This article is brought to you by Marvin’s Auto Repair and Service. Located at 111 E. Gano St., Marvin’s is ready and able to repair vehicles of most makes and models, affordably and professionally. They also can provide service to your vehicle, from oil changes to tire rotations. To schedule a repair or service appointment, call 765-553-7074.
Soil and water contamination isn’t unusual in Kokomo and Howard County. Industries such as Continental Steel and Delco Electronics left their mark on the community in the form of toxic chemicals nearly every place they operated locally. And they weren’t alone.
Gas stations across the community have contaminated groundwater and soil due to leaking storage tanks in multiple locations – as recently as last year. Dry cleaning businesses also have contributed to contamination by improperly handling cleaning chemicals. There is no shortage of actual and potential contamination sites in Kokomo.
Local environmental activist Sherry Roe watches these contamination cases vigilantly. Ever since she discovered that her father’s cancer was caused by decades of work with chemicals at Delco Electronics, she has devoted her life to watching, documenting, and publicizing industrial contamination.
A site map detailing the locations of testing across the Southway Plaza contamination sites from March 2020.
She recently placed her attention on two underground plumes of contamination beneath the Southway Plaza shopping center. First reported publicly by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) in 2015, the plumes reside under the businesses, parking lot, and alley of the plaza, as well as beneath nearby Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer.
AN IDEM report from June 16, 2023, discloses that contamination at the site is still well above legal limits for human exposure. The chemical Tetrachloroethylene (PCE) is present in the groundwater beneath the Southway Plaza and Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer. The volatile organic compounds which result from the degradation of that chemical also are present at dangerous levels. Toxic levels of benzene and other volatile organic compounds are located at the gas station plume on the south end of the plaza.
“Let me be clear,” said Roe. “No level is safe. It states levels are decreasing. This has been in remediation for over 20 years. I’m still trying to understand how our community didn’t know about this.”
An effort was made to inform the public in 2015 when IDEM notified local media about the remediation of the property and filed a copy of its findings and remediation plan at the local library. A second public disclosure came in 2020, when additional monitoring wells were installed across the affected area.
The locations of confirmed contaminants at unsafe levels on the Southway property as of August 2020.
IDEM identified a dry cleaning business, Southway Cleaning Center, as the source of the northern plume. The company was in operation from March 1967 until February 1999. A long-abandoned gas station was identified as the source of the southern plume. Following is an excerpt from the 2020 IDEM report detailing the contamination:
“The Site is divided into two areas of concern: a northern plume and a southern plume. The northern plume consists primarily of tetrachloroethene (PCE) and its daughter products originating beneath the northern building from the former dry cleaner tenant space. The southern plume consists of petroleum hydrocarbon constituents, primarily benzene, originating from a former retail gasoline station with a former underground storage tank (UST) system located to the west of the southern building.
“The northern plume exists underneath the Southway Plaza Shopping Center and extends eastward under an alley toward the Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer/school property. The northern plume has thirteen shallow monitoring wells screened from 3-13 feet below ground surface (bgs) and 11 deep wells extending from 15-20 feet bgs. These wells make up the monitoring well network for the northern plume.”
The locations of monitoring wells and proposed soil remediation on the Southway and Lutheran church properties as of October 2020.
Knowledge of possible contamination at the site, however, reaches back to at least 1998, when the Kokomo Fire Department was called to respond to the presence of an unsealed barrel in the alley behind the Southway Plaza.
On July 28, 1998, then-Battalion Chief Gary Stevens reported the presence of the barrel.
“An employee of Goodwill discovered a barrel behind their shop with the lid off and a hazardous waste data sheet. The employee put the lid back on the drum. When we arrived, we collected the data and called Safety-Kleen, the distributor and reclaiming agent for the product.”
Safety-Kleen responded and collected the barrel.
In February 1999, the Kokomo Fire Department reported to the agency the presence of two abandoned 55-gallon drums filled with unknown substances in the alley that runs behind the Southway Plaza.
On Feb. 24, 1999, then-Assistant Fire Chief Pat O’Neill reported the presence of the barrels.
“Upon my arrival in the rear of 3710 S. Reed Road, I observed a 55-gallon drum painted light blue, sitting in the roadway behind the building. A second barrel was next to the building. Neither barrel had markings of any kind. After talking to employees of the Goodwill Store, they advised they notices the barrels on 2/23/99 around 4:40 p.m. Both barrels at that time were next to the building. Sometime overnight, a barrel was moved into the roadway and was discovered this morning. The barrels were not leaking and had secured lids.”
O’Neill contacted IDEM, which sent a haz-mat contractor to remove the barrels. The dry cleaning business shuttered its doors around this time, but the legacy of contamination continued.
Again, on Sept. 11, 1999, three abandoned barrels of contaminants were reported to the fire department. O’Neill made the report to IDEM, based on an initial case report authored by KFD investigator Steven Elkins.
In his investigation, Elkins learned that the owner of the shopping plaza, Throgmartin Inc., had hired environmental company August Mack to take core samples of the ground beneath the plaza quarterly at the demand of IDEM. The samples were taken from in front of the Treasure Mart, which was located in the plaza at the time, as well as in the rear of the building housing Powerhouse Gym.
“There used to be a dry cleaners where Powerhouse Gym is at, and they used to dump dry cleaning chemicals out of the back of the building,” said Elkins wrote. “In front of Treasure Mart there used to be a gas station years ago, and the tanks leaked gasoline into the ground.
“The core samples are taken and put into the barrels, and they are put behind the building. And then they are picked up by August Mack, the environmental company, and transported to Michigan to be dumped.”
Monitoring wells such as these are scattered across the alley behind the Southway Plaza, which borders the Lutheran Church of Our redeemer.
The report released in 2020 detailed the fact that the contaminants present were such that continued remediation actions and groundwater usage restrictions had to remain in place.
“Without significant progress in reducing the site concentrations, on-site environmental restrictions will need to be considered that include a groundwater usage restriction, a soil disturbance restriction with a Soil Management Plan, and a requirement to keep the Sub-Slab Depressurization Systems (SSDSs) in place until verification is provided showing these systems are no longer necessary,” IDEM wrote.
“For the off-site property (Lutheran Church/school), a groundwater restriction most likely will need to be considered along with possible vapor restrictions, if future impacts are found (dependent on sampling data).”
The approximate location of a gas station that once resided in the Southway Plaza, which is the culprit of causing a contamination plume in the immediate area.
Roe is concerned after speaking to residents near the plaza, as well as parishioners of the church and school. Few were aware of any contamination.
“I’ve had three employees of the church from the late 1990s say they knew testing was going on, but the church said nothing was wrong,” said Roe. “It was just precautionary. I am getting a lot of messages from people who had children at Lutheran and were members in the late 1990s and early 2000s who said they were never told of any contamination.
“The thing I’ve learned about voluntary remediation is that it makes the owner look good, but they only have to do the bare minimum clean up. These chemicals should never be present in any air. No level is safe. There are hundreds of files on this case. Remediation goes all the way back to 1999. I’m not trying to hurt businesses or schools, but people do have a right to know. I know it happens everywhere, but it doesn’t make it right.”
Roe can be contacted through her Facebook page, Profits Over People. She also has written a book detailing her investigative journey into industrial contamination, also titled “Profits Over People.”