A number of contaminated properties in New York’s Lower Hudson Valley are getting cleaned up and redeveloped as residential projects.
But are they safe places to live?
Developers and environmental remediation advocates say yes because the cleanups are typically regulated by the state Department of Environmental Conservation. The contamination often involves pollution from former automotive, chemical or industrial uses.
Not all brownfield-to-residential conversions have gone smoothly. In 2010 the DEC fined a developer $100,000 for not properly following a remediation plan at the Ferry Landings residential site in Tarrytown.
The cleanup included the excavation of former manufactured-gas-storage structures and approximately 21,000 tons of contaminated soil, installation of coal-tar collection trenches and dredging of contaminated sediments.
Three thousand tons of soil contaminated with petroleum was removed from former oil-spill areas and the DEC required more work when the incomplete remediation was discovered.