Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for September 7, 2007 CAIRO HOSPITAL CLEANUP COMPLETED

Cairo hospital cleanup finally completed

By Adam Testa, The Southern

CAIRO - Angela Greenwell worked at St. Mary's Hospital in Cairo during the early 1950s.

In the 1980s, the building was abandoned by its owners and left filled with supplies, medical records and needles, amongst other things, left inside.

"This has been a ghost that's been here haunting this community with its presence for more than 20 years," said Greenwell, now an Alexander County commissioner.

A project sponsored by the Illinois and U.S. Environmental Protection Agencies has been working on cleaning up the old hospital site at 2020 Cedar St. for more than a year. The two agencies, as well as local officials, announced Wednesday the cleanup was completed and the building was ready to be used again.

"We still have the ghost here, but we've cleaned out the guts of it," Greenwell said.

The building was selected as a cleanup site because of Cairo's involvement in the Team Illinois program, said IEPA spokeswoman Maggie Carson. The Team Illinois program helps cities and regions that are in lower socioeconomic status with these projects and other developmental opportunities.

"IEPA really does not have the resources we can target to buildings with asbestos problems like this," Carson said. For this reason, the IEPA and U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's office approached the USEPA about helping with the project.

USEPA spokesman Mick Hans said the build was "a mess" when the agency started working on the project. The building was filled with asbestos, supplies were scattered around and medical records were still in trash piles. Vagrants also had entered the building and scrap metal had been stolen, he said.

Now, the building is an empty shell, but hope is not lost for revitalization, he said.

"There's nothing worth taking out of it now," he said. "While it's beat up, there is some potential for development."

Greenwell said there have already been talks of opening a community service of some sort in the building, but a structural engineer survey will need to be done on the building first. The estimated cost of this study is $25,000.

Early talks have been to convert the building into either an assisted living facility or an apartment complex, Greenwell said. With a coal gasification plant being constructed in town, there may be an influx of people needing housing, she said.