WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-Contamination Near Burlington Waterfront
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Burlington, Vermont - April 10, 2009
It's that time of year-- people are out in force getting fit, looking for healthy diversions. But just north of Waterfront Park in Burlington, signs now warn of a health hazard. This site is contaminated with arsenic. That's a cancer-causing metal that occurs naturally in the soil, but in this case the culprit is coal.
"This was the site where the Moran Generating Station held the coal pile," said Larry Kupferman, of Community and Economic Development.
The amount here ranges from 35 parts per million to 88 parts per million and even though state environmental officials have known of the contamination for several years, it was never sealed off or removed because of little public use on the land.
"Up until now, these results have been known to folks, but it hasn't really risen to the point of public attention only because there hasn't been a lot of use here, but now that we're planning extensive use of this parcel, we have to comply with the public notice of remediation effort and remediate them," Kupferman said.
This land will get its new lease on life through the redevelopment of the Moran Plant, the former coal-fired electric generating plant. It's expected to house the community sailing center, a children's museum and ice climbing wall. This parcel will turn into new park space, but not until the project is finished and clean fill is placed on top. So is it dangerous now?
"It's not dangerous for walking on," environmental consultant Miles Waite said. "Again, the roots of exposure are either breathing it in or ingesting it. And because it's covered in grass there's not dust generated so you don't really consider the breathing in aspect and there's not many people who eat the soil."
And Waite quotes federal standards that say you'd have to be exposed to arsenic on a daily basis for 70 years in order to have a one in a million chance of cancer. But when you're dealing with public space it must be deemed clean-- period. So state grants of thousands of dollars are helping in the clean up here-- inside and out-- but until the project is completed a few years from now, this area will remain closed to the public.
Bridget Barry Caswell - WCAX News
