Increasing Public/Private Partnerships in RCRA Corrective Action
and other EPA and State Clean Up Programs

A unique partnership of industry, environmental agencies, and non-profit organizations guide and implement ecological enhancement work on private properties and public lands of NW Indiana.

The Wildlife Habitat Council is undertaking a 3-year demonstration project with the U.S. EPA Region 5 Division of Waste, Pesticides, and Toxics and Indiana Department of Environmental Management to increase the rate at which Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Corrective Action facilities clean up and reuse contaminated lands using ecological enhancements. This project will be applied to Underground Storage Tank (UST/LUST), brownfields and Superfund sites, as well as other clean up programs.

The steering committee members are focused to increase awareness by all stakeholders to ecological enhancement opportunities and alternatives in corrective action and land reuse, and better communication among stakeholder groups to explore opportunities as demonstration sites. The committee is currently reviewing potential eco-enhancement projects on a variety of demonstration sites.

Steering committee members: AIG Environmental, BP, ChevronTexaco (invited), ExxonMobil, Indiana Department of Environmental Management RCRA Program, International Steel Group Burns Harbor, Ispat Inland Inc., United States Steel Corporation Gary Works and U.S. EPA Division of Waste, Pesticides, and Toxics. 

Advisory members: City of Gary Department of Environmental Affairs, Earth Tech, Hammond Department of Environmental Management (invited), Indiana Department of Natural Resources-Natural Resources Damages Assessment Office, JFNew, KLN Consulting, Rhodia, Save the Dunes Council, The Nature Conservancy and URS Corporation. 

Meetings have resulted in greater attention by agencies to ecological opportunities and alternatives in corrective action and land reuse; better communication/relations between companies and agencies; formal steering committee; We are reviewing eco-enhancement projects on demonstration sites.

Potential demonstration projects: United States Steel Corporation's Gary Works, UST/LUST and Brownfields at the City of Gary, UST/LUST and corrective action sites in the City of Hammond and a Brownfield site with the Save the Dunes Council.