For Pat Likins, it’s a rare environmental cleanup which doesn’t uncover more contamination than originally expected.

That’s proving the case at Continental Steel, where almost every phase of the cleanup, from the demolition of the old plant buildings to the dredging of Kokomo Creek, has cost the federal government more money than expected.

But Likins, the longtime project manager at the massive cleanup, hasn’t been discouraged by the numerous discoveries of contamination.

It’s just part of what she does.

If tests or just plain visual evidence uncovers more muck, it gets added to her cleaning list. The list, however, has grown considerably shorter thanks to millions spent over the past three years.

The latest interesting discovery involves a network of pipes connecting numerous fuel oil tanks at the southern end of the Main Plant site, the 80-acre tract bordered by Park and Markland avenues, the Kokomo Creek and Leeds Street.

A quantity of that fuel oil managed to leak into the soil bordering a major sewer interceptor — Pete’s Run — which runs just below the Main Plant site before emptying into Kokomo Creek.

Over the last several weeks, contractors working for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have dug trenches on both sides of Pete’s Run, and installed concrete walls at the bottom of the trenches to cut off the flow of the oil.

Instead of the oil flowing through the sewer into the creek, it is now collecting in a sump pit where the walls meet the sewer line.

If environmental officials weren’t sure where the contamination was coming from a few months ago, they are now.

“We think it’s all coming from on site,” Likins said last week. “This was the best place to catch it and stop it.”

Digging out the contaminated soil to install the catch walls and sump pit added to the already considerable stockpiles of contaminated soil still awaiting transportation to an approved landfill.

Late last year, EPA project manager Naybil Fayoumi requested and received an additional $2.8 million to address the fuel oil leaking into Pete’s Run and to landfill the greater-than-expected amounts of contaminated soil.

Most of the soil came from the bottom of Kokomo Creek, in a quarter-mile stretching from where the Kokomo and Wildcat creeks upstream past the Kokomo city parks headquarters.

Fayoumi said contractors dredged 3 1/2 feet of contaminated sediment from the bottom of the creek in that stretch, more than twice what was originally expected.

“We’re really just glad we caught it,” Fayoumi said. “The main purpose of the work was to keep [the oil] from entering the creek areas we’d already cleaned up.”

To stabilize the north bank of the Kokomo Creek, work crews have also placed more than 50 huge limestone blocks, LEGO-style, along the creek bank.

The excavation exposed another sewer line which runs along that bank to the city wastewater plant, and the EPA wanted to make sure erosion won’t threaten the line in the future.

In a short period of time, contractors will place clean fill atop the limestone blocks, as well as over the limestone riprap covering the creek banks up and downstream.

“They’ll put fill over that, and plantings, so we don’t have ‘riprap creek,’” Fayoumi said.

Quarry going down

In 1993, about nine years after Continental Steel closed its gates, authorities removed more than 1,000 metal drums, many filled with carcinogenic chemicals, from the Markland Avenue Quarry. Those chemicals are now permanently in the deep groundwater, all flowing ever-so-slowly in a southwest path from the quarry.

There’s not much current environmental remediation techniques can do about it, other than make sure no one drills any drinking water wells in the spreading path of groundwater contamination.

The emergency cleanup which followed also determined the quarry’s water had enough alkaline making it incapable of supporting marine life. Likins said the water was so devoid of plant and animal life it was almost completely clear.

“I know a lot of baghouse dust was dumped in there, filtered from the plant’s stack emissions, and baghouse dust has a lot of lime in it,” Likins said.

The quarry has recovered somewhat, but the water still measures above 11 on the ph scale, making it very caustic.

As the quarry water is pumped out to the EPA’s temporary, on-site water treatment facility, it is neutralized with sulfuric acid. The water is being pumped out at 1,500 gallons per minute, and the quarry’s surface has dropped six feet since pumping began the week of May 19.

Work crews have already floated a barge out onto the quarry, and an excavator with a 70-foot arm sits on the barge. The excavator has been dipping out debris at the bottom of the quarry in preparation for the next step.

When the water level is low enough, a floating platform with a pump attached to it will begin sucking contaminated sediment out of the quarry.

That sediment will end up in a landfill specifically designed as the final resting place for contaminated waste.