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The 22nd Street Station Site (Site) is located at 2200 South Racine, Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, in a mixed residential, commercial, and industrial area. The site is bordered to the north by Cermak Road, to the east by an electrical substation owned by Commonwealth Edison (ComEd), and to the south by the South Branch of the Chicago River. The Site is approximately 7.2 acres in size and is occupied by ComEd.
The Site is a former manufactured gas plant (MGP) that operated as an MGP facility from approximately 1862 to 1958. The Site was initially developed by Peoples Gas to produce coal gas. In 1934 it was modified to produce carbureted water gas and oil gas. In 1944, two production sets were modified to produce reformed natural gas. Peoples Gas began leasing portions of the site to ComEd in 1931 and sold the last portion to ComEd in 1959. The MGP facility at the Site stopped operating in 1958 and the plant was entirely dismantled by 1960.
A preliminary assessment of the Site was conducted by Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) in 1988. Peoples Gas performed site investigations between 2000 and 2002. A Remedial Objectives Report (ROR) was developed that recommended the removal of impacted material from several on-site locations.
Remediation activities by Peoples Gas began in April 2006 under the IEPA Site Remediation Program. Remediation consists of excavation and disposal of contaminated soils. Excavation depths range from 3 feet to 30 feet below ground surface. Other site activities by the potentially responsible party (PRP) include daily air monitoring, continuous 24-hour perimeter air monitoring and sampling, confirmation soil sampling, and water treatment and discharge to sanitary sewer. The PRP contractor remediating the Site is Burns & McDonnell Engineering Company, Inc. (BMcD) along with their subcontractors.
To date, BMcD has conducted the following remediation activities at the Site:
• Impacted material in the east gas holder was excavated to a depth of approximately 20 feet below ground surface (see BMcD map of excavation areas under "documents" on OSC website).
• Impacted material in portions of the former Throop’s Canal was excavated to a depth of approximately 30 feet below ground surface (see BMcD map of excavation areas under "documents" on OSC website).
An Administrative Order on Consent was signed by Peoples Gas in early June 2007 prompting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) to begin PRP oversight activities at the Site. The U.S. EPA Superfund Technical and Response Team (START) contractor will perform PRP oversight during the removal activities at the sites. As part of the removal activities, START will collect confirmation samples of soil and water to confirm that the PRP cleanup objectives are being met. Site contaminants of concern are:
• Benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes (BTEX);
• Polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH);
• Synthetic precipitation leaching procedure (SPLP) lead, manganese, and selenium;
• Carbon disulfide [a volatile organic compound (VOC)];
• 2-Methylnaphthalene and 4-chloroanaline [semivolatile organic compounds (SVOC)]; and
• Total lead, manganese, and selenium.
On June 12, 2007, a kick-off meeting was held at the 22nd Street Site between U.S. EPA, START, Peoples Gas, and BMcD, to discuss future oversight activities, documents required, and logistics for transmitting data and documents. The meeting addressed three MGP sites that U.S. EPA would be overseeing that are located within one mile of each other: 22nd Street Station, Hough Place, and Pitney Court. Note that one START member is to cover oversight of these three sites and will rotate being at a different site each day. Both Hough Place and Pitney Court remediations are expected to be completed by end of 2007 while the 22nd Street Station Site remediation is expected to be completed by the end of 2008.
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