Progress has been made at the Tremont City Barrel Fill in Clark County.
The long-contaminated site has been monitored by the U.S. EPA since 1997.
Springfield-area residents have long worried that the buried drums full of waste could contaminate the nearby aquifer that supplies their drinking water. The Barrel Fill contains 300,000 gallons of industrial waste, including volatile organic compounds, semi-volatile organic compounds and metals.
Now, prep work will start at the Tremont Barrel Fill as early as mid-September.
Project manager Bob Rule said that preparation includes upgrading roads and fencing, and setting up a staging area for the removed barrels.
Rule also says two rounds of recent testing show that the pollution isn’t moving.
"There’s no appreciable difference in the contamination. It's not, it's not moving. So groundwater is still protected," Rule said.
He said they can start pulling contaminated drums out after they get approval from the U.S. EPA. That could be as early as December.
Seven companies — Chemical Waste Management, Inc.; Franklin International, Inc.; International Paper, Co.; The Procter & Gamble Co.; PPG Industries; Inc.; Strebor, Inc. and Worthington Cylinder Corporation — are responsible for funding the clean-up, as established through a 2022 consent decree. Staff previously estimated the project would cost $27 million, but they say they’ve exceeded that amount.