Activists criticized a just-approved consent order governing the cleanup of a contaminated site next to a Baltimore park.
“It shouldn?t take three years or five years to clean it up,” said Bishop Douglas Miles, a spokesman for BUILD, a community organization that advocates for low-income city residents. “They can do it in a few months.”
The consent order between the city, Honeywell International and the Maryland Department of the Environment sets guidelines for clean-up at the site of the former Allied Chemical pesticide plant next to Swann Park. The agreement allows three years to complete “remedial” work, and five years to complete final “corrective work.” City officials closed the park in April after Honeywell found high levels of arsenic in the soil.
Anthony McCarthy, spokesman for Mayor Sheila Dixon, said: “There is no timetable yet for cleaning up Swann Park, but the mayor expects it to be completed before the end of the year.”
The City Board of Estimates approved the decree on Wednesday.
“It?s too slow,” said Terry Harris, spokesman for The Clean-up Coalition, a local environmental watchdog group, said of the cleanup plan for the former plant site. “Honeywell can basically decide what they?re going to do.”
But Honeywell officials said the plan was reasonable.
“We will be working closely with Maryland Department of the Environment throughout the cleanup,” said David Wickersham, spokesman for Honeywell. “We haveto first evaluate the soil and run tests to develop a plan.”
City officials praised the plan.
“The mayor approves of the consent order because it will immediately initiate full testing and analysis of the conditions at the Race Street site to determine if there is any imminent public health danger. This is first and foremost,” said Andrew Frank, deputy mayor for neighborhood and economic development.
But environmentalists argued heavy contamination at the site required a faster and more intensive cleanup.
“Thirty years ago, they took bulldozers and bulldozed all the buildings and capped [the site]. It didn?t work, so now we?re back where we started,” Harris said.
“It is a horribly nasty toxic mess.”?
