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MIDDLETOWN — Pending permit approval, representatives from AK Steel Corp. said cleanup of two local waterways should begin this summer. The company intends work to be complete in 2010.

About 20 people, many of them environmental agency representatives, attended a meeting held Thursday, March 5, at the Middletown Public Library to inform the community about the work along Dicks Creek and Monroe Ditch.

The meeting was part of a 2006 consent between AK, the U.S. and Ohio environmental protection agencies, Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council to clean up the sites, which have been contaminated by polychlorinated biphenyls — a probable carcinogen.

The company has submitted wastewater, air and treatment system permits to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. Heather Lauer, spokeswoman for the agency, said it could take 60 days to approve the permits. Carl Batliner, director of AK's environmental affairs, said the local steelmaker hopes to begin cleanup in June.

The work will be done in two phases along an about two-mile stretch of Dicks Creek and a 0.7-mile section of Monroe Ditch. Cleanup will be done from June through November in 2009 and 2010. Floodplain soil and stream sediments will be trucked out and disposed of while clean soil and plants will be brought in to restore the habitats, Batliner said.

Attendees expressed concern regarding the disposal of the affected soil, which is estimated at 80,000 tons. Soil with 50 parts per million or more in PCBs will be trucked to a secured disposal site in "Indiana or Michigan," Batliner said.

Lower level areas, which can infect fish and therefore infect humans who eat them, will be disposed of by Rumpke, most likely at a landfill like the one in Colerain Twp., said Tim Barber of ENVIRON, the lead consultant for AK.

Karen Stevenson, of Hamilton, said she is concerned for the residents who might live near such a landfill.

"The landfill in Colerain is in the middle of a residential area," she said. "To have 1,000, 20-ton trucks coming in with this stuff for five months a year is still a big concern."

Barber said it would take a person eating at least one meal of fish every day from Dicks Creek for 15 years to feel the effects of the PCBs. Still, Tom Schnider with the Ohio EPA said residents should adhere to advisories not to take fish from the creek at all.

Marilyn Wall of the Sierra Club said she just hopes the cleanup doesn't "drag out to 2012.

"Hopefully they will be doing a good job to get it clean and get it done expediently," she said.

While AK's current operations do not produce PCBs, the "predominate theory" is storage ponds used by Armco for oily material decades ago may have overflowed, causing the toxin to make its way into the streams at some point, said company spokesman Alan McCoy.