Dead Creek's pollution soon to be thing of past

SAUGET, Ill. -- The stories sound like something out of a bad B-movie:

A healthy dog runs through a polluted creek, climbs up the opposite bank and drops dead in its tracks.

Workers in a railroad yard behind a chemical plant watch the same creek emit an eerie glow at night.

When the creek is dry, rings of smoke rise from the contaminated sediment, which spontaneously combusts when kids stir it up by riding their bikes through the creek bed.

Even the name sounds ominous: Dead Creek.

But after 60 years of off-and-on crises and emergency cleanups, crews in Southern Illinois are about to write a happy ending to the saga of the polluted creek that runs 3.5 miles from an industrial area in Sauget to a pumping station in Cahokia.

In June 2000, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ordered Solutia Inc. to excavate 50,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment from the creek. Solutia, a chemical company spun off from Monsanto Corp. in 1997, owns the W.G. Krummrich plant in Sauget.

The plant, which manufactures industrial chemicals, is believed to be the source of much of the pollution. The creek is not the only polluted area near the Krummrich plant, but it was the most pressing concern, said Don Ridenhower, community relations coordinator for Solutia.

"Because the creek runs through the heart of the community, that's the main reason we wanted to get the creek taken care of first," he said.

Removed sediment

Dead Creek is part of Sauget Area 1, one of two contaminated sites designated for cleanup under the federal Superfund program, which helps the EPA prioritize and clean up the worst-polluted sites in the country.

In February, crews finished removing the contaminated sediment from the creek and placing it in a containment cell, which will be covered with a permanent cap this summer. Part of the creek bed will be lined with plastic and concrete, and the area will be landscaped.

The second site, known as Sauget Area 2, is located between Illinois 3 and the Mississippi River in Sauget and parts of Cahokia. Area 2 contains several closed landfills and other potentially hazardous sites.

Ridenhower said Sauget was an industrial area long before there were environmental regulations and government-funded studies to tell anyone certain chemicals could cause problems in the environment.

"We didn't intentionally put this material into the creek. It's been an industrial area since the early part of century," Ridenhower said, referring to the 20th century. "EPA identified 29 potentially responsible parties that may have had something to do with the chemicals that got in the creek. A lot of those companies are gone now, and Solutia is one of them that's still around."

EPA records show there have been problems with Dead Creek and the surrounding areas since at least 1942, when an engineer from the Illinois Sanitary Water Board reported contamination of the creek water.

Spot cleanups and temporary fixes such as fencing or capping badly contaminated areas have occurred at various areas in and near the creek since then, some at the government's expense and some at the expense of Monsanto, Solutia or other companies deemed responsible for the pollution.