Many of the people who started pressing for the cleanup of the radioactive sites in Ottawa around 35 years ago aren’t around to see the final cleanup that’s expected to start next year. Katie Troccoli has spent most of her adult life calling for it and she’s 64 now. She and others were scoffed at by local officials who said they were going to ruin the city’s reputation. But she’d do it again.
Troccoli is concerned about the radiation that remains because the EPA decided to cap it in place and prohibit digging. She says a long time from now, someone who has forgotten about the radium contamination and what it can do could unearth it.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says it will put $90 million into the last of the cleanup next year. That’s at a former dump site between the Fox River and Illinois 71. It got a lot of debris from the Radium Dial and Luminous Processes glow-in-the-dark paint businesses that worked on watch dials and instrument panels.