MiddletownJournal.com

NEW MIAMI — Pollution from AK Steel Corp.'s former iron and coke production plant has contaminated an aquifer nearby, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Friday.

But that aquifer does not supply drinking water to the city of Hamilton or Liberty and West Chester townships, representatives from the EPA said.

The 252-acre site, now owned by Armco successor AK Steel, sits on either side of Augspurger Road to the east of Ohio 127 and is bounded on the south by the Great Miami River.

Wellheads for New Miami and Hamilton — which also serve parts of Liberty and West Chester townships — are less than a half-mile away.

However, the New Miami wellhead is located at a higher elevation than the contamination site and will not be affected, said Pablo Valentin, project manager for the site.

Contamination has only been found in a shallow aquifer near the site, Valentin said. Hamilton's drinking water comes from a deep aquifer where contamination has not been detected.

"There is no indication that the aquifer that supplies drinking water to Hamilton is impacted" by the contamination, Valentin said Friday.

Whether remediation is necessary on the contaminated shallow aquifer will not be known for months, or until AK Steel resubmits its investigation, which will be available for public view.

Preliminary tests conducted on the site revealed polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are chemical compounds formed by incomplete combustion of carbon-containing fuels such as wood, coal, diesel, fat and tobacco, according to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

PAHs can be carcinogenic in some instances.

The Middletown-based steelmaker

has agreed to post fish consumption advisory warnings on the Superfund site adjacent to the Great Miami River.

A local watchdog group, Friends of the Great Miami, had asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in January to warn local fishermen and other outdoors enthusiasts to stay away from the site just outside New Miami and to not to eat fish caught there.

Although much of the site is fenced and posted, other parts of the retired facility grounds are easily accessible by foot and by the Great Miami River. Large amounts of debris, which Friends of the Great Miami warn could be contaminated from the Superfund site, have been dumped along the riverbank and into the river.

Friends of the Great Miami was awarded a $50,000 Technical Assistance Grant from the EPA to help disseminate information gathered in an ongoing study of possible public health risks there.

A representative of the Friends of the Great Miami has asked that the debris along the river be removed immediately, but said Friday that "a lot of that depends on the contamination" report.

AK Steel spokesman Alan McCoy said the company and its contractor were in the preliminary stages of what has been a long cleanup that could still take "years and years."

The company has a voluntary agreement with the EPA to study the site and prepare a report on how to best clean it up.

Since 1983, the EPA has been studying pollution found on the grounds and in river sediments there. Although a 2005 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services suggested sampling fish there for toxic chemicals, a representative from the Friends of the Great Miami said the EPA told his group in a January conference call that it had no intention to do so unless there's proof that pollution from the Armco site was the source for the pollution found in the river.

Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2840 or dgreber@coxohio.com.