Dan's Papers - September 5, 2008

On September 22, and until at least May if not Memorial Day 2009, the world as you know it in Sag Harbor will change. The new world order in the Village will feature road closures and as many as 40 trucks a day loaded with class 2 hazardous waste moving through the streets. In an airtight tent, hazardous waste will be put into plastic bags, loaded onto enormous dump trucks, and trucked out of Sag Harbor to off-Island dump sites, where the contaminated soil will be destroyed by high levels of heat (e.g., burned).

In a lightly attended public presentation of plans held on August 27 at Pierson Middle-High School, National Grid employees Ted Leissing and Sara Aldridge (as well as two consultants at tables set up with information) tried to explain the stages of a plan that will affect most of downtown Sag Harbor. The consultants moved around the room to insure all questions were carefully answered. Amazingly, National Grid, which provides electricity and gas to the Northeast, is by their own definition "a London based" company - a euphemism for the fact that it is foreign-owned.

The plan is to first build a 15-foot wide soil wall around the 2.2 acre site. Then the moveable, pre-fabricated white tent-like structure (in which contaminated soil will be loaded into the trucks) will be erected and relocated as needed around the site. Inside that space, a 6-15 foot layer of contaminated soil will be removed and loaded into bags, then trucks. At the same time, wells to "recover" liquid contaminates will be constructed to collect, then treat, up to 750,000 to one million gallons per day. That liquid will be discharged via an above ground pipeline into Sag Harbor's outer cove. The consultant, no name given, went out of his way to explain the water would not be drinkable pure, but would be within legal limits of treated water before being discharged. A "dewatering system" will be used to lower the ground water level at the site.

Bridge Street at Long Island Avenue will be closed during the entire project (September '08 to May '09). Portions of Long Island Avenue will be closed intermittently during the project and portions of the Village parking lot will be used for the duration. Residents can also count on daily detours and changes in traffic patterns in that very busy part of town near the post office.

Julienne Moses, a local condominium owner near the site, attended and expressed her concern about almost every aspect of the project, perhaps truly understanding the scope of what's going on and the inconvenience it will cause. Taking the other side was Roger Hathaway of ENSR - the company hired by National Grid to do the project. Hathaway and ENSR have managed around 150 sites to date, including the most recent in Nyack, New York. He described the project as, "not terribly risky ... digging a big hole basically."

However, the more he explained the loading of the trucks with the contaminated soil the more risky the whole project seemed. He assured those in attendance that no truck would leave the enclosed tents with any contaminated soil exposed on it in any way - that is, not on the tires, hood or any part of the exterior of the truck. He said there is a process, involving a variety of foam and other sprays, that would make sure there is no residue on the trucks. I hope now, knowing that 40 of them daily will be traveling through the heart of Sag Harbor, that he is correct.

According to the National Grid official Sara Aldridge, after the soil is removed, the hole will be "backfilled using certified clean soil from a local source." Also at the meeting was Renata E. Ockerby, a Public Health Specialist, of the New York State Department of Health's Bureau of Environmental Exposure Investigation. She was basically rubber stamping the claims National Grid was making, saying New York State Department of Health is okay with this plan.

The contamination itself is the result of a manufactured gas site constructed on the location back in 1859, that ran until 1931. In that year, "gas production ended." However, the huge blue ball, called a Hortonsphere gas storage tank, remained on the site owned by LILCO as part of the Long Island gas delivery system, until it was dismantled in 2006. Keyspan, a successor to LILCO on ownership of the site, signed an agreement around 1999. National Grid now owns Keyspan - or as they phrase it - Keyspan has become National Grid. The above mentioned plan was part of an agreement with the New York State Department of Conservation signed on March 31, 2006. The Record on Decision Remedial Action Work Plan and other documents pertaining to the Sag Harbor site are available at the John Jermain Public Library in Sag Harbor.

The bottom line is this: Starting September 22, anyone driving near the post office will be inconvenienced. And in the very heart of Sag Harbor will be a site actively handling the removal of Class 2 Inactive Hazardous Waste, which by definition "represents a significant threat to public health and/or the environment and requires action."

Not surprisingly, some people are concerned that digging up this soil will be stirring up some major problems.