Vapors may be seeping into St. Louis Park

The Environmental Protection Agency wants to test St. Louis Park High School and about 270 homes, businesses and other buildings nearby for potentially hazardous vapors seeping in from underground.

If it finds problems, the EPA will use Superfund money to correct them, city officials said.

"We don't see an imminent public health threat at this time," said Brad Moore, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency commissioner. The EPA said in a press release that so far, it has seen "no evidence that the vapors are getting into buildings at this time."

However, the agency wants to check properties on both sides of Hwy. 7 near Wooddale Avenue, where two sets of soil borings earlier this year detected vapors in soil, Moore said.

The study was prompted by the discovery of compounds used as solvents and degreasers in shallow groundwater and soil in the suburb just west of Minneapolis. The substances, known as volatile organic compounds, do not affect drinking water supplies that are much deeper, state pollution authorities said.

But their vapors could rise through soil into buildings through basements and foundation cracks. It's the sort of contamination problem outlined earlier this year in a Star Tribune series that described 20 significant plumes of tainted groundwater underlying 35 metro-area communities.

Officials did not want to speculate on what would happen if elevated levels of chemicals were found, but they compared the potential contamination to radon, where homes with elevated concentrations of the gas can have their basements ventilated to solve the problem. Ed Pelto, owner of Ed's Heating and Air Inc. in Woodbury, said that it typically costs $1,300 to $2,500 for homeowners to vent basements so radon does not accumulate.

The area to be tested includes St. Louis Park High, with about 1,500 students, staff and administrators, and Park Spanish Immersion School in the Central Community Center. Samples were taken at both schools on Saturday and Sunday, state pollution control officials said, and the results should be available in a few days.

When asked whether parents should be concerned, school district spokeswoman Amy Parnell said: "To be honest, we need answers to those questions as well." High school Principal Rob Metz said that the district is preparing to send a letter to all parents in the next day or two.

Affected property owners began receiving separate letters from the EPA and the city of St. Louis Park on Tuesday. They explain the study, which would begin in mid-January, and ask for cooperation because the EPA needs permission to enter homes and conduct the tests.

That was not good news to Jay Gianera, who is trying to sell his house near Wooddale Avenue, where he has lived for the past eight years. But he was philosophical. "It's out of my control, and I tend to put things in two categories: things I have control over and things I do not," Gianera said.

Charlie Gebien with the EPA's emergency response unit said that owners will not be charged for the air sampling and will be informed of the results. "There would be borings conducted in the basement to determine if there are any vapors in the sub-slab area, and then that would be combined with indoor sampling of the air in the residence," Gebien said.

The EPA is testing indoor air for similar chemicals in the Dayton, Ohio, area, officials said, but on a smaller scale. "The whole issue of soil vapor intrusion is really an emerging one," Moore said.

St. Louis Park residents Charles and Carmella Anderson said they're willing to endure drilling in their basement, and trust that the city will handle the study and any fixes as successfully as it cleaned up a nearby industrial site years ago. "St. Louis Park has always been tough with this kind of stuff," Charles said.

The retired couple live in a 115-year-old house in the affected area and raised three children there. They have tested their basement for radon. Carmella said she's been having headaches for five weeks but doubts that they are related to any chemical vapors.

The vapors found in St. Louis Park are from several compounds, including vinyl chloride, tetrachloroethylene and trichloroethylene. They are commonly used in industrial degreasers, metal cleaners and dry-cleaning fluids, and some have no detectable odor at low levels.

Jim Kelly, health risk assessor for the Minnesota Department of Health, said exposure to low levels of the chemicals over time could worsen asthma and other problems, and at very high levels could cause more serious health problems, including cancer. But he said it's premature to assume risks.

"We don't know yet whether there are any vapors that even are intruding into people's basements," he said.

Doug Wetzstein, MPCA Superfund Unit supervisor, called the St. Louis Park study a large project on the scale of the arsenic investigation and yard cleanups in south Minneapolis, and the asbestos contamination and cleanups in northeast Minneapolis. Like those projects, state officials referred the St. Louis Park case to the EPA, which can tap emergency money from the national Superfund for testing and lab work.

Mick Hans, EPA regional spokesman, said that federal and state officials will search for the source of the contamination in St. Louis Park "on a separate track." Wetzstein said that there may be multiple sources of the pollution in the industrial Hwy. 7 corridor, where "dozens and dozens" of machine shops, dry cleaners and other businesses used solvents and degreasers.

Wetzstein said that the MPCA began testing the groundwater in St. Louis Park after a municipal well in Edina showed elevated concentrations of the chemicals in 2003 and was shut down. As state officials traced the flow of groundwater to St. Louis Park, they began testing soil earlier this year and found vapors as shallow as 3 feet.

Although the sources are unknown, St. Louis Park inspections director Brian Hoffman said that the contamination does not result from the former Reilly Tar and Chemical site, a former creosote plant whose contamination the city is still cleaning up.

In a letter to affected property owners, Hoffman urged them to cooperate.

"The EPA will cover the cost of this remediation for homeowners, so it's important that you allow the testing at this time," Hoffman wrote.

meersman@startribune.com • 612-673-7388 jross@startribune.com • 612-673-7168