[CPEO-MEF] Armorcast building, Berks County, Pennsylvania

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

[Please excuse the duplicate posting.]

County's redevelopment rooted in brownfields


By Andrew McCue
Southern Berks News (PA)
January 12, 2006


In Berks County, where it was once common to grind up old car battery 
cases and use them for driveways and parking lots, it shouldn't come as 
a surprise that a lot of time, effort and money are going into cleaning 
up messes left by past generations.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania refers to such messes as "brownfields." 
Whether a property is contaminated by pollutants like chemical solvents, 
oil or lead, drinking-water supplies and air can suffer.

One such brownfield, the old Armorcast building in Birdsboro, is 
currently being cleaned up by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

...

The expansive 750,000-square-foot main building, with ceilings almost 80 
feet overhead, once held a military tank factory that operated during 
World War II and the Korean War. Afterwards Birdsboro Steel owned it for 
a long period of time. As recently as four years ago, part of the site 
was used by Universal Concrete of Stowe, according to Willems.
Art's Auto Salvage now occupies much of the property, which straddles 
the borough line - 75 percent falls in Birdsboro and 25 percent falls in 
Union Township.
...

For the entire article, see
http://www.berksmontnews.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15917430&BRD=2694&PAG=461&dept_id=552988&rfi=6


--
Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
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