[CPEO-BIF] "New Riverfront Condo Site is on Toxic Land"

[CPEO Moderator <cpeo@cpeo.org>]

Top News Stories
July 27, 2001
http://www.wetp.org/newsbriefs/jul01/nb27jul01.htm

New Riverfront Condo Site Is on Toxic Land 
On a gentle, lumpy hill that runs down to the Hudson River, a landscaper
scatters wildflower seeds. Just a few yards away, residents stroll along a pier
where new riverfront condominiums sell for $700,000. To the south, the sky
rings with the crash of piles being driven into open land, ahead of the hotels,
the shops, and apartments now on the drawing board. 

This is the Promenade in Edgewater, and behind the tidy scene, with its
wide-angle views of the Hudson and the towers of Manhattan, is one of the most
contaminated stretches of land in the northeastern United States. Here, a
developer says he will rescue lost and ruined land by building a tiny, upscale
village on a giant concrete platform, 10 feet above tainted ground. The
builder, Gene Heller, says he is taking advantage of a new spirit in New Jersey
and more flexible approaches championed by Christie Whitman, the state's former
governor and now the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. "At
the end of the day, the property will be far cleaner than it ever was," Mr.
Heller said. 

Yet state and federal regulators say they are being outrun by Mr. Heller,
despite a harrowing spectrum of pollution on his land. Just below the skin of
that newly- seeded hill, for instance, is a slumping gypsum landfill that
officials say is producing a toxic gas, hydrogen sulfide. The condominiums on
the pier were placed there against the wishes of state officials, who pleaded
with the developer to wait for a clean-up of deadly contaminants that are
leeching into the river sediment around the wharf. And beyond the pile-driving
machinery is a wide swath of ground laced with heavy metals and most
prominently arsenic, a lethal poison that is deemed unsafe above 20 parts per
million in soil. Portions of the ground at the site, tests show, are 7 percent
arsenic - or 7 parts per hundred, 70,000 parts per million. 

Full story 
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/26/nyregion/26TOXI.html

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