ENVIRONMENTAL AND BLIGHT ISSUES: In all my years at the Redevelopment Authority, Penn Salt was the most contaminated property we ever faced. More than six decades of chemical production had deposited tons of toxic cryolite on the site, along with TCE, PCE, PAHs, PCBs, pesticides, and arsenic. The environmental problems weren’t limited just to land: A canal coming off the Delaware River that fed into the property also exhibited some of the same problems.
All of this had taken a heavy toll on the company’s compound. During World War II, grass, weeds, and all other vegetation were completely absent from the grounds surrounding the site’s buildings. As the years passed, Mother Nature made a modest comeback. By the 1990s, a hint of life had emerged once more on the property, but it was a stretch to describe the existing scrub brush as “life.”
Atochem had done a preliminary study of the soil and groundwater at the site in 1996. Numerous other tests were conducted and supervised by the RDA, the EPA, and the Pennsylvania DEP. Due to the extent of the environmental problems, the testing went on for almost a decade. The unanimous conclusions indicated that the concentration of contaminants far exceeded acceptable Pennsylvania DEP ACT 2 cleanup levels.
The site’s cleanup began in 2006 and continued for several years. Penn Salt’s campus consisted of two long, single-story buildings with high ceilings and sawtooth roofs that ran parallel to the river. They were surrounded by several other smaller buildings with similar profiles. All of them were razed, and their concrete was crushed and used as a portion of the fill material needed to replace the 43,700 tons of contaminated ground soil that was removed and sent to an EPA-approved landfill.
<– Previous Excerpt