Read an extended Q&A with Claudia Lennhoff, executive director of Champaign County Health Care Consumers, about the history of the site and the research completed over the years.

A spokesperson for the utility and energy company Ameren said it is a few months away from finishing the lengthy environmental cleanup of hazardous and carcinogenic pollutants in the Champaign neighborhood known as Fifth and Hill.

The site is located at the intersection of Fifth and Hill streets in northeast Champaign. 

Brian Martin, senior manager of environmental services for Ameren, said of the company’s three properties, two have received a letter of No Further Remediation (NFR) from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.

“Remediation has also been completed on the third parcel at 308 N. 5th Street,” Martin said in an email with CU-CitizenAccess in October. “We have submitted our Remedial Action Completion Report to Illinois EPA and are in the process of responding to Illinois EPA review comments.”

But the advocacy group that has pushed for the cleanup, Champaign County Health Care Consumers (CCHCC), said it was not notified.

Claudia Lennhoff, executive director of Champaign County Health Care Consumers, said she feels “very uncertain” with the remediation efforts:

“Ameren has not kept us informed as they had pledged to do,” she said. “And if they’re communicating with the City of Champaign, the City of Champaign has not kept us informed as they had pledged to do. I don’t know whether or not they should really be getting these NFR letters.”

Champaign Public Works Director Terry Lusby, Jr. referred CU-CitizenAccess to an Ameren spokesperson.

In response to questions about the remediation, Illinois EPA Spokesperson Kim Biggs said in December the agency anticipates an upcoming submittal for remediation of the 308 N. Fifth parcel from Ameren:

“Illinois EPA will review the submittal to determine whether the site has been remediated as required by Illinois law before a No Further Remediation (NFR) letter can be issued. Illinois EPA will have 60 days to respond to the company once a submission is received. A NFR letter acknowledges that the site owner/operator has satisfied the program’s statutory and regulatory requirements.”

The mandated cleanup of the former manufactured gas plant site in the Fifth and Hill neighborhood began in 2009 after two years of community concern and advocacy for action. The site has posed hazardous risk to the water supply of the surrounding neighborhood in the past, Lennhoff said.

The Illinois Power company operated the site from 1887 to 1953 where coal and steam was used to create gas for lighting, cooking and heating. Ameren bought the company and site in 2004.

History of the site, neighbors’ health concerns

The site was classified as a superfund site by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which is an area especially affected by hazardous waste dumping that poses environmental and health risks.

The manufactured gas plant created toxic contaminants  such as coal tar, and heavy metals like lead, mercury and chromium, which pollutes the neighborhood’s water supply. Prolonged exposure to coal tar poses risk of skin, lung, bladder, kidney or digestive tract cancer. 

There are at least 400 similar sites throughout the U.S. and at least 100 in Illinois, according to a Missouri engineering professor who has studied the issue for years.

In 2008, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services completed a health consultation on the Ameren site and concluded the surface soil had “no apparent health hazard.” 

Citizens and environmentalists had raised concern over the site  since  the late 1990s. Residents of the neighborhood campaigned to urge Ameren to clean up the contaminants, which required the toxic materials to be removed by excavating the contaminated soil. 

From 1997 to 2020, Ameren Illinois has conducted eight investigations since enrolling in the Illinois EPA remediation program, where the company studied soil and groundwater from the site. The results can be seen on the Ameren website.

In 2014, the National Institutes of Health completed a study comparing historical rates of cancer in this area to that of the national average. Using participants of the neighborhood between 1990 and 2010, the agency concluded it could not find an increased risk of cancer.

Nonetheless, in 2016, residents told Illinois Public Media they were being affected by toxic vapors in their homes. 

Lennhoff said when the site was in operation, board members of Illinois Power, the company that became Ameren Illinois, couldn’t keep so much toxic waste on-site. She worked with manufactured gas plant expert Dr. Allen W. Hatheway, a professional geologist and environmental engineer who has studied similar sites in other states, on the historical research of the site and its practices. 

“What they would do, back in the day, is the company would have their board members purchase properties throughout the neighborhood in their name, so it didn’t look like it belonged to the company,” Lennhoff said. “And then with horse and buggy, they would haul some of this coal tar and dump it in these properties.” 

Lennhoff said instead of remediating these properties, Ameren simply bought them, paying over market value. She said some of the houses in the neighborhood today are located on these dump sites.

One of the places Ameren found coal tar was in the backyard of Miss Pearl’s Daycare, a house on the perimeter, north of the Ameren site. The daycare was located in the basement, the point of the house with the most exposure to toxic vapor intrusion, according to Lennhoff.

“Miss Pearl’s Daycare had everything from babies to young children,” Lennhoff said. “And it didn’t matter what time of day or night we went, when there were kids there, it was eerily silent. These kids were out of it.”

She said younger people tend to feel a tingling sensation in their extremities.

“Everybody reacts a little bit differently. My co-worker, who I would go with, would feel sleepy and nauseous, whereas I would start getting a headache. And I could feel the inside of my mouth was coated with something and this would happen even if you couldn’t smell the smell,” she said. “That’s how I would know personally that something’s not right here.”

When they tested the soil in the backyard, the contamination was so extensive that the daycare was shut down.

“It was too dangerous to be testing it unless they were going to excavate it,” Lennhoff said. “Because by drilling and getting those soil samples, you’re now creating more exposure, and they just shut it down.”

Lennhoff said residents worry about bleeding disorders, eye problems, skin disorders, numbness, cardiovascular issues, breast and multiple myeloma cancer.

“My guess is that some of the kids who were there at that daycare are going to grow up with pretty serious health problems, and they’re not going to know why [it happened],” she said. “They’re not going to know that they were exposed.”

Advocates question cleanup process

Ameren said in 2019 it won’t excavate contaminants that it does not own. Ameren Spokesperson Brian Bretsch told Illinois Public Media the source of toxins could be a nearby bus depot or a former bulk petroleum facility. 

The healthcare consumer group has sought data and action to remove all the toxic materials affecting their water supply for more than a decade — but both Illinois EPA and Ameren claim the contamination isn’t threatening. Both Illinois EPA and Ameren Illinois officials said this is because public water systems are allowed near the site and subject to regular testing and maintenance.

Lennhoff said a proper remediation process calls for systematically plotting deep wells along a grid stemming outward from the site for water testing.

“These chemicals spread over more than a hundred-year period. As the groundwater kept flowing, it kept pushing them out further and further,” she said.

Lennhoff said instead of employing this strategy, Ameren’s testing wells were scattered rather than a grid.

“If you want to do a good job for human beings and for the environment, you would try to find where all of it is, and then you would come up with a strategy to remediate it. They really only remediated the site itself, the Ameren property, and in an area on Fifth Street,” she said.

Ameren did not return a request for comment in response to questions about advocates’ concerns.

Ameren groundwater reports from December 2022 showed concentrations of benzene, ethylbenzene and naphthalene exceeded the acceptable threshold for ingestion and inhalation at residential sites. The three contaminants are the carcinogenic remnants of coal tar.

Fifth and Hill is a historically low-income, Black neighborhood, and still is today. Lennhoff said the community has experienced a long history of disenfranchisement from the city of Champaign and Ameren:

“If there had been a toxic site like this in the middle of Cherry Hills neighborhood in Champaign – Cherry Hills is an old wealthy neighborhood – if it had been there, I guarantee you there would have been a proper remediation.”

For more, read the extended Q&A with Claudia Lennhoff, executive director of Champaign County Health Care Consumers, about the history of the site and the research completed over the years.