Sellersville Superfund development

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Sellersville considers plans for 32 townhouses

By Charles W. Baum
News-Herald (PA)
July 21, 2004

After proposing more than a half-dozen development plans for a 10-acre
tract in Sellersville over the past 20 years, Park Ten Inc. may finally
have found one that both the developers and borough officials like.

The Lansdale-based development firm Monday night presented a new sketch
plan which calls for 32 homes on the Superfund cleanup site at 12th and N.
Main streets, a vacant and largely wooded tract located just south of Faith

Baptist Church.

Attorney Edward Mullen, representing Park Ten, presented two alternative plans
that he said would "lessen the impact" on the tract, part of which is a former
dumpsite.

The site was a former landfill prior to the 1950s, and the U.S. Gauge in
Sellersville reportedly dumped radium and dial coatings there prior to World
War II. TCE, a suspected cancer-causing agent, was discovered in core samples
and the tract eventually was declared a federal Superfund site in the early
1990s. The state DEP and federal EPA oversaw a cleanup of the site, with
contaminated soils removed and shipped in special containers to Utah. The
process, initially estimated to cost $2 million, topped $6.7 million and took
over two years to complete.

for the entire article, see
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1306&dept_id=187826&newsid=124&920&PAG=461&rfi=9