The town of Silver Lake was recently mentioned in a series by USA Today titled “Ghost Factories: Poison in the Ground.”
The 14-month investigation by USA Today led to the publishing of hundreds of potential locations where lead was melted down or smelted.
The paper notes that despite the fact that such smelting facilties closed down years ago, hazardous materials can still be found in the soil.
One of the locations listed by USA Today is at 9136 Ind. 15S, north of Silver Lake. The location is between Par-Kan and Kerlin Bus Service.
The Silver Lake location is one of six listed in Indiana.
The land is now owned by Mike Metzger of Metzger Trucking.
Metzger declined comment on this story.
While the USA Today report states that government agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency knew of those potentially hazardous sites, there is no evidence that such hazards exist on the Silver Lake property.
USA Today reports finding hazardous levels of lead in places across 13 states, mainly Rust Belt states, but when listing the Silver Lake site admits it took “detective work” to even find the location.
In 2007, the land was sold to Metzger. At that time, as a contingency of the sale soil testing was done on the land.
Steve Parker, CEO of Par-Kan, told the Times-Union Tuesday in a phone interview from Arizona that he remembered when the sale took place borings were conducted and samples were taken to test the soil quality.
Kosciusko County Southern Commissioner Bob Conley said Tuesday that the results of those 2007 tests found no lead in the ground.
“The only thing they found was foundry sand and that was replaced,” said Conley.
The USA Today article states that it had trouble finding information on the company that was formerly located near Silver Lake and was originally thought to be in Fort Wayne.
The company, Pb Co. was open for about two years, said Parker, and closed its doors in 1983. The name of the company is derived from the symbol for lead on the periodic table.
The plant was set up to melt lead from batteries.
“It was a pilot plant,” said Parker. “It was one of those start-up things that didn’t fly. It was closed. The equipment was removed and the building was remediated.”
Parker said the furnace at Pb Co. only fired two or three times while it was open.
“The output was only that of a truckload in the entire time,” said Parker.
Parker’s company Par-Kan rents storage space near the former Pb Co. He said that his company has stacks of records of when the company was shut down, and the testing and due diligence that was done on shutting down the plant.
Parker said he felt confident the land was without contaminants and served as a “good neighbor.”
Despite the 2007 testing and those records from when Pb Co. shut down in 1983, IDEM still plans to do their own testing.
“It’s important to seek out and identify and make sure any type of contamination is addressed,” said IDEM spokesperson Amy Hartsock.
Hartsock said that this sort of testing falls under what IDEM calls “discovery.”
IDEM did a similar investigation into abandoned dry cleaning facilities recently.
Hartsock admitted that the Silver Lake facility was a difficult one to find for USA Today’s report. IDEM along with the EPA worked with USA Today on the report.
The origins of the report come from a 2001 research article published by environmental scientist William Eckel.
The article states that Eckel warned of old smelting factories and their potential for contamination, and used old directories to come up with a site map of more than 400 potential locations.
That was pared down by USA Today to an interactive map of 230 sites.
While some sites are described as having dangerous levels of poisons, information for the Silver Lake site said that additional testing would have to be done to see if any hazards existed.
In Eckel’s report, he lists the Silver Lake location as potentially in Fort Wayne.
IDEM investigated and found records from the Silver Lake location in September 1982.
The corporate contact for Pb Co. was listed as Ken Moudy with an Auburn address.
In February, IDEM contacted Moudy who informed IDEM staff that Dot Group, Fort Wayne, was a primary stakeholder of Pb Co and that they were planning to crack batteries in a separate Illinois facility and then recycle the lead at the Silver Lake facility.
Moudy also said that Pb Co. spent a couple of years getting their processes in proper working order but were only in actual operation for a little less than a year and closed down in 1983.
