Baltimore City dumped a huge mound of toxin-laden dirt in a city park and refused to remove it, brushing aside tests confirming the dangers, according to internal documents obtained by The Examiner.
Construction managers for the city told the contractors to leave the dirt at a Wyman Park site near a private school in the city?s Remington neighborhood in November, despite it having twice the toxicity level allowed by the Maryland Department of the Environment, the documents state.
Neighborhood leaders say the documents confirm their worst fears about the dangers of the mound in the site in the middle of a residential area near the Johns Hopkins University Homewood campus.
“It?s really difficult for me to process this,” said Joan Floyd, president of the Remington Neighborhood Association. “We asked them repeatedly about environmental problems. We did everything we were supposed to do.”
?Somebody was … careless?
Steve Warner, principal of the nearby GreenMount School, which uses the park next to the construction site, said, “Somebody was evidently careless.”
In November 2007, city contractor Whiting-Turner Contracting Co. alerted city officials of possible contaminated dirt excavated from a construction site across the street for a water pumping station.
In a memo sent to city officials in the Department of Public Works on Nov. 29, 2007, Whiting-Turner warned of possible contamination of the dirt left in the park.
“While performing excavation … several subcontractors on the site noticed a strong odor,” the memo reads. “[We] immediately notified a testing agency to take tests from the area.”
Tests conducted in November 2007 by environmental engineers Penniman & Browne found the dirt had 10 times the acceptable level of diesel fuel. At that level, state law requires the soil be treated and moved to a safe location.
City told of hazards
But in the memo, city officials told contractors to leave the dirt in the park, the documents show.
“The diesel-contaminated soils excavated from the site are to be stockpiled separately and then reused for fill in the same area that it was excavated from,” wrote Joe Paplauskas, a construction supervisor for the Department of Public Works in a Dec. 10, 2007, memo.
David Scott, director the city?s Public Works Department, which is overseeing the construction, said the soil was not dangerous.
“It is not a hazard to the community,” Scott said. “It is similar to soil around a gas station that gets contaminated with gas. … We expect the levels will have dissipated, and we expect to put it back better than it was and restore the park.”
MDE: Mound should have been removed
But MDE spokesman Herb Meade said the soil should not have been left at the park.
“It should not come in contact with human beings,” he said. “So it should be moved. It should not have been sitting there like that.”
Meade said the city will retest the soil to see whether the toxicity levels have dropped since it was initially excavated.
“They are going to resample the soil in the next couple of days,” he said. “The levels may have decreased.”
Terry Harris, executive director of the Clean Up Coalition, an environmental advocacy group that monitors toxic waste sites throughout the city, said diesel fuel is hazardous to humans.
“Let?s be clear: This is not stuff you want around children,” Harris said. “Clearly, it should be moved immediately. It is a hazard.”
