TERRE HAUTE — Former dry cleaning sites are an environmental problem all over the state, according to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.
IDEM is currently mapping current and past dry cleaning locations around Indiana, said Barry Sneed, an agency spokesman in an email to the Tribune-Star Wednesday.
In 2011, city officials went to work trying to determine the extent of tetrachloroethene (PCE) contamination from a former dry cleaning operation at 1212 Spruce St. They recently purchased property with PCE contamination in the groundwater at 3000 S. Ninth Street.
“We call this historical pollution,” said Alan Spielvogel, director of technical services for the National Cleaners Association, a trade group based in New York. “Unfortunately, there is a problem.”
Things have improved greatly, Spielvogel said. Now, dry cleaners must hire hazardous waste disposal operators to remove their solvents. The technology of the dry cleaning machines has also dramatically improved within the past 30 years, making spills virtually a thing of the past, he said.
IDEM’s Sneed agreed the lack of controls in the past led to the current problem. As a result, IDEM encounters the sorts of problems facing Terre Haute on a fairly regular basis, he said.
“Part of the problem is that many of the sites were dry cleaners several years ago when there were no standards that they had to follow,” he said. Additionally, PCE is used as an industrial solvent so it’s not always easy to know whether the source of the contamination was a dry cleaner or another business in the area, he stated.
Improvements in dry cleaning equipment and mandatory hazardous waste disposal has added greatly to the cost of running a dry cleaning business, Spielvogel noted.
“It is expensive and that is unfortunately one of the reasons dry cleaning is expensive,” he said. Being more environmentally friendly is “a major part of the cost of doing business.”
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