Champaign County health care group demands EPA look at pipeline

By Illinois Public Media News - A health care advocacy group is renewing its call on the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to investigate an underground pipeline in Champaign’s Fifth and Hill neighborhood.

Champaign County Health Care Consumers held a news conference Tuesday in the neighborhood, and cited a recent report that identified chemical waste in the pipeline know as “coal tar” as petroleum-based. The group’s executive director, Claudia Lennhoff, said the toxins are likely linked to a gas manufacturing plant that had been in the area from 1887 until 1953.

“This is like a sleeping giant underground,” she said. “It’s highly toxic. One of the problems with the material that we found is that these contaminants can also leach off and can spread and move through the groundwater and through the soil.”

But Eleanor Blackmon, who’s an assistant engineer in the city of Champaign, said the pipe has been dry every time it has been inspected.

“We inspected it after rains from the time that (Champaign County Health Care Consumers) expressed their concerns about it,” Blackmon said. “We never saw any outflow from the pipe. The dirt inside the pipe was always dry.”

Furthermore, Blackmon said there is no way to connect the pipeline to the old manufactured gas plant.

The city agreed this year to plug the pipe facing Boneyard Creek after Champaign County Health Consumers filed a notice of intent to sue the city over cleaning it up.

The Illinois EPA said it is already looked at the site, and that any toxins that might be there are so far underground that they don’t pose a health risk to people living in the area.

“We have done an investigation and this was our finding that no one was at risk,’ Illinois EPA spokeswoman Maggie Carson said. “Secondarily, even if it were connected to the site, our primary concern would be is someone at risk? And the answer here is ‘No.”