Decatur, Ill (WAND) – The WAND News I-TEAM has been nominated for a Mid-America Emmy award for reporting on the environment.
In August of 2017 reporter Doug Wolfe documented how the U.S. EPA was running out of funding to finish a cleanup at a federal Superfund site in Springfield. The site, an old Pillsbury Mills plant, was undergoing the bulk removal of asbestos. When the EPA did cost estimates for the project it was unable to get into the plants 47,000 square feet of basements which were underwater resulting in a funding shortfall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjJsf7Fk2fQ&t=192s
Work was scheduled to stop because of the lack of funding during Labor Day weekend in 2017. However, within a week of the WAND story airing, Congressman Rodney Davis, (R) Illinois, helped secure federal funding to complete the project.
In addition to removing asbestos the EPA discovered 14 pounds of mercury, 2,000 florescent lights containing mercury, PCB ballasts, pesticides and hundreds of containers of unknown contents.
The Mid-America Emmy Award Gala is September 22, 2018 in Kansas City, Missouri.
