joelekane t1_isiuqxe wrote
Interesting. It’s a former chemical factory now a parking lot. It’s being cleaned up as a part of the Brownfield Program and they are complaining about the VOC mitigation not being up to snuff. Might be true—but they also want to halt development, which will stall completely remediation, prolong vapor exposure and importantly—keep the Site an environmentally contaminated one.
Maybe I’m biased since cleaning up these Sites is what I do for a living—but the complaints made about the environmental cleanup feel a bit disingenuous and put forward with alterior motives.
Physical_Language144 t1_isjpro3 wrote
There are also 2 elementary schools facing the site. Not sure if this was raised in the complaint, but at least at one of the schools they are unable to open the windows in an attempt to minimize exposure - I think complaints about making sure the site is as safe as possible is fair in this instance, while attempts to block the development entirely are futile.
joelekane t1_isjscgu wrote
Understood.
Just to be clear, as a part of redevelopment under the Brownfield Program the Site is required to develop an environmental remediation plan with review/approval and oversight from both the Department of Environmental Conservation and Department of Health. This includes the Community Air Monitoring Plan which institutes the continuous air quality monitoring requirements for the Site. Additionally, the Brownfield program requires periods of community review and comment on all these workplans. They send out notices to all neighbors, community boards, schools, elected officials in the area and send them notification that these plans are up for review.
All this is not in defense of the remediation quality at this Site or dismissing their complaints—but rather to say, this is not being done completely in the dark. There is mandatory government oversight of key agencies and community involvement in this process.
[deleted] t1_isjg83o wrote
[deleted]
joelekane t1_isjp7yr wrote
100%. Langan is like a report mill.
I don’t have enough info to say whether there is negligence on the part of Langan in this instance. Temporary work shutdowns from CAMP happen on jobs. Which it sounds like you know. Especially when you are working with potential mercury vapor—which is a lot higher stakes than typical CAMP monitoring analyses. I haven’t read the RAWP but I assume the threshold levels are very low.
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