Tuesday, March 21, 2023
American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO) of Taylor Springs Illinois began under a slightly different name at this location in 1912. They were involved in zinc and lead smelting and refining as well as sulfuric acid production in addition to coal mining and storage, primary and secondary slab zinc production and both American and French Process zinc oxide production. Waste products from plant operations were conveniently dumped on-site and coal ash from the plant’s gas producing operations was casually spread on the ground. Slag piles were found to contain lead, arsenic, cadmium and other problematic metals. To what was surely the surprise of everyone involved, these methods of "storage" resulted in the contamination of both surface water and soil. This contamination not only extended onto adjacent residential properties but some waste materials were also used as fill dirt in the neighborhoods near the site. ASARCO LLC purchased the property from American Zinc and Lead in 1971 and they continued zinc smelting and refining activities. They then leased the facility to Midwest Zinc-Hillsboro, which remained in operation until 2004.
EPA superfun site
A 1912 industrial site sounded super fun to me. It was an hour long drive to the best parking spot and a decent hike on top of that before we could even get eyes on the site and learn what, if anything, was still standing. It wasn't until we walked up out of the trees and finally laid eyes on the objective that we knew some, possibly all, of the original buildings still stood. I started to get my hopes up at this point. It looked like we had an office building in the front with some garages/shops in the middle and then the main production site in the rear-complete with a big ass power plant building that had a crazy ventilation fan sticking out of the side of it. It looked like it was going to be awesome. Very excited by this point to head in and see what's left.
The front office building was actually not a disappointment, as far as those things go. There was one of those weird rooms where workers put their belongings in baskets and hoist them up to the ceiling. Some other random stuff like showers, lockers, a sound isolation booth, etc. Much of the usual ephemera was still left where it was discared so it seemed safe to assume we might find vintage industrial goodness the further on we went.
Except.. Everything else was gutted and empty. The power building being the most depressing example was completely devoid of all its former organs except a bunch of lonely catwalks and stuff that would have once allowed access to the upper ends of whatever awesome old equipment had been amputated prior to our arrival. The rafters are home to vultures whose defecations frequently plopped down around us in reddish colored chunks. We were only in there for a few minutes but I had several near misses with the stuff falling close to me. The floor was several inches thick with shit and feathers and over time these things had formed the heavy particulate swirling in the air all around us. There was some weird halfassed crumbling 1980s looking office space built randomly in one side of the room, completely out of place and utterly offensive considering the old industrial jungle gym that should have greeted us as reward for the pilgrimage.
The entirety of the rest of the structures were similarly remediated of 97% of their former contents and the only stairs to the only upper sections of the whole place were cut off and laying on the floor. There were some big empty warehouse docks, a loading bay, several large steel buildings, etc. All empty.
Sure it was still something to do but not really worth the effort since it was gutted. So I can't recommend it partially due to all the above, but also because of the following:
Oh wait. SuperfunD. With a "d".
According to the EPA's Public Health Assessment of this location, there are 4 main contaminants onsite that are cause for concern: Arsenic, Lead, Cadmium and Zinc. Basically, I got the impression that everything except the arsenic is pretty "meh" as far as dangers go. But it sounded like there was enough of a presence of inorganic arsenic that it wasn't something to just shrug off. Highly unpleasant/carinogenic/etc. So I decided to a wear an old and thus disposable set of clothes/boots/etc and change out of them before I got back into my vehicle, tossing them into a trash bag ultimately to be discarded. Also brought a respirator and wore it inside one of the buildings, but that was mostly just because of the vulture shit.
So yeah. Things were looking real good on the approach..
I started getting real excited as we got closer.. only to be inconsolable soon hereafter. If this doesn't look like a slice of heaven to you then I don't know what your damn problem is.
This is what disappointment looks like.
