Allen County’s Metea Park could become home to Houdini the screech owl, Homer the American kestrel, Ruby the red tailed hawk and Apollo the great horned owl, and all their friends.
The soil and groundwater beneath Wayne Metal Protection, 1511 Wabash Ave., is polluted with chlorinated solvents and heavy metals. Here’s a look at the efforts to clean it up so far:
October 2004: Wayne Metal Protection applies to the state’s voluntary cleanup program, saying it has found both tetrachlorethylene and trichloroethylene in the soil and groundwater.
February 2006: Wayne Metal Protection misses its first deadline for a cleanup plan.
April 2006: The firm submits an interim site report but not a cleanup plan. The site report shows soil and groundwater is contaminated with chlorinated solvents, cyanide, arsenic and heavy metals such as lead, chromium and cadmium, and that some pollutants have spread northeast from the site toward Memorial Park Middle School.
June 2006: The company misses its second deadline for a cleanup plan.
April 2007: Under pressure by IDEM, Wayne Metal Protection installs monitoring wells between its property and Memorial Middle School to ensure contamination is not moving toward classrooms.
June 2007: The company misses its third deadline for a cleanup plan.
August 2007: IDEM inspectors find hundreds of gallons of hydrochloric acid stored at the site in violation of federal hazardous waste laws. Some is in containers that were leaking, not sealed or not labeled.
October 2007: IDEM notifies Wayne Metal Protection of its findings and proposes a deal where the firm corrects the violations and pays a $166,000 fine. Negotiations over the violations and the fine begin; they are supposed to be done in 60 days.
December 2007: The deadline to complete negotiations over the fine and hazardous waste violations passes with no agreement.
Dec. 31, 2007: The company files its cleanup plan, 22 months after it was first due.
March 2008: Wayne Metal Protection fails to submit a biennial report on its hazardous waste activities and pays a yearly $1,565 fee.
July 2008: Wayne Metal Protection is kicked out of IDEM’s voluntary cleanup program for missing deadlines, putting it in the state’s forced cleanup program. IDEM also notifies the company of its failure to submit a biennial report and pay its annual fee. Negotiations over the violation and a possible fine begin; they are supposed to be done in 60 days. The violations the firm was informed of in October 2007 remain unresolved.
April 2009: IDEM critiques the firm’s revised site investigation and demands a revised cleanup plan by June 1.
June 2009: Agreement is reached on the company’s 2008 failure to submit its biennial report and pay its annual fee. The company agrees to file the report, pay the fee and pay a $2,750 fine. The October 2007 violations remain unresolved.
July 2010: IDEM accepts Wayne Metal Protection’s clean-up plan. Site work could begin as soon as October.
Source: IDEM records, Journal Gazette archives
