Continued
"Who
knows what's leaching and oozing out of the park," said Nick
McCormack, who lives nearby at 1 Osborne Ave. "I think if this
town goes further (with development plans), they should be informed
of the liability."
McCormack
is worried about old garbage from the dump ending up in the harbor.
On
a recent afternoon, he plucked more than a dozen ancient-looking broken
bottles out of the park's southern shoreline during low tide.
"This
is like a bottle collector's dream," he said, wiping caked mud
from large green and blue shards.
David
McKeegan, an environmental analyst with the state DEP's Waste Management
Bureau, said harbor waters could be eroding the park's shores and
uncovering waste.
Although
it is unclear whether these bottles are from the dump, they highlight
how little is known about the landfill's legacy.
"The
environmental side of this has got to be considered," said Laurel
Lindstrom, the head of the East Norwalk Neighborhood Association and
an outspoken critic of the park proposal. "The city shouldn't
be taking a lead on this unless they've done their homework and have
assessed" the park, she said.
Mocciae,
however, said that because the dump was a place for people to toss
junk like mattresses and boxes, an environmental investigation is
unnecessary. Parks Committee Chairman Fred Bondi agreed.
"I
don' think there's anything wrong with the soil," he said. "It
hasn't been a concern in the years that I've been around."
But
City Historian Ralph Bloom said it is not entirely clear what was
dumped there.
More
than a century ago, Bloom said, there were no baseball fields at Veterans
Park. There were no parking lots, and there was no oyster festival;
it was all marsh.
But
beginning in the early 1900s, the marsh was turned into a city dump.
This
was long before state environmental regulations required landfills
to use special liners and collection systems for contaminated water.
It also was before more modern capping systems were used to close
dumps.
Back
then, said McKeegan, garbage was often dumped and burned, leaving
behind ash and nonburnable materials.
McKeegan
said opinions are divided as to what does less harm to the environment.
Modern landfills might keep contaminated runoff from bleeding into
groundwater and soil, but they also can act as "dry entombments,"
where waste does not decompose, he said.
When
the Washington Street bridge was built on the south side of Veterans
Park in the early part of the last century, the city demolished some
buildings along Seaview Avenue to build approaches to the bridge,
according to Bloom. He said it is possible that the remains of those
buildings were hauled to the dump.
He
said he also remembers cars dumped there.
"It
was municipal, and it was very disorganized," Bloom said. "But
what's down there? I don't think anyone really knows."
Dumping
continued until the 1960s, when the landfill began to resemble a park,
he said.
Because
the state DEP does not have data on the park, McKeegan could not say
what problems, if any, the dump's remnants may pose.
Though
these problems are not likely, he said he would want to check for
gases from decomposing waste that could creep through the soil. He
said he also would look for problems with future construction, such
as a foundation cracking because of different waste decomposition
rates.
One
instance where a recent park renovation went awry was in Stamford,
McKeegan said.
As
the city was working on new additions to Kosciuszko Park - which also
is the site of a former city dump - it used contaminated soil dug
up from the park to prepare new baseball fields, McKeegan said.
That
dump operated during the 1960s and '70s, and was mostly used for building
debris. It had been permitted by the DEP, according to McKeegan, but
the city was never authorized to close the landfill or turn it into
a park without properly sealing it.
The
contaminated soil was discovered in 2002 - after the city decided
to spend $3 million on new ball fields and gazebos. The park finally
reopened last weekend, after the city set aside more than $1 million
for remediation work.
The
DEP did not exist when Veterans Park was a dump - or when that dump
most likely closed - so there was no state permitting process, and
Norwalk was not required to get approval from the DEP, as Stamford
was.
But
McKeegan said that even when that's the case, his department can require
that it oversee a project such as the one at Veterans Park.
"One
could make the argument that this a closed landfill, and even though
we didn't permit it, we might still have jurisdiction over it,"
he said.
