Crab Orchard Wildlife Refuge has housed industry since it was brought under control of the federal government in the 1940s. Wildlife preservation and weapons manufacturing don't typically go together, and Crab Orchard has a history of environmental problems.

From a few yards back it appears the rusted metal pole with the dull red light protrudes from the top of a hill. It sticks out at an angle, partly hidden by brush.

But a closer look shows the light pole is attached to the top of an abandoned building, one of many at Crab Orchard Wildlife Refuge. The man-made hill surrounds the decaying structure on three sides, hiding it from view.

Before the light pole and the building were abandoned in 2006, the red glow served as a warning to those near the structure: explosive chemicals were being mixed inside. That mix would then be used in detonation devices for explosives.

The scene is a strange one for a wildlife refuge, but Crab Orchard has long been home to weapons manufacturers and other industrial tenants as well as deer, fish and bald eagles. The refuge, five miles west of Marion on the border of the Shawnee National Forest, is intended to preserve wildlife habitat while simultaneously providing space for industries. Balancing the interests of wildlife and industry has been complicated, and the problem makes the refuge relatively unique.

The industry housed in the refuge has long served as fuel for the Southern Illinois economy, although most of the companies that employed local residents have left the area in recent years. General Dynamics, a company specializing in military technology and weapons production, is the only major industrial tenant left on the refuge.

Bob Butler, who has been the mayor of Marion since 1963, said the industry at Crab Orchard once employed many of his town’s residents.

“At one time there were literally thousands of people employed in the industries in the refuge, but very few of those jobs are still there,” Butler said.

Sangamo Electric, which produced electric meters, was one of the largest employers, he said. But the company relocated to South Carolina in 1962, and much of the rest of the industry has moved out since then.

Many of the facilities, which were mostly built after World War II, eventually began to deteriorate and the tenants left.

Messy Renters

 Some of Crab Orchard’s industrial tenants, including Sangamo Electric, have left behind major environmental problems that posed risks to wildlife as well as humans.

Dan Frisk, manager of Crab Orchard, said waste disposal practices that were common during the 1960s and 1970s, when industry boomed on the refuge, were mostly to blame.

“That was just status quo back then that you go to the back forty and dump things out,” Frisk said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency added Crab Orchard to its list of Superfund sites in 1987, meaning there was abandoned hazardous waste in the wildlife refuge. Major cleanup projects have taken place since then to rid the land of the contaminants, some of which have washed into the water.

The cost of those cleanup projects is paid largely by “potentially responsible parties,” the companies that most likely caused the problem in the first place, said Leanne Moore, senior operable unit specialist at U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services. Some of those businesses, like Sangamo Electric, have been bought out and their successors now pay the bills.

Pollution is a problem in many parts of the refuge and Crab Orchard Lake is no exception.

Like a number of bodies of water in the state, the Illinois Department of Public Health cautions against eating too much of certain species of fish caught in the refuge’s lake.

Children and women of childbearing age in particular are warned against eating largemouth bass from the lake more than once a week, according to the 2008 Sports Fish Consumption Advisory. Carp and channel catfish are not safe to eat more than once a month, according to document released by the Department of Public Health.

The three species of fish have been shown to contain potentially unsafe levels of polychlorinated biphenyl, a contaminant once used as a coolant or an insulating fluid. In the 1970s the U.S. government banned the production of the chemical, which tends to accumulate in animals after repeated exposure.

Many fishermen seem to know that the advisories exist, although many also say they are unclear on the details.

Frank Knight, from Cape Girardeau, said he had been fishing at the lake for two years. He said he had heard about contaminants in the fish, but he didn’t know many specifics.

“Is there really anything to any of that? I don’t know,” Knight said.

Michael Kinley, from Carterville, said he took the warnings seriously, although they didn’t keep him from fishing at the lake. Kinley said he took a common sense approach to the situation.

“I just don’t eat a bunch of them all the time,” he said.

It’s no surprise there are PCBs in the lake. The pollutant drains into the lake from the land, some of which is very contaminated, said Paul Lake, Crab Orchard project manager with Illinois EPA.

Lake said his agency has done cleanup work at the refuge, but most of its effort has focused on the land.

“That’s where the sources of contamination are,” he said.

Much of the PCB contamination can be traced back to Sangamo Electric. The company stored much of its waste in a landfill that drained into the lake.

Lake said there is still PCB contamination at the refuge, and some of it is not easily removed. One difficult site is under buildings now owned by General Dynamics, although Lake said the weapons producer did not contribute to the contamination. The pollution probably came from a previous tenant, Lake said.

An Explosive History

The history of the Crab Orchard area before it became a wildlife refuge is partly to blame for the environmental problems.

From 1941 to 1945 the land was owned by the War Department, which apparently used it to manufacture explosives, according a study released in 1997 by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services. An intact land mine was discovered on the site during research in the mid-1990s, according to the study. Beth Kerley, contract compliance specialist at Crab Orchard, said a similar piece of live ammunition was discovered in the refuge in 2007.

It appears that when the land was owned by the War Department the government tested explosives containing trinitrotoluene (TNT) on the site. The amount of TNT detected 50 years later, when the EPA first began to clean up, was so high that about 800 pounds of soil had to be incinerated because it was potentially explosive.

The refuge still houses bunkers where explosive material is stored. Kerley said the renters, who range from General Dynamics to fireworks producers, store their supplies at Crab Orchard in part because of laws against storing such explosive material in town.

The area near the bunkers is mostly off limits to the public, but Kerley said fishermen occasionally wander in to toss a line into a nearby pond. One of the bunkers, most of which are partially underground, exploded in 1998, she said. The explosion was caused by an accidental chemical reaction and it sent the thick metal doors flying across the road.

"The top just cracked open," she said.