Powder Farm Takes First Step Toward Remediation

After decades of stasis, the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) and the Olin Corporation have taken the first steps toward remediating the Powder Farm in southern Hamden, with an eye to transforming the over 100-acre parcel of land from environmental hazard to forested public park. But there’s still a long road ahead.

That was the message from a public meeting held at Keefe Community Center at 11 Pine St. in Hamden, at which DEEP officials laid out the process for testing the soil and water at the Powder Farm in order to create a plan for remediation that — once completed — would allow for the possibility of opening the land to the public.

Hamden Mayor Lauren Garrett started the meeting by looking out over the crowd of about 80 people, observing that ​“this is a much better turnout than we expected.” Justin Farmer, who represents District 5 on Hamden’s legislative council and has joined the decades-long efforts to turn the Powder Farm into a park, echoed Garrett’s enthusiasm for the turnout, saying that it would be ​“one of many, many meetings to be had.” 

“We want everyone to know that we have this beautiful gem in our backyard,” Farmer said. Ray Frigon, director of DEEP’s remediation division, agreed. Inside the property, he said, ​“you get the feel that you’re miles away from civilization” and it could be ​“a great amenity” to the surrounding community. 

Frigon was ready to brief attendees on what DEEP and Olin would be working on beginning as early as ​“the weeks ahead,” he said. ​“We’re getting rolling again.”

Starts And Stops

Frigon’s comment doubled as an apologetic acknowledgement as he walked the audience through the property’s history. The Powder Farm, bordered by Treadwell Street, Leeder Hill Drive, Putnam Avenue, and the Farmington Canal Trail, has had a fraught history. Winchester Repeating Arms Company bought the land, then known as the Pine Swamp, in the 19th Century to store gunpowder. Winchester — bought by Olin Corporation in 1931 — then used it as a firing range and as a site for burning hazardous materials, also dumping battery waste, toxic chemicals, construction debris, and other materials there.

In 1966, Hamden’s Department of Public Health ordered Olin to stop burning and dumping its waste at the Powder Farm, with which Olin complied. The site then became dormant. In 1969, Hamden residents formed the Hamden Land Conservation Trust with the purpose of buying the land from Olin to turn it into a park, which did not succeed (the trust now manages several other wild spaces in Hamden and participates in numerous conservation efforts). Olin demolished the structures it had built on the site, including bunkers to store gunpowder, in 1975. In 1979, the town assessed the feasibility of turning the land into a park, but no action followed.

In the 1980s the site underwent a series of environmental investigations of the land and water. Based on those results, in 1986, DEEP — then called the Department of Environmental Protection — issued a consent order, a ​“legal agreement between DEEP and Olin Corporation,” Frigon said, that required the corporation to remediate the site.

Here Frigon paused. ​“Why are we now just pushing the matter?” he said. ​“I’m here with the answer.”

Based on the consent order, Olin did some remediation of the site in the 1990s. Then, Frigon said, ​“things kind of went dormant. I can’t explain why that was.” (Frigon wasn’t working at DEEP at that time.) In 2006, DEEP put following through on the consent order ​“back on track.” That same year, however, Olin was in the process of decontaminating 66 acres in the Newhall neighborhood based on a previous consent order — the old Hamden Middle School and many residences — and both parties agreed that with limited time and personnel to devote to both projects, the Newhall remediation had to take priority. Newhall’s remediation ended in 2014, and Olin began sampling sediment and groundwater at the Powder Farm. But then changes within DEEP and a lack of staff led to the agency dropping the project again.

“More recently,” however, ​“we got an incredible team” together at DEEP and ​“we’re looking at some of these older legacy cases that we need to move, and we recognize that this is one of them,” Frigon said. In the past year, DEEP has brought Olin ​“back to the table” to discuss, at last, completing the remediation of the Powder Farm.

“They do understand their obligation is to clean up the entire site,” Frigon said.

Changing Standards

One problem, Frigon said, in waiting so long to complete the terms of the 1986 consent order is that the order itself is out of date. ​“It’s a vintage consent order at this point in time,” he said. Likewise, said DEEP environmental analyst John Duff, DEEP and Olin can’t use the data from the 1980s to construct a remediation plan today. Under the terms of the consent order, Olin must conduct the work, from investigation through remediation, with DEEP oversight. ​“Olin’s going to have to look at everything again,” Duff said. Modern environmental studies can detect pollutants at lower concentrations, and with greater accuracy, than studies did in the 1980s, Frigon said. In addition, in the 1980s Olin’s cleanup plan focused on just a few areas of the site. Current standards dictate that Olin sample all of the property for possible remediation.

The 1986 consent order provides some guidance for how to proceed, however. DEEP already knows of two burning grounds on the property that raise concerns about metals from shell casings, PCBs (which are carcinogenic), and chemical waste. Olin remediated one of those spots (by 1980s standards) but not the other. In another location, Olin filled part of a wetland with incinerator ash and other debris, creating a ​“two-foot thick ​‘blanket’ of waste fill covering 22,500 square feet.” That area, possibly contaminated with lead, PCBs, and other substances, got partial but not complete remediation in 1990. Olin also filled a glacial kettle on the Powder Farm with demolition debris. The soil below is contaminated to an unknown depth. Finally, the consent order points to two more areas where Olin disposed of batteries, debris, and chemical waste. Both of these sites received only partial remediation. 

Applying today’s standards to the 1986 order, DEEP has identified numerous other smaller issues across the property, from an area used for target practice, to places that used to host machine gun mounts and brick bunkers, to an area of exposed slag and demolition debris.

In addition, DEEP would like to revamp the consent order. The 1986 document had no schedule for work or deadlines for remediation written into it. ​“That’s one of the errors,” Frigon said, that he would like to fix. 

Duff and Frigon stressed that so far Olin has proved a ​“pretty willing participant” in talks about revisiting the consent agreement and rejuvenating remediation efforts. So far that effort begins with soil and water testing this summer. The results should be back in the fall, giving DEEP and Olin the end of the year to review the data and begin discussing a remediation plan.

The Long Road Ahead

Though the meeting was cordial — with DEEP officials receiving rounds of applause at certain points for returning to the Powder Farm case — in the Q&A that followed the presentation, Frigon sought to frame expectations for how long a remediation process could take, while meeting attendees sought to inject urgency into the effort. Attendees asked for specific schedules and deadlines. Frigon agreed on their importance, explaining that a revamped consent order would surely include them, but it was too early in the process to solidify them now. Attendees also asked for annual meetings with DEEP staff about progress on the project, to which Frigon agreed.

Frigon stressed that DEEP’s involvement with the Powder Farm case began and ended with assessment and remediation work, which Olin would conduct through a third-party environmental consultant.

“The next step that we’re doing here,” he said of the studies about to begin regarding current environmental conditions at the Powder Farm, was to figure out ​“how bad it is and how far does it go, vertically and horizontally.” That, he added, may require ​“a couple rounds of testing” to replace ​“a body of data that is decades old.… That refresh is, in my opinion, a good thing.” 

The more thorough the assessment, he added, the more thorough a remediation could be. Under the consent order, Frigon said, ​“Olin can’t back out” of remediation. ​“Should they default on this order, we go to court.” One attendee asked whether anyone would check on Olin to make sure it was conducting its assessment and remediation right. ​“John’s our man,” Frigon said, gesturing toward Duff. ​“John is watching.” But talk of noncompliance on Olin’s part, Frigon added, was purely hypothetical at this point. ​“We do not see them running from their responsibility,” he said.

One attendee expressed frustration that DEEP had taken so long to pick up the Powder Farm case. Frigon validated it. ​“I’ll give you that all day long,” he said. ​“We’re going to take that hit.” But he stressed that ​“we’re on this now, like a dog with a bone. We’re not letting up on this.”

Frigon pointed out that Olin would still own the land after remediating it. DEEP’s participation would end there as well. What happened next would be up to other parties.

Kathy Czepiel, lands communication specialist for Save the Sound, informed attendees about the Six Lakes Park Coalition, a network of organizations and citizens working together to ​“realize the dream” of turning the Powder Farm into Six Lakes Park.

“We have to have patience,” she said, noting that the Hamden Land Trust’s effort had started in 1969. But the community could have an active voice in the process that followed. ​“What does the community envision for this property?” she said. Articulating that vision ​“can affect the remediation plan.” She lobbied for the big turnout for Thursday’s meeting to keep happening, as it ​“lets our public servants know that we care about this property.”