Residents gets some answers on Elkhart Clinic closure

ELKHART, Ind. -- To address the ongoing environmental issue that caused the Elkhart Clinic main building to close its doors in Jan., The Strong Avenue Neighborhood Association invited the community to a meeting Tues. evening.

At the meeting, experts from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM), a member of the Elkhart Fire Department, and a representative of the Mayor’s Office explained the timeline of events at the clinic and where they are now.

The branch chief for IDEM’s Petroleum Branch in Indianapolis, Tim Veatch, said IDEM takes a look at how contaminants might reach people, like through touching soil, consuming groundwater, or vapor inhalation.

They have been and are currently evaluating all of those pathways around the clinic, hoping to find a potential source, but have yet to find one.

“IDEM has requested investigation of a potential source, located across the street from the Elkhart Clinic… They found minimal contamination at that property but did confirm a release. We’ve requested some additional investigation from them. The Elkhart Clinic has hired their own consultant, they did preform work at their property as well. Contamination was noted in several borings on the property between the gas station and the clinic, and so there will be additional work that will be necessary to determine the source of that contamination,” said Veatch.

He explained because they did find some contamination coming from the gas station, they are demanding additional investigating with a 60-day timeline. If they are still unable to find a source after that, they will make the same demand to the clinic.

“I don’t wanna get ahead of ourselves because there’s a lot more work to take place, but if we’re unable to locate a source of contamination from an offsite property, we will likely issue a demand to the clinic to further investigate a contamination that is known on their property,” said Veatch.

One resident who came to the meeting is an Elkhart City Councilman for the 3rd district, David Henke.

“I actually came as a city representative, representing the public for public interest, public safety. I brought this up at a council probably four weeks ago and I was concerned because of lack of information that was coming to the public. I know the clinic has thousands of patients, I’m one of those, and it interrupted us, but there’s people more vulnerable than me whose lives depend on their healthcare, and this was a larger issue I think than the clinic and maybe the city put out,” said Henke.

He goes on to explain the meeting showed him how extensive and long the process is to identify the source of a contamination, that the clinic is still months away from being reopened, and that even the experts still have some questions.

“My question is what do we do for these folks? How do we protect our community as the investigation goes on? So, we learned a lot of nice people, educated people, are looking into the equation, but we have no answers at this date… it feels like we don’t have a handle yet, it feels like we could get a surprise, it could be months… My question is more about those folks that are already affected, either because of their physician is in some other location, the diagnostic equipment that they counted on, if the plume doesn’t move in the other general direction, who else will be affected. There are healthcare buildings all around this campus. It means a lot because we all depend on it,” said Henke.