Lately | July 12, 2003

Lately, in Corinna...

July 12, 2003

At the TAG meeting Thursday, Rick Leighton of the EPA, led the group on a tour of the soil decontamination facility at the Superfund cleanup site in Corinna. Here we see the group standing at the end of Soil Decontamination Bed Number 4. Under the covers are two bins, each holding about 500 tons of contaminated soil in a layer about 3 feet thick. Hot air and steam are forced through the soil to remove the chemicals. After about five days of heating, the soil is removed and replaced with a new batch.

There are four beds, with two bins each. The furnaces and boiler run 24 hours a day heating the soil. The hot, moist air is pulled through the soil by large fans. The exhaust air containing the chemicals removed from the soil is drawn through carbon filters to remove the contamination before it is released.