Special Board of Aldermen 03-15-2021 Page 9
“unfortunately” but | had many dealings with that area over in my previous career, traversed it. As you
know, the topography in some places there’s some pretty good valleys going down to the river and stuff like
that. Would removal of the top soil that is contaminated, would that be used to smooth out the topography
that is currently, naturally there right now? Would that be in turn, in such a way, become a buildable area
with that base underneath.
Director Cummings
| don’t know Alderman O’Brien whether the top soil or not, or where that top soil is that you’re talking about.
| think anything that has contaminated soil has been represented to be part of the encapsulated area. So |
think everything, as | understand it, everything in the site is “contaminated” and again | am going to define
the site, the project site is Mohawk Tannery, Fimbel Door and partially some of the City’s right-of-way which
has asbestos on it, would all get consolidated into a certain area and get capped. My understanding is this
capped area is significant, 2 to 2 ’ acres would all get consolidated in one area with the theory being you’d
have some usable land to develop.
Alderman O’Brien
Follow-up if | may Madam President?
President Wilshire
Alderman O’Brien.
Alderman O’Brien
| don’t know, someday if you want we’ll go for a walk through it. But from what | remember there are a
couple of valley and stuff like that. But | would like to share Alderman Tencza’s anticipation. Right now if
we don’t do anything with this, it is not going to go away. The thing is we have a good history with the old
Sylvester Facility that is off of Gilson Road. That was something that we did receive the Superfund help
with. But there’s been no leakage, as a matter of fact, the area is greatly improved and so | think the EPA
does have a way in dealing with a lot of this. It would be probably great to see this area come back,
particularly for the health of the neighborhood as mentioned by Alderman Clemons. Thank you.
President Wilshire
Alderman Dowd?
Alderman Dowd
Yes. A couple of things. A few of us attended the EPA briefings back in the day and they provided how
they would encapsulate all of this material. They've done it several places and it was a fairly safe way of
encapsulating it. They basically build a damn around the area and pour the material in and it can’t leak out.
| understand that the EPA would be monitoring it and it would become their responsibility. And then they
cap it. | think that perhaps it might be a good idea to get that briefing one more time because we have a lot
of new people who haven't seen it.
The other thing is that this whole project won’t go anywhere if we don’t allow the developer to develop the
property after they encapsulate the material because otherwise why would he spend that money? My other
concern is, and | don’t know if we have ever considered it, | know we keep talking about it is going to tie
into the Broad Street Parkway or Veteran’s Parkway if we get that far. But have we thought about is it
going to be a stop sign, a traffic light? Have we done a traffic study as to what we think the number of cars
would be? That will have to be done at some point, probably not right this minute, that would have to be
done at some point because | think from the discussions we had, including the Tamposi piece that there
could be a lot of traffic coming out that area and it might have to be a traffic light. Well, who is paying for it?
