Drinking water for tens of thousands of people near three active Superfund sites in Utah at risk or already polluted

March 30, 2008 - Drinking water supplies for tens of thousands of people near three active Superfund sites in the Bountiful and Woods Cross areas have been at risk or even polluted because of groundwater contamination.

The pollution is so bad that the federal government decided to join state regulators in directing long-term cleanup efforts of those sites.

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Gas contamination below ruins lives above in Utah

April 1, 2008 - The gas station a few blocks away had already been blamed for the closure of the movie theater and the dress shop. But Kuhni thought the smells were in her head. Then the first benzene reading inside her house came back - 34 micrograms per cubic meter. State guidelines say the risk of developing cancer increases with constant indoor exposure over 8.8 mcg a year.

She moved out - her 7-year-old daughter, the iguana, the dogs and some clothes. Her job taking reservations for Marriott Hotels is on hold. She shuttles between hotels, her parents' house in Lehi and a friend's place in Aurora.

Kuhni is one of dozens of Gunnison residents and business owners who filed suit against Wind River Petroleum and Top Stop gas stations earlier this month.

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A Success Story: Cleanup Nears Completion in Salt Lake Neighborhood

January 18, 2008 - LITTLE COTTONWOOD CANYON - The well-trimmed yards and high-priced homes obscured an ugly fact for many years about the neighborhood at the canyon's opening. Three defunct smelters had fouled the landscape with dangerously high levels of arsenic and lead.

But now the polished image matches the reality. Dangerous dirt has been scooped out and hauled away from 29 homes. The landscaping has been replaced.

"This was a very difficult Superfund cleanup," said Thomas D. Daniels, who oversaw three years of gritty work and delicate compromise for the Utah Divison of Environmental Response and Remediation.

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Utah Plume Added to Superfund

September 24, 2007 - he U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has added a contaminated groundwater plume in Bountiful and Woods Cross to the National Priorities List, making it the 14th active Superfund site in Utah.

The contaminated groundwater plume in Bountiful, which was first found in the late 1990s, led to the closure of two drinking-water wells in Woods Cross — one that was forced to be shut down and one the city opted to close when levels of PCE, or tetrachloroethylene, continued to rise after it was detected.

PCE, a chemical found in dry-cleaning operations, can cause dizziness, headache, sleepiness, confusion, nausea, difficulty in speaking and walking, unconsciousness and death if concentrations are too high in closed, poorly ventilated areas, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Utah Lawmakers Considering New Laws for Homes Used as Meth Labs

July 26, 2007 - When they bought the house the Alkinani's had no idea the home and the shed were once used as meth labs. When they found out, Salt Lake County assured them it had been properly decontaminated. It was even in writing.

Cleaned and cleared once, now the county says the Alkinani's must pay to clean it up again.

Jaimee Al-Kinani says, "The minimum we're talking is about $30,000."

n light of the Alkinani's case, Rep. Ray and other lawmakers are now considering new state laws for meth homes. "I'm hoping to see a process set up where every home is safe," Ray said.

On his list:

define the meaning of clean for health departments;

more funding for home cleanup programs;

possibly change real estate disclosure rules, so people who buy meth homes are told.

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Utah Contamination May be Impacting Health of Local Residents

May 6, 2007 - ROOSEVELT — State and local health officials have more questions than answers about what caused life-threatening asthma attacks in two young boys living near an environmental cleanup site in central Duchesne County.

El Paso Exploration and Production began the second phase of its remediation effort on contaminated soil at one of its sites in Utahn, nine miles north of Duchesne, in mid-April. Two weeks later, a 4-year-old boy and a 1-year-old boy from two families had to be rushed to the hospital in Roosevelt after they experienced asthma attacks so severe that their inhalers and other home breathing treatments failed.

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EPA Searching for Toxic Asbestos Contamination in Salt Lake City

April 26, 2007 - Is there toxic asbestos contamination in your yard? The Environmental Protection Agency wants to find out. The agency needs people to help out if they are familiar with two old processing sites in downtown Salt Lake City.

Twenty years ago a company called Intermountain Products made insulation from vermiculite in that building. There was asbestos in the vermiculite, and the EPA wants to find out if anyone knows whether any of the toxic mineral was carried off site.

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Cancer rates high around chemical plants

Friday, April 06, 2007

If you lived within two miles of the old, downtown Salt Lake City vermiculite plants, your chances of getting lung cancer were about 50 percent higher than if you had lived somewhere else in the state.

That's the finding of a study begun six years ago on the health impacts of two plants that for more than four decades processed vermiculite, a home insulation and soil additive that used to be wildly popular until it became known it contained dangerous levels of highly toxic asbestos.

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