MARQUETTE - Johnny DePetro looked at the wrecked, mostly barren landscape of the former Cliffs Dow property in Marquette and pointed at a spot on the ground.
"This is where the tar pit used to be ... this is where they used to dump that liquid wood tar," DePetro said. "When it dried up and got a solid base to it we used to play over here as kids. The stuff was soft enough to make tar balls and you'd chew on it because back then you didn't know what pollution was."
From 1935 to 1969 the Cliffs Dow Chemical Co. - owned for much of that period by Cleveland Cliffs and the Dow Chemical Co. - produced charcoal, wood creosote and other chemicals on the site near the Lake Superior shore in North Marquette. The city bought 77 acres of the property in 1997 for $1 with plans for future development. After selling portions, it now owns 46 acres.
DePetro worked at the plant as a young man in the early 1960s. Now, as a city commissioner, he is tasked with finding a way to clean up the property.
One of the byproducts of wood distillation is wood tar, containing chemicals including benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene and phenolic compounds. There are still pockets of wood tar at the site, buried under the soil and mixing with groundwater which flows out to Lake Superior. Although the site has been investigated by several environmental agencies over the years since the plant closed, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment recently requested that the city do additional work at the property to better determine what kind of contamination exists and how much.
DePetro said the smell of the plant in its heyday was terrible.
"It would burn your nose and your lungs ... if the wind was coming off the lake from the Cliffs Dow way you didn't put your clothes out because you'd have to really wash them because it would be so dirty. But everybody kind of just lived with it and now we're going to pay to get it cleaned up," he said.
Rich Baron of the law firm Foley, Baron and Metzger, was retained by the city to work on compliance issues at the site. He said the DNRE wants the city to monitor groundwater on the site that is migrating into Lake Superior as well as do some subsurface investigation to determine whether contamination is continually effecting groundwater.
Baron said previous investigations of the site mostly studied the near-surface soil conditions.
"What the (DNRE) wants the city to look at now, as the owner of the property, is that deeper area," Baron said, adding that soil on the property goes down 30-45 feet before hitting bedrock.
According to officials at TriMedia, an environmental and engineering firm contracted by the city to monitor the site, wood tar is heavier than water and will sink through saturated and unsaturated soils until it hits a less permeable layer such as clay, bedrock or a building foundation.
Depending on the tar's viscosity, it may move through groundwater in a spiderweb configuration. Or if the tar is more viscous and near the source where it was generated, it could pool.
The DNRE wants the city to submit a work plan, detailing what measures it will take to investigate, and if need be, remediate the site. The work plan must go back to the DNRE for review by the end of May.
Baron said several large building foundations and other rubble left over from the plant have hampered previous investigations. He said drill rigs, often used to collect soil samples, can't punch through buried foundations and other types of solid debris.
To solve this problem, TriMedia has suggested using ground penetrating radar and electromagnetic investigation to find anomalies in the soil which may indicate contamination.
Tracy Goble, senior environment engineer with TriMedia, said they particularly want to study the area just north of the Wright Street extension.
"We really don't know what's underground there but we know that when we drilled before we met with refusal frequently," Goble said.
When the city bought the Cliffs Dow property in 1997 it was with the stipulation that the city was purchasing the site in an "as is" condition and would be responsible for any environmental compliance.
Baron is studying that purchase agreement to determine if one of the companies that sold the property might be accountable for some of the cost of remediation. In March the city agreed to pay Baron's firm up to $10,000 for his services. At Monday's Marquette City Commission meeting, the commission voted unanimously to increase that contract up to an additional $10,000.
"Initially we had reserved that ($10,000) and we're just hitting that limit right now and there's still a considerable amount of work to be done," said Mayor John Kivela. "We have been pleased with Mr. Baron's services."
The site was first used in 1902 by the Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company to manufacture charcoal pig iron. The Cliffs Dow Chemical Company acquired the property in 1935.
From 1989 to 1994, environmental investigations on the site were done on behalf of the companies that had owned it. In 1993, 125,000 tons of soil was removed from the northernmost nine acres - current site of BioLife Plasma Center - and transported to Utah for disposal at a cost of $10 million.
Christopher Diem can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 242. His e-mail address is cdiem@miningjournal.net.
