A special meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held Tuesday, October 2, 2018, at 7:10 p.m. in the
City Hall Auditorium.
President Brian S. McCarthy presided; City Clerk Patricia D. Piecuch recorded.
Prayer was offered by City Clerk Patricia D. Piecuch; Alderman Linda Harriott-Gathright led in the Pledge to
the Flag.
The roll call was taken with 14 members of the Board of Aldermen present; Alderman Gidge was recorded
absent.
Mayor James W. Donchess and Corporation Counsel Steven A. Bolton were also in attendance.
COMMUNICATIONS
From: Brian S. McCarthy, President, Board of Aldermen
Re: Special Board of Aldermen Meeting
There being no objection, President McCarthy accepted the communication and placed it on file.
PRESENTATION
Mohawk Tannery Presentation by EPA Officials
President McCarthy
Tonight’s agenda item is a presentation from the Environmental Protection Agency regarding the Mohawk
Tannery. | will introduce Melissa Taylor from the EPA who can introduce the other people who are with her
and deliver the presentation.
Melissa Taylor, EPA NH & RI Superfund Section Chief Thank you very much. My name is Melissa Taylor and
| work for EPA. | am the manager of the New Hampshire and Rhode Island Superfund Program of which
Mohawk Tannery is one of the sites that we have in our section. This is Gerardo Millan-Ramos, he is the
project manager for the Mohawk Tannery site. We also have Kelsey O’Neil who is our Community
Involvement Coordinator for EPA and that is it from the EPA.
I’m not sure what format you would like to have us work on but I’d like to say a few just opening points and
then maybe hand it over to Gerardo to kind of go through a few slides of the presentation if that is ok with you.
President McCarthy
That would be fine.
Ms. Taylor So the reason why we are here today | think is two-fold. The Mayor had a meeting back on
September 13" and a few things were raised at that meeting that we'd like to hopefully address today, if that’s
what you want. More importantly, we really believe that we are at the crossroads and that we have a unique
opportunity to work cooperatively with the State, the City and the developer on a common sense solution to the
site that takes it out of its current stalled state and returns it to productive use at a reasonable cost to the
taxpayers.
The administration recognizes this opportunity and placed it on their administrator's special emphasis list back
in 2017. We have been working with the City, had many conversations with the City, the State and the
developer over the past year on this approach to the clean-up.
