WEST CHESTER TWP. — After a report of dead crawfish, snakes and minnows turning up in the creek next to an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site, township officials are asking the EPA — again — for ground-water test results from the Skinner Landfill.

        The township requested the results from water running off the landfill in February, but hasn't received them. Officials also have sent a letter to the EPA outlining several concerns about the landfill cleanup that have yet to be answered.

        On Tuesday, a U.S. EPA project manager said the results from tests conducted in March do not show any water seeping from the landfill into the creek and that the ground water tested from the site turned up no toxic material.

        Project manager Scott Hansen also said his response to the township's letter would be coming shortly.

        “All monitoring wells that are out there show nothing has gone off the site,” Mr. Hansen said. “No ground water is going to the creek. Any of the ground water that is coming from the Skinner site that is headed toward the creek is captured in the collection trench.”

        The consent decree requires a ground-water collection trench to the south and east of the landfill to carry runoff to a county water-treatment facility, and wells and monitoring equipment to ensure that any toxic waste remains contained.

        Mr. Hansen maintains that the cleanup is 99 percent complete and has been done according to federal consent decree requirements.

        He said Tuesday he was unaware of the dead animals and fish and pledged to look into it.

        West Chester Trustee Catherine Stoker and a resident who closely watched the cleanup last fall said early this year that they suspect it wasn't properly done.

        The resident, Fred Carroll, took pictures showing what appears to be water leaking from under the 78-acre landfill.

        He also gave the township photos showing large rocks on the cap's layers, something that is prohibited in a consent decree outlining procedures for cleaning up the site.

        “I find it very frustrating that the information we need to proceed with the finalization of this cleanup is constantly being delayed,” Ms. Stoker.

        Last week, fire officials took a report from Marie Roy, who lives on the landfill site.

        She and children at her day-care center there discovered the dead crawfish, snakes and minnows in the creek around the end of May when it rained a lot, according to the report.

        A fire investigator noted in the report that there was very little water in the creek last week because of the drought, but that the water that did pool out was clear and that minnows, crawdads and frogs were present.

        The investigator did not find signs of animal carcasses and there were no unusual odors. “The monitoring wells at the site did not appear to be in an "alarm' state,” the report reads.

        For more than half a century, Skinner was a disposal site for companies and municipalities. The waste included toxic chemicals and construction debris.

        The EPA closed the landfill, off Cincinnati-Dayton Road across from Union Elementary School, in 1990 because of toxic-waste dumping there.

        A federal consent decree calls for an impenetrable cover consisting of clay, a thick flexible liner and two feet of topsoil.

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