In Kalamazoo off Cork Street sits a moonscape that used to be home to paper mills owned by Allied Paper. Where the Bryant and Monarch mills once sat is now a cleanup site, which the federal government put in the Superfund program due to the presence of paper waste and industrial chemicals called PCBs. Cleanup began in 2021. Today, it looks like a huge dirt hill surrounded by embankments.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is in charge of the cleanup and contracts with several engineering, construction and consulting firms for work on the site. On August 28, the EPA invited visitors to tour it and see the progress being made.
Visitors gathered near the front of the site at 268 E Alcott Street for a presentation before filing onto buses and riding up to the top of the dirt hill toward the center. At the top of the hill, dump trucks could be seen being loaded with contaminated soil and offloading it into a central area.
Ben Giese is a scientist and site manager for Geosyntec consultants, which is working on the site and consulting on the construction of the permanent landfill. The goal is to secure the contaminants in a central area where they can’t get into the surrounding environment. Giese said to think of the finished product like a jelly donut, where the jelly represents contaminants…