WILDWOOD — In the woods east of his house, Dan Topik can hear the thump, thump, thump of a giant drill burrowing into the ground.

An environmental testing firm has pounded earth for days, churning the soil and grinding rocks in search of something Topik prays does not exist: contaminants buried long ago by infamous polluter Russell Bliss.

"There is just a lot of fear," Topik said.

The city of Wildwood recently approved spending $300,000 to retest the site, off Strecker Road near the border of Ellisville, after a developer bought the property to build 23 new homes. The move came after months of debate about whether the testing was necessary.

Now, there is another, newer concern: "vapor intrusion."

The state's Department of Natural Resources wants to spend $168,000 to retest land around the site and put in eight new wells to monitor ground water.

Don Van Dyke, the site's project manager for the DNR, has told the council that a monitoring well on the Bliss site picked up elevated levels of volatile organic compounds. There is concern that vapors from those compounds could migrate into basements.

The new testing, some council members say, brings into question years of claims that the Bliss property doesn't pose a danger to homes surrounding it.

"For whatever reason, he (Van Dyke) changed his mind," said Wildwood City Councilman Bart Cohn. "And that doesn't instill confidence."

A DNR spokesman says the department is simply responding to new information and that it is too early to set off alarms.

"When new evidence comes along, we act on it," said the spokesman, Travis Ford. "That's what we are doing in this case."

Topik and other residents hope the tests will finally dispel claims of contamination. But what if they don't?

Topik, 71, a retiree, bought a house north of Strecker Road more than a

decade ago. He knew he would eventually sell it and move back to the East Coast near his daughter. A shoddy housing market stands in his way — and now, a cloud of suspicion hangs over the land.

"If I would have known what was happening, I would have never have bought here," Topik said.

18 ACRES, $1.5 MILLION

The City Council in late 2007 gave developer Wesley Byrne permission to build a new subdivision, Strecker Forest, next to Topik's subdivision. Byrne bought the 18 acres for $1.5 million, and he had visions of building all-brick, $400,000 homes.

The land, though, bordered a property where Russell Bliss once lived.

Federal authorities discovered that Bliss, known as one of the worst polluters in the nation's history, used his own land as a dumping ground in the 1970s. He buried hundreds of drums filled with dioxin and poured industrial waste into open pits and storage tanks.

By the late 1980s, the Environmental Protection Agency put the site on a registry of the worst polluted land in the country and eventually paid $6.4 million to clean it up. The EPA also installed three monitoring wells on the Bliss property.

Despite the cleanup, fears of contamination have thrown a wrench in Byrne's plans.

First, a woman who used to live in Topik's subdivision came forward right after the council approved the new development. She told the council that both her son and his best friend became ill after playing in the woods and fields around what is now Byrne's property. The woman's son is in remission with leukemia. His friend died of a rare blood disorder.

A doctor said there was no evidence to connect the illnesses to the pollution on the Bliss property. Still, the story was enough to convince the council to put the development on hold until the land could be further tested.

Byrne later sued the city, saying the freeze on his development was illegal.

The state DNR, the EPA and some Wildwood officials said they believed the land was safe. Only a sliver at the northeastern corner of Byrne's parcel was actually contaminated, officials said. That small corner is downhill from where Byrne wants to build homes, making it seemingly impossible for toxins to migrate there.

The issue lingered until last month, when the City Council approved a new round of testing, hiring Mundell & Associates, an Indiana-based environmental firm.

Byrne continues to argue that the property is safe and says he spent $70,000 of his own money to test it. Some residents, though, are relieved about the new round of tests.

"I'm very happy we are doing this," said Michael Garrett, who lives in Topik's subdivision.

GROUNDWATER WORRIES?

While the city went ahead with tests on the Byrne property, another concern emerged back on the Bliss property.

This summer, Van Dyke approached the City Council to say that a monitoring well was showing elevated levels of volatile organic compounds, such as benzene, in the groundwater.

Van Dyke thought the well might be picking up evidence of material the EPA missed during its cleanup. He investigated for any source contamination but didn't find anything.

Van Dyke hypothesized that the level of pollution on the site was so severe and long-lasting that contaminants had seeped into the bedrock.

"Once contamination is in the bedrock matrix, it's virtually impossible to remove," Van Dyke told the council in August. "Time and time alone can remove it."

Van Dyke turned over his findings to the state Department of Health. That's who raised concerns over harmful vapors that could intrude into nearby homes.

So the state will install eight additional wells on the Bliss site and conduct soil boring to test for vapor intrusion. The cost to install and monitor those wells over the next four to five years is roughly $168,000. The DNR wants to begin installing the wells in the next 90 days.

Ford, the DNR spokesman, said about six homes in the Turnberry Place subdivision, just north of the Bliss site, could be affected. But he added that the department doesn't believe anyone is in danger.

"What we are testing for is the potential for this to happen one day," Ford said.

Even if the tests show some homes are at risk, Van Dyke told the council, the threat wouldn't be that difficult to alleviate. Homeowners would simply have to install a mitigation system, similar to what is used in basements for radon gas.

"If there was a vapor mitigation system in place, I would not care what's under the house," Van Dyke said. "I would not hesitate to live there."

Some residents and council members, though, say the new revelations have only made them more uneasy.

'LAST MINUTE'

Topik remembers the day he closed on his house. Among the signing documents was one that disclosed his home's proximity to the Bliss site.

"Hell, they had the moving van on the way," he said. "And we get this statement at the last minute."

The woman whose son fell ill used to live just down the road from him. Topik doesn't think the Bliss property is to blame, nor does he blame it for his own sickness. A couple of weeks ago, he lost a kidney to cancer. It wasn't pollution, he said, just life.

Today, on the property where Byrne wants to build homes, dozens of black metal barrels dot the land, not busy construction crews. The testing on the land will continue for a few more weeks. A giant air compressor continually hums, helping power a drill off in the distance.

Topik thinks the tests will exonerate the land. But what should he tell a potential buyer?

"I'm not sure I want to ask," he said. "I'm afraid of what the answer might be."