EAST CHICAGO ENTERPRISE CENTER

The East Chicago Enterprise Center is a 31-acre industrial park located in northwestern Indiana.  The site was first developed in the late nineteenth century and has since been occupied by a variety of heavy industries; at one time the property was home to one of the country’s few builders of steel mills.  This foundry also made large scale castings for ships, pipelines, railcars, mining equipment, and M-60 tank components for the military.  At its peak, it was one of the largest machine shops in the Midwest.

Carlson performed Phase I assessments along with a series of subsurface investigations to determine the impact of past operations, characterize the nature and extent of soil and groundwater contamination, and to evaluate the potential need for remediation.  Site operations as well as a major fire which destroyed a tire warehousing and shredding operation at the site resulted in impacts at a number of locations across the site.

Carlson enrolled the site in the Indiana Brownfields Program and obtained site closure following an endangerment assessment and evaluation of multiple remediation approaches, implemented a site remediation program which included free product recovery, excavation and off-site disposal of impacted soils, in situ bioremediation, as well as institutional controls.