Leech Lake Community members recently meet with E-P-A officials to discuss the path forward for cleaning up tribal land, contaminated decades ago by hazardous waste from paper company. Reporter Kayla Doula attended the public meeting to hear more about the plans and concerns from officials and local residents.
Transcript
HOST (Marie): Leech Lake Community members recently meet with E-P-A officials to discuss the path forward for cleaning up tribal land, contaminated decades ago by hazardous waste from paper company. Reporter Kayla Doula attended the public meeting to hear more about the plans and concerns from official and local residents.
ELAINE FLEMING: I lived there, my family lived there. My friends lived there. Our people live there. That’s our story, that's our land. We have to keep it alive...we have to talk about it. We have to tell what happened to us.
REPORTER: That's Elaine Fleming. She’s a Leech Lake Tribal College Professor, author and historian speaking at a public meeting last month.
Fleming was talking about the St. Regis Paper company Superfund site — it’s a 125 acre site on the Leech Lake reservation.
About 75 people attended this community meeting put on by the U-S Environmental Protection Agency all about finalizing plans to clean-up the area they call “Operable Unit number 7” or O-U-7 of the superfund site.
Site OU7 refers to residential and habitable areas in the site, where soil was contaminated with hazardous waste. Currently that includes 5 homes and the Leech Lake Reservations Department of Resource Management Office and Fishery.
EPA OFFICIAL: My name is Herbito Leon, I’m community involvement coordinator with the US Environmental Protection agency and with me tonight is Leslie Patterson. She’s going to be presenting some details regarding the proposed plan for the cleanup of contaminated soil.
The Environmental Protection Agency declared the area a Superfund site in 1984.
But it took the agency almost TWO DECADES -nearly 20 years - to start the first clean up action.
The toxic chemicals in the area have been spilling into the soil and water ways that are important to the tribes sustainability.
Elaine Fleming is one of the many people representing residents who have been affected by the contamination.
She’s been fighting for proper clean up since the late 90’s.
I asked Elaine about her experiences living near the toxic site and how it has impacted her personally:
FLEMING: It’s been there for what about 61 years now, It opened up when I was going to kindergarten and I was sick all the time, and they diagnosed me with measles, scarlet fever, rheumatic fever, and I don't know what else but I was always sick. My youngest brother Michael Johnny got cancer. When you talk to people who live over there, they will talk about their experiences and about being sick.
REPORTER: Community members talked about these issues at this meeting.
SPEAKER 1: I’m 62 years old now and I have survived 3 rounds of cancer.
SPEAKER 2: We don’t deserve this. I’m begging you to get the soil out of here because it’s killing us.
Most of the residents who live in the area were unaware of the site’s history before moving in.
Others learned about it but couldn’t afford to leave the contaminated land.
At this community meeting, EPA officials presented 12 plans but only 2 were identified as realistic options.
The EPA’s proposed plan s15b, would create a containment site on the reservation for highly contaminated soil.
It would take around 3 years and cost 18.5 million.
Plan s15a is backed by a majority of the Cass Lake and Leech Lake residents.
It calls for all contaminated soil be trucked off the reservation to a treatment facility near St.Cloud, Minnesota.
It would take roughly 3 years and cost around 30 million dollars to complete.
The current owners of the site, International Paper, would foot the bill.
Plan s15a is backed by the majority of the Cass Lake and Leech Lake residents.
SPEAKER 3: I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask the residents to deal with another storage site. I think it’s unreasonable. There’s a storage site there now. I think the residents here deserve a 100% assurance that the contamination of soil and everything is going to be cleaned up and going to be removed from here
The EPA is still taking comments regarding the proposed plans online and through the mail.
A Final EPA report from the meeting is expected in late fall.
Further cleanup of non-residential sites will be addressed sometime in the future.
For more information on the St. Regis Superfund Site, check out the Leech Lake Department of Resource Management website
I’m Kayla Duoos with the DeBahJimon for MN Native News.