FAIRMONT — The city of Fairmont presented its plans to remediate the Helmick Manufacturing Plant site to city residents at a town meeting Thursday night.
The city is applying for a $1.5 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to pay for the rehabilitation of the former industrial site so it can be used for recreation. To strengthen its bid, the City needed community input to submit with its application.
“One of the things that will help get the application approved is the positive comments from the community,” said Anna Leisher, Montrose Environmental Group Inc. project manager. “So we will welcome any comments. But positive comments will help you strengthen the app, especially if you’re a community member.”
Based in Pittsburgh, Montrose is acting as a consultant for the city’s grant application.
The city collects comments through an online form. Leisher said government grants used to accept a bunch of letters of support, but they’ve discontinued that method of gathering community input. Instead, public comment is collected by the City and submitted with the application.
City Planner Shae Strait said the City envisions a soccer field, multi-purpose sports fields and supporting amenities such as grandstands. But before the land can be repurposed, the toxic features built up by years of industrial use must be sealed.
Leisher said the City considered various alternatives, such as removing the contamination at the site or doing nothing. Direct removal of the contamination would require the soil to be trucked onto city streets, potentially spreading industrial pollutants and disrupting the surrounding community. Doing nothing would prevent the City from repurposing the land for recreation. Leisher said they decided on the method with the least impact and best chance of success.
“The youth soccer field would be covered with a permeable membrane to allow water to pass through,” Leisher said. “And then 10 inches of clean topsoil, and then to plant turf on top of that.”
Similar caps would be used for the multipurpose sports field area and other parts of the proposed park where people will visit.
One resident asked why the City didn’t just use a centrifuge to pull the industrial contaminants out of the soil so it could be reused. Based on his experience working on Superfund projects in the ’80s and ’90s, he said it could reduce cleanup costs.
Montrose geoscientist Leah Mistick explained that metals are extremely difficult to remove from soil.
“If we were to start digging up the soil and centrifuge it, there may be places where the contamination is higher,” Mistick said. “It could spread further than we originally thought. We might end up having to clean up more because we’ve exposed it now and you can’t just put dirty land back.”
Strait added that he trucked in all the dirt, and replacing him would double the size of the project, putting it at $3 million and making the application less competitive. Leisher also added that the way the Superfund and Brownfields programs are managed are very different from each other.
Landgate.com says Superfund sites are highly contaminated and require federal cleanup. Brownfields, however, have potential pollutants that can be remediated with state and local support. Mistick said contamination studies show the contamination is within expected Brownfields norms.
Andy Wharton, who is involved with several soccer organizations in the community, expressed concern that the Helmick Site project would suffer the same outcome as the Big John Salvage site next to the Sharon Steel site. Wharton said the Big John Salvage site has been in the cleanup for 10 years. He wanted to make sure the same thing wouldn’t happen to Helmick.
“This is taking a while because it’s a Superfund site,” Strait said. “It’s different than this, we go straight to the federal government and say, ‘hey give us the money and we’ll do it.'”
Strait added that Fairmont has had a successful history with the EPA, receiving three grants from the agency in the past five years. However, in the event the EPA does not award the $1.5 million grant, Strait said the City plans to reapply each year until it receives the money. Once the site is cleared, it will be ready for recreational development.
Wharton found the City’s presentation satisfactory. However, he said that if the City provides cleanup funds, it wants the cleaned-up site to be used in the best way possible.
“Put in the weed, turn on the lights, park,” he said. “I hope we’ve done what we have to do to make the project work, not just do the project.” That would be the only thing. The other things around him are great.”
The deadline for public comments is November 4. The comment form can be accessed on the City’s website or in person on the third floor of the J. Harper Meredith Building.