Cleaning up the source of contaminated groundwater beneath a Billings neighborhood could cost about $7 million and could take three to five years, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The costs, at least initially, will be borne by the EPA. The agency later will decide whether it will seek reimbursement from whoever was responsible for the chemical getting into the groundwater.

The EPA has approved a plan for the Billings PCE site, a 140-acre plume of groundwater beneath more than 400 homes and buildings southwest of downtown.

The agency proposes quick action, saying that if unabated the PCE, a solvent used in dry cleaning and other industrial operations, could continue to contaminate the groundwater for decades or even centuries.

"Delayed action will increase public health risks," the EPA said.

The EPA plan has several steps, including digging out contaminated soil near the source site, believed to be at 715 Central Ave. Other steps include treating the soil to neutralize the PCE and slow its spread.

Work could begin as early as spring 2008. The total cost is estimated at $6.9 million.

Big Sky Linen, at 715 Central Ave., has been identified as the only "potentially responsible party" by the EPA. That finding, though, isn't final.

"The operative word there is 'potentially,' " Jim Stearns, an enforcement attorney with the EPA in Denver, said Thursday.

Company officials told the EPA in a letter earlier this year that they don't believe any dry-cleaning chemical ever spilled into their drainage system.

Though the chemical is in the groundwater, the biggest concern for the EPA is that it has vaporized in some places and seeped up through the soil and into homes where it could be inhaled by people.

There's also a concern about whether frequent use of the groundwater in wading pools, for instance, could cause problems.

The contamination doesn't appear to be posing imminent, short-term danger to residents, but EPA officials are worried about potential risk for cancer from long-term exposure.

Investigators said the contamination probably happened decades ago.

When Big Sky Linen began at its current location in 1965, its main business was laundering, not dry cleaning, company officials said in the letter to EPA. Dry cleaning began two years later and lasted until 1994 but was always a small part of the business.

None of the people at the company now was involved in the dry-cleaning operations, and no paperwork documents a leak, officials said.

"It is not believed that there were ever any leaks of dry-cleaning chemicals at the facility," the company said in its letter. "Any spill of dry-cleaning chemical would have occurred on rare occasions and would have been very small (less than one gallon)."

Company officials could not be reached Thursday.

EPA officials were called to investigate the site in 2006 after reports in The Billings Gazette and an acknowledgement by Montana Department of Environmental Quality officials that, although the site was listed as a "high priority" for action, the agency didn't have the resources to do the work.

The EPA conducted four rounds of tests. Of the 45 buildings in which air samples were conducted, four homes showed elevated levels of PCE inside their basements that exceeded EPA's air quality targets. Many of the other homes had elevated levels beneath their foundations.

The plume is about 8,000 feet long and, in some places, about 1,000 feet wide, encompassing several blocks, the agency said.

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http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2007/10/19/news/local/17-pce.txt