The rants of Mr. Greenpeace have been distilled into a nice story by Tim Stelloh about Oyster Shell park. It’s a must read, and raising some intriguing questions. I’vm pulled some highlights:
That report - along with numerous violations the DEP issued the city during the 1970s - describes a landfill from another era: Garbage was left uncovered or burned, sending plumes of smoke into the air. An unknown number of drums packed with aluminum chloride sludge were dumped there by King Industries, the Norwalk-based chemical manufacturer, the DEP report said. The chemical is used to disinfect slaughterhouses and manufacture rubber. It is also a component in antiperspirant, according to the federal Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry.
The DEP and the federal Environmental Protection Agency inspected the dump a few years after Esposito announced the Heritage Park plan. The agencies found harmful contaminants like pesticides, benzene and PCBs at levels exceeding state regulations but determined the site did not pose a serious public health risk, said Doug Zimmerman, an environmental analyst with the DEP.
Neither agency has visited Oyster Shell since 1994, and officials did not know whether the drums containing aluminum chloride remain beneath the park.
This tainted history led the city to cap the landfill with 18 inches of clay, an impermeable plastic sheet and 6 inches of topsoil before proceeding with the park, said Martin Overton, the former assistant director of the city Department of Public Works.
David McKeegan, an environmental analyst with the DEP, said he could not specify how long these caps last. But absent hurricane-force storms or other stressors causing erosion - like kids on dirt bikes, for instance - the cap can last “for a very long time,” he said. Protecting public health requires a good maintenance plan, he said.
OK when is the city going to get around to having the DEP check out the site?
This transformation of a 13-acre trash heap into a park is how Overton, the controversial self-described “champion” of Oyster Shell, became involved with the project in the early 1990s.
“It was in the dead center in one of the most important economic development centers in Norwalk,” Overton said from his office in Middletown, where he is an engineer with Malcolm Pirnie. “Because it was not closed or benign, we couldn’t sell development space around it. Closing it became part of our economic development, and public works got involved to do the technical part of building the park.”
The way Overton describes it, he threw himself into the project. Over the next several years, he helped plan the capping of the landfill; he organized a “huge” advisory board for the park; and he got involved in aspects of park planning that wouldn’t traditionally be in the purview of a public works employee - a fact that still frustrates and confuses some city officials.
“The problem from the beginning is that it was supposed to be a landfill cap,” said Michael Moccaie, director of the city Department of Recreation and Parks. “Then (DPW) got involved in park planning. They weren’t schooled or educated to do that. There were problems with the original designs because they didn’t have the experience. This was over nine or 10 years ago. The director of parks at the time didn’t get involved either because he didn’t ask, or because DPW felt it was doing the right thing.”
Overton painted a slightly different picture. Because the project lacked a champion in the parks department and hadn’t garnered the political will needed to be completed, he said he was forced to assume the role.
Is Overton the same guy who “overlooked” contamination at the site of the Police Station in South Norwalk and others in South Norwalk by hiring the types of contractors that would not follow DEP guidelines?
Another dispute came after Oyster Shell Park’s grand opening back in 2001. Overton said the park was opened and used for a long time but was ultimately shut down because the parks department refused to take over because of outstanding public safety issues.
Moccaie, however, said Oyster Shell was never opened. “It was always cordoned off,” he said. That grand opening was only for a walkway between the Maritime Aquarium and Mathews Park, he said. Now, no clearly marked signs indicate that the park is closed, and visitors can be seen fishing, riding bikes or walking pets through the park.
There are no signs posted that it is a former landfill and that it is not open.
Overton’s department raised a red flag because the contract’s lowest bidder - Site Remediation Inc. of East Windsor - had a sketchy financial history, according to department records.
Overton recently said the company didn’t even own its own equipment.
Though DPW didn’t support hiring Site Remediation, that recommendation was overruled and the company was hired, Overton said. A series of problems followed during the dredging, leading to lawsuits and countersuits.
“They didn’t know how to use their equipment efficiently,” he said.
Former Common Council member Richard Bonenfant said one of the contractor’s cranes once fell into Mill Pond.
Bonenfant also recalled a contractor cited for leaking hazardous waste from his dump truck, which was carrying dredged material from Mill Pond to the landfill. That waste, he said, was being used for the cap at Oyster Shell.
Though Overton acknowledged that the cap material was contaminated with mercury, he disputed Bonenfant’s hazardous waste claim.
“I was told by a guy from the DEP that there is more mercury in a mercury lightbulb than in that material,” he said. “At no point was that material ever hazardous.”
Perhaps someone should be digging, literally, into what was used to cap Oyster Shell park. Mecury is a contamination that stays put.
About 1,200 cubic yards of waste was dumped next to a trail that meanders alongside the I-95 bridge, according to city documents. Now, a large rectangle of mostly barren dirt is where piles of construction debris once sat. No official interviewed knew who was responsible for the dumping, but Walter Briggs, the former head of the Oyster Shell Advisory Committee, said the city should have tried to track the dumper down.
“We threw that back in DPW and Redevelopment’s lap,” he said.
Ah yes. Briggs likes to throw problems into other departments/committees laps. And he thinks these are good qualifications for being mayor?
“The landfill was capped and grassed, and ready to be adopted. After that, people illegally dumped. We did not find who did it,” he said. “Sometimes it’s impossible after the fact to identify the source.”
That additional cleanup and capping will cost the city more than $300,000 - $59,000 to design a plan to fix the problem, $259,000 to cap the area where the garbage once sat and $7,000 for a final survey to make sure the area is in good shape, said Hal Alvord, DPW’s current director.
That process has held up the park’s progress because the city couldn’t obtain a certificate of closure from the DEP, officials said. The certificate is required for the site to be used as a park.
“One of the questions I have is if the landfill was capped, why did the city not seek a certificate of closure?” Alvord said.
Overton said that’s not the way it works: “If you’re trying to create features, you don’t close the landfill first,” he said. You add all the park elements atop the cap - such as ponds and trails - then get the certificate, he said.
Regardless, that second cap is nearly complete, Alvord said. After years of setbacks and additional procedural requirements, the project might move forward.
Searching for a pearl
The next chapter in the saga, said Susan Sweitzer, a senior project manager with the city Redevelopment Agency who’s overseeing Oyster Shell, will include construction and park improvements that should begin early next year. The city now has more than $1 million to spend on the project - $800,000 from a state loan and $350,000 from state Rep. Lawrence Cafero, R-Norwalk.
But it will still cost an estimated $3.9 million to $4.8 million to finish the entire park, according to a master plan for Oyster Shell drawn up last year by a city consultant.
Much of that could be covered by grants, as the city is trying to build a park that’s the first of its kind, according to Tom Tavella, a landscape architect with BSC Group of Boston.
I would hope that the environmental issues get a hard look before money is spent “greening” the park.
source: Advocate, City hopes for a pearl as it tries to complete Oyster Shell Park, By Tim Stelloh, August 12 2007
