[CPEO-BIF] Capewell Horsenail Factory, Hartford, Connecticut

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

EPA: Don't Make New Brownfields 
It doesn’t make sense to keep funding toxic cleanup efforts while simultaneously loosening regulations.

by TIM SULLIVAN
City Lab
June 4, 2017

When I first visited the Capewell Horsenail Factory in Hartford in early 2014, I saw an all-too-familiar scene—a hulking, contaminated carcass of bygone industrial might. Built in 1905 and designed by a bridge-builder, it was one of the first fireproof buildings in Connecticut, with a brick parapet that looms over the low-slung Coltsville neighborhood that surrounds it. The factory had closed in the mid-1980s. A tree had grown up through the inside of the building, its limbs piercing the shattered windows that looked out onto the nearby homes. Inside, feral animals and more than a few people had taken up residence over the years.

The building was still structurally sound. But the site bore the toxic residue of its decades of industrial use. Asbestos and lead paint caked the building, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) spilled by the metals-finishing work at the factory lingered within the concrete floors and under the building’s foundation. The heavy contamination rendered it nearly impossible to repurpose and consigned it to rot for decades.

If you visit the site now, you’ll find 72 new units of luxury loft-style apartment housing that is helping to spur the revitalization of Connecticut’s struggling capital city, where the median household income hovers just below $29,000.

…

For the entire column, see
https://www.citylab.com/politics/2017/06/epa-dont-make-new-brownfields/529104/

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650/961-8918 
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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