County grant cleans up dump site contaminated with asbestos and other hazards
Hennepin County, Minnesota has been awarded a $735,000 grant to clean up 3,200 tons of contaminated soil and debris from an old dump site in the Elm Creek Park Reserve. The former dump was discovered during roadwork in 2008, believed to date back to the early 1900s. It contained mostly glass and metal with smaller amounts of shingles, pottery, wood and vehicle batteries. There was a variety of contaminants discovered in the dump materials, including: asbestos, lead, mercury, selenium, arsenic, petroleum and cadmium.
About 750 pounds of mercury-contaminated soil were sent to a landfill in Iowa because it could not be legally accepted at Minnesota landfills. The other contaminants were not found in very high concentrations. It took about two weeks to complete the cleanup, but it took several months to rebuild the road slope.
Nearby Goose Lake did not appear to have any impact from the contaminated dump site, thanks to tests conducted on sediment samples, so no cleanup of the lake was required.
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