Digging deeper on the field fixes at Greenwich High
With federal and state approval in place for the plan, the town has begun work on a project to seal in place soil contaminated with high levels of PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, on the athletic fields at
Greenwich High School.
Cleanup of fields six and seven in the northernmost end of the 55-acre campus on Hillside Road started several weeks ago, and is expected to end by the Sept. 1 start of the new school year, according to Amy Siebert, commissioner of public works.
Some PCB-laden soil near the surface of the athletic fields will be removed and carted to sites licensed to receive the contaminated soil. But heavily PCB-contaminated soil that sits 11 feet below the surface in two parts of field six will go undisturbed, to be kept in
place by an “engineered control,” which the plan describes as layers of clean stone and geotile fabric.
Both fields will be topped by new artificial turf surfaces.
Approval of the GHS plan by the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection marks a significant change in the approach to managing PCB soil contamination. For more than 40 years, soil with PCB levels as low as 1 part per million had to be carted to approved landfills, a costly and time-consuming process. The two hot spots on field six registered 223 ppm and 51 ppm.
Both EPA and DEEP officials were asked to describe what has changed in their thinking about the safe disposal or containment of PCBs, but they have not yet responded.
Town officials eagerly anticipated approval of the new remediation method because it saves many millions of dollars. While no specific details were available on project costs, the DPW budgeted $2 million for the work in the fiscal year that started July 1. It has budgeted $8 million in each of the next two fiscal years and $2 million the fiscal year after that.
Work to be completed this summer, according to Phase 1 plans developed by AECOM, an environmental consultancy working for the town, includes removing soil, constructing the clean crushed stone and geotile barrier, and installing new artificial turf surfaces on fields six and seven.
It also calls for carting away petroleum-contaminated soil in the courtyard between the main entrance to GHS and the swimming pool, as well as some minor cleanups near Cider Brook Mill, which is near the southern boundary of the campus.
Phase 1 includes removing some contaminated soil near the concession stand at Cardinal Stadium. The Board of Education is in the middle of trying to win approval for a new stadium, which would include extensive new digging at that site. It is not clear what implications the EPA and DEEP approvals have for any new construction on site.
Phase 2 is a much more complex remediation problem, AECOM told a sparsely attended public meeting last December. “Fields two and three are a bigger job [than fields six and seven]. There is more soil to move and any capping would be
Cleanup of fields six and seven in the northernmost end of the 55-acre campus on Hillside Road started several weeks ago, and is expected to end by the Sept. 1 start of the new school year.
more complicated,” the official said.
Plans for Phase 2 have not yet been presented to the town. The timetable discussed at the end of 2019 called for the plans to be forwarded to the DEEP and the EPA this summer, but that has not yet happened.
It seems out to be describing a Phase 1 in a project that has been in the works since 2011, when PCBs were unearthed during excavation for the GHS Auditorium, also known as MISA.
It will be at least three more summers before fields two and three are cleaned. The campus has been a construction site since then, and now the town is looking to build a new Cardinal Stadium.
The approval of the “engineered control” method of PCB management bodes well for a similar plan being developed to clean Western Middle School fields, which have been closed since the summer of 2016 when soil tests were positive for PCBs and other toxins.
The DEEP is expecting a submission of a plan for Western fields soon, according to Jeff Wilcox, the DEEP official working on the Greenwich field projects. “The town has asked to ‘meet’ to discuss the path forward. We haven’t set a date yet, but expect we’ll meet in the next few weeks.”