Special Bd. of Aldermen — 10/26/15 Page 16
| think the first we’ve got to do is decide are we doing this or are we getting on the NPL? | mean that is a fairly
simply straight-forward decision. Then the second thing is to go ahead with understanding some of the costs
and what the City can bear in terms of what we get as a solution versus what we invest in it.
Alderman Dowd
If waste at the Fimbel site and the asbestos total removal rather than putting it on top of the existing lagoons, if
we wanted to take that approach and the developer didn’t want to pay for it, then it is either going to have to be
covered by the TIF or city funding, which we would have to address.
President McCarthy
Right. And | don’t think we have numbers yet but we can sit down and add those up and figure out, at some
point we have to do a revenue and cost analysis and figure out what works and what doesn't.
Ms. Taylor Could | just make a clarification, I’m sorry. It was my understanding that the City wanted to hear
what the cost was just to remove the Fimbel waste, that doesn’t include any of the City asbestos waste, so it
would be a separate cost for that. | believe that is about 22,000 cubic yards.
Mayor Donchess
My impression was that because removing asbestos is really dangerous to begin with, exposing it to the air, so
you wouldn’t want to move the asbestos, removal that is sort of never the approach in an asbestos situation.
Ms. Taylor Well we would be moving it. But it would be still on essentially the same property versus going off-
site.
Alderman O’Brien
To help me make a decision, when you said encapsulation, the site can be repurposed for recreational
purposes. Can you give us examples and what are some of those recreational purposes. Will it be safe
enough for children in this development to be able to walk on, play on and will it be monitored and the like. |
think to help me make the decision what do you recommend to make sure we handle it the best way we could.
Ms. Taylor Well to answer those two questions | could say yes and yes. Children would be able to play on it, it
would have a level of top soil with grass on the top and then there is a geo-synthetic or impermeable liner
underneath that so there is really no way to have contamination come up from underneath on to the top soil
and the grass. So kids could play on it; there would be full recreational use. There obviously wouldn’t be any
structures that would be built, there wouldn’t be any digging allowed, of course, because you would dig into the
cap. But other than that, there would be recreational use around that area.
| believe the developer at our last meeting did mention some other things that he wanted to do to increase the
recreational use of that area, potentially creating a walkway, maybe even building a bridge over the Nashua
River so that you could have access to Mine Rivers Park. | don’t know if there was anything else, | mean there
were a bunch of things that are kind of in the works. So he wanted to have a pedestrian walkway from the
Fairmont Street properties and they have access down there.
Mr. Millan-Ramos | think it is essentially that plus the possibility of handing over the southern parcel to the City
for open green space.
