corps’ plan contend that fumes from the CDF could affect students at the nearby East Chicago Central High School and West Side Junior High School.

Orris, a physician, is director of the Health Hazard Evaluation Program at the Great Lakes Centers for Occupational & Environmental Safety and Health, based at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

He will examine data on the CDF and a new risk assessment study — which the EPA is still working on — before making his report to residents.

Orris tried to reassure residents at Wednesday’s meeting that he would take an independent look at the project.

“We’re not here to convince you of one thing or another,” he said.

And although construction of the CDF has started already, Orris said decisions about the dredging program and the CDF still could be changed.

He noted that, in 1998, objections from local groups prompted an East Chicago company to back out of a U.S. Navy contract to recycle 23 million pounds of Vietnam-era napalm.

The Army Corps might still push forward with the long-delayed dredging, Hammond resident Betty Balanoff said.

But residents deserve to know all about the health risks before the work starts, she said.

“We don’t want them to build anything,” she said, “until we see everything.”

Riley said the next TOSC meeting could be held in the Marktown area, the East Chicago neighborhood close to — and downwind of — the CDF.

Reporter Tim Zorn

can be reached at 648-3073

or tzorn@post-trib.com.