Watch Out For That Dust

The public health danger posed by the former nuclear manufacturing facility on Shelton Avenue isn’t its few remaining uranium-impacted walls, but rather its toxic wealth of lead-contaminated dust and asbestos fibers.

A General Electric expert delivered that message to Newhallville neighbors concerned about the building’s demolition.

James Van Nortwick, the manager of General Electric’s Corporate Brownfields program, returned to that message about the dangers of hazardous dust again and again Tuesday night in an hour-and-a-half presentation and public dialogue with the Newhallville Community Management Team.

The conversation focused on GE’s imminent remediation and demolition of the former United Nuclear Corporation site at 71 Shelton Ave.

Forty people filled the cafeteria of Lincoln-Bassett School on Bassett Street to learn more about the demolition plans, and to pepper Voan Nortwick and the half-dozen local, state, and federal regulatory officials present with questions about the safeguards in place to ensure that the surrounding neighborhood isn’t stuck with any kind of toxic — or radioactive — effects when the blighted building next door is finally taken apart.

“It’s falling down,” Van Nortwick said about the current state of the building. ​“That’s not a good thing.” The building is in such disrepair that it can’t just stand in its current state for any longer. GE has to demolish it soon, he said, or else the building will likely fall of its own accord.

Van Nortiwck assured the neighbors present that GE will follow a comprehensive containment, remediation, and demolition plan that the company has developed in conjunction with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the U.S. Department of Energy, the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, the state Department of Public Health, and the city Health Department.

Click here for a detailed project fact sheet and timeline, as put together by GE and Prospect Hill/Newhallville Alder Steve Winter.

All of those regulatory agencies, Van Nortwick said, will be providing third-party supervision over the year-long demolition process. GE, DEEP, and the city will also be laser-focused during that time on making sure that no dust escapes the site during that time.

“That is really the main culprit,” he said about the lead and asbestos-contaminated dust.

As for any radioactive threats? At this site, he said, they don’t really exist.

About 19 percent of the dilapidated 61,500 square-foot building contains any kind of low-level uranium impact leftover from when the facility was used to manufacture nuclear fuel components for the U.S. Navy, Van Nortwick said. And that remaining nuclear contamination is embedded solely in the building’s walls.

“I can walk through the building,” Van Nortwick said, and be just fine — from a nuclear hazard perspective. The entire site, however, teems with lead paint-contaminated dust and asbestos fibers.

GE and its contractors will be continuously monitoring the air quality on the site over the course of the 12-month demolition process, he promised.

They’ve already installed a privacy screen and fencing around the site, he said, as well as dust suppression devices, air monitoring machines, and a weather monitoring machine.

The company will soon begin abating the remaining asbestos and lead-based paint hazards before it starts demolishing the building structure, the concrete slab, and the foundation. That demolition work should extend from November through October 2020.

Any uranium-impacted concrete will be packed into Intermodal Containers and then trucked along a state Department of Transportation (DOT)-approved route to a railyard near the North Haven border before being trained out to a disposal site in Utah, he said.

The company will then dig up and replace six inches of contaminated soil beneath the current site and replace it with clean fill, gravel, and grading.

The end product, he said, will be a cleared and leveled parcel of land available for any kind of allowable use by the site’s owner, Schneur Katz of Zsy Development LLC.

When we’re all done, Van Nortwick said, the site will be available for ​“unrestricted use” — as if there had never been a nuclear manufacturing facility on that very spot.

What If?

Despite Van Nortwick’s assurances, neighbors had plenty of questions — - about demolition details, about safety precautions, about the risks present to their community.

“Tell us which way it’s going,” Newhallville Alder Delphine Clyburn said about the planned trucking route for the containers that will be holding the uranium-impacted materials. Neighbors need to know about how the radioactive contaminants will be ferried out of their neighborhood, even if Van Nortwick is primarily concerned with lead and asbestos dust, she said.

The route is not yet finalized, Van Nortwick said. It ultimately has to be approved by the state DOT, and has to receive state sign-off every day that trucks are traveling.

Right now, he said, the planned route is for the trucks to go down Shelton Avenue to Dixwell Avenue to Elm Street, past the top of the Green, and then up State Street to a railyard near the North Haven border. The containers will then be loaded onto trains and transported to Clive, Utah.

The most truck trips on any given day over the course of the remediation and demolition will be 18, he said.

“This is a very short distance,” city Acting Health Director Roslyn Hamilton said about the truck route — only two blocks before the trucks hit Dixwell Avenue.

Plus, she added, the building needs to come down now — there are just too many dangers associated with leaving it standing and risking collapse.

“This is not something you want to leave in the neighborhood for another 100 years,” she said.

What about these intermodal containers? Prospect Hill/Newhallville Alder Steve Winter asked. How secure are they? Have they ever accidentally opened on a previous radioactive waste disposal project?

They’re heavy steel ​“spec containers” with lock-down lids, state Supervising Radiation Control Physicist Michael Firsick said. ​“It’s designed to ship hazardous materials.” When Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory remediated a former nuclear power plant in Windsor in 2006, he said, they used thousands of these containers — and there wasn’t one spill.

“This is not new,” he said about the planned remediation and radioactive contaminant removal process. ​“This is not breaking ground.”

But what if? Ward 20 Democratic Committee Co-Chair Oscar Havyarimana asked. What if something does go wrong? What if someone does breathe in hazardous dust and gets sick? What will happen then?

Van Nortwick said that, indeed, one of his team’s top priorities is making sure that no lead or asbestos-contaminated dust leaves the premises. If anyone at any time on the site sees a dust cloud, he said, they’re authorized to stop all operations so that GE can make sure the cloud is suppressed and that that doesn’t happen again.

The company has installed a variety of fine misting devices to spray water to keep the dust contained at all times.

“Water’s going to keep the uranium down?” Read Street resident Bob Smith asked with concern.

There’s no glowing uranium on site in the way that one thinks of radioactive material from the movies, Van Nortwick said. Even the uranium-impacted materials would in the dust, just like the lead and asbestos. And the best way to keep that dust contained is through water.

“No one’s going to be breathing the dust,” he said. ​“It’s all about fine mist spraying and dust control.”

And when the site is finally all cleaned up, Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Branch Chief Anthony Dimitriadis, the state and federal regulators that have been monitoring the remediation throughout the process will conduct an independent survey to ensure that GE’s work is indeed done.

Who officially owns the site? asked Newhallville resident Adair Franklin. And what do they plan on doing with it once the site is clean?

“It’s privately owned by a local developer in this city” who also owns the building right next door, city Livable City Initiative (LCI) Executive Director Serena Neal-Sanjurjo said about Katz. Right now, she said, ​“there is not a plan for any development.” The sole plan is to get this site clean and to a state where it can be used again.

“Shame on us in Newhallville for not getting” this property earlier, management team Chair Kim Harris said. The community should be able to have some say in what will ultimately go on this site, she said: The community has borne the risk of living next to a dilapidated former nuclear manufacturing facility for decades. But, come next fall, it will have limited control over how that parcel is ulimately used.

Towards the end of the meeting, Downtown resident and former mayoral candidate Wendy Hamilton gave a raucous presentation arguing that the building should be left standing as it, that it presents no harm to neighbors in its current state, and that disturbing anything on site will only create undue risks. She accused GE of paying no corporate taxes, of scamming seniors, of being as unpopular a corporation as Comcast, and, more pertinently, of potentially filling the neighborhood with exhaust fumes and heavy truck traffic through this hazardous material disposal plan.

“This is a dog,” she said about the property. ​“Let’s give it a kiss and send it back home.”

Her presentation sparked a series of concerns from Newhallville residents about whether or not GE was being honest about its demolition plans, and about how residents might be able to make sure that they aren’t stuck in a similar situation, with a dilapidated former industrial building filled with health hazards right next door to where families live, in the future.

“We need to attack them in their pockets,” suggested Brother Born, a lifelong Newhallville resident and former alder candidate. Alders and the city should consider filing a class action lawsuit against GE, he said. His grandmother died of cancer, his father died of cancer, and he is well aware of a seemingly high rate of cancer in the neighborhood that may or may not be related to this facility.

Clyburn and Winter promised to be in close contact with the GE, DEEP, and the other relevant local, state, and federal regulators over the course of the demolition project. Winter held up the fact sheet he helped GE put together, and noted that he went door to door on Shelton Avenue in the run up to the meeting, getting the word out about the planned demolition and about Tuesday night’s management team meeting.

“I think this is a reasonable plan,” he said, ​“but the thing is, it’s got to be followed.”