United States Environmental Protection Agency
Region VII
POLLUTION REPORT

Subject: 

The Omaha Lead site is located in the Omaha metropolitan area including Council Bluffs, and Carter Lake, Iowa.  The specific boundaries of the site have not yet been defined because the sampling activities for the entire area of investigation are not complete.

Several businesses and manufacturing companies used or processed lead at their facilities in the Omaha metropolitan area, ASARCO Incorporated (ASARCO) operated a lead refinery at 500 Douglas St. in Omaha for over 100 years beginning in the 1870s.  The operation of the refinery ceased in 1997.  As a routine part of the refinery operation, lead particles were emitted into the atmosphere at the refinery.  In addition, the Gould Inc. lead battery recycling plant located at 555 Farnam Street in Omaha was a secondary smelter of lead from discarded lead batteries, closing in 1982.  The blast furnace used to smelt the lead at the Gould plant emitted lead particles into the air from that smelter.

There was limited activity conducted under this action memorandum during the reporting period (most of the activity occurred under the separate removal action for the >1,200 ppm yards).  There were 3 properties excavated during this reporting period.  

The weekly tracking sheet is included as an attachment, listing the project totals. A portion of the work this reporting period involved meeting with residents who expressed concerns about damage to their sidewalks and/or driveways.  A small percentage of properties incur minor concrete damage or some other type of miscellaneous damage which occurs during the course of the removal action. Some of the concrete sidewalks or driveways were in extremely poor condition prior to EPA's presence, resulting in the likelihood of minor damage being probable.

This brings the total to 83 properties that have been placed under this removal action to date including 32 day cares from Nov.-Dec. 2002.

EBL and Day Cares will continue to receive a high priority for scheduling as they are received.

There have been 69 EBL’s and Day Cares that have been completed at this time during both phases of the removal action.

There have been a total of 3,675 cubic-yards of lead-contaminated soil excavated, and 64 properties have been backfilled with 3,130 cubic-yards of clean soil.

Elevated blood-lead (EBL) and Day Cares will continue to receive a high priority for scheduling as they are received.

On November 5, 2003, a small fuel spill occurred. Personnel from the Missouri River Treatment Facility contacted on-scene coordinator (OSC) Dan Garvey and reported that an ERR’s dump truck did not have the gas cap affixed resulting in a diesel fuel spill.  An estimated 50 gallons of  diesel fuel spilled as the truck was headed up-hill on Missouri Avenue.  An ERR’s clean-up team was immediately dispatched to clean-up the diesel fuel.  The truck driver was contacted by radio to secure the gas cap.  There was no waterway affected by the spill.  The release was estimated at less than 10 gallons.  All of the diesel fuel was properly cleaned up.