Slag Football

Blame gets passed around when assessing responsibility for a festering industrial site.

by Tom Namako

environment

MOUNDING PROBLEMS: The EPA wants to "cap" this 40-foot pile of contaminated lead, manganese and beryllium. Neighbors want it gone. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

There are a few things that Charles Casey always has within reach while sitting in his Port Richmond living room: his five electric and acoustic guitars, his artwork (the main canvas depicts a field of bald human heads missing a chunk of their skulls) and his dossier on his neighbor, the hazardous waste dump.

He's been reaching for the 2-inch thick file, which sits on his coffee table, quite often lately. It contains information on the 40-foot-high pile of contaminated lead, manganese and beryllium about five blocks away. The file also holds a document describing the federal Environmental Protection Agency's recent plan for the site.

The EPA wants to clean the Franklin Slag Pile by "capping" it, an environmental term for burying pollution under a weatherproof tarp and a 2-foot-plus layer of clay, soil and grass. It's a method that the EPA said is successfully used across the country.

"In other words, they want to keep it right where it is, indefinitely," Casey says. "That's just not acceptable."

Casey's not alone in his feelings. At a meeting held in St. George Parish Hall in late July, about 20 residents and elected officials told the EPA they would like to get rid of it completely.

Residents not only see the pile as unhealthy for themselves and the environment, but also as reinforcement of the area's decades-old reputation as a place where all kinds of waste — from personal garbage to industrial by-products — can be dumped and left to fester.

"This stuff is garbage of some other company who couldn't buck up and get rid of their own trash," says Joe Franchek, who lives a few doors down from Casey on Richmond Street. "Why should we be left to deal with it? It's already made the people around here sick — adults have nerve damage and the children have learning disabilities."

Franchek says proof of this can be seen in the neighborhood. But although lead is known to cause nerve damage and blood disorders, and beryllium is a known carcinogen, there's no scientific evidence of such effects in Port Richmond.

In the early 1950s, Franklin Smeltor and Refining Corp. began chemically refining copper and sent the by-product, a gritty slag that resembled asphalt, next door to MDC Industries. MDC stored and sold the grit for sandblasting, according to a 2000 report released by an EPA contractor. When both companies closed in the late 1990s, the waste was left sitting in a lot that borders Castor and Delaware avenues and a Philadelphia Water Department sewage lagoon that empties into the Delaware River.

"They told the EPA that their liabilities exceeded their assets and that they couldn't remove the waste," says Patty-Pat Kozlowski, who lives near the pile and is City Councilwoman Joan Krajewski's legislative aide.

EPA records list the current owner as Bala Cynwyd real-estate firm Francos Realty, and a Web search for the company lists the name Michael Saltzburg. During a recent phone call, Saltzburg would not say whether he owned the company or the land where the slag is located.

"That was a long time ago," he said cryptically. "No comment."

When both Franklin and MDC closed, they left the pile to sit in the open. Strong winds would blow the toxins around the neighborhood, river and industrial sites — nearby workers told federal authorities that they found the black grains in their drinks at lunch. Rainwater would carry the soot into the streets and drains, according to a 2005 report released by the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

"I remember one morning after some strong winds, everyone woke up with black soot on their cars and in kiddie swimming pools," says Kozlowski. "There was a cloud of black dust swirling in the air."

In 2000, the EPA considered the pile dangerous enough to cover it with a plastic liner as a short-term fix. Residents like Casey think the toxins are leaching into the soil beneath the pile — although the EPA disagrees. After that, the agency considered four cleanup options, with one being complete removal. The major difference, Krajewski and at-large Councilman Frank Rizzo say, is the price tag.

Reports show that capping the slag would cost the federal government's Superfund program, which pays to clean environmental disasters, about $5.6 million. Removing the waste would cost $31 million.

The EPA said the cap is the "best alternative because it's protective of human health and the environment and it protects the slag material from release into the environment," according to Kristine Matzko, the site's remedial project manager. Several factors go into making this decision, she says, and one of them is cost.

The EPA will make a final decision once they finish hearing public comment. (Anybody can write or e-mail their thoughts and concerns to U.S. EPA Region 3, Attn: Kristine Matzko, 3HS21, 1650 Arch St., Phila., Pa. 19103 or matzko.kristine@epa.gov until mid-October.)

Krajewski says that she'd like to see the slag removed and the land used for future riverfront development. "The people of Port Richmond and Bridesburg ... should not have to foot the bill and clean this slag pile up with their tax dollars," she says.

Meanwhile, Rizzo said that if the EPA continues with the suggested plan, he'll try to legislate against it and may take legal action. "I wasn't happy with the EPA's cleanup plan," Rizzo says. "I'll exhaust myself if the EPA is not cooperative and do all I possibly can, even if that means sue, go to court, talk to other members of council or all of above."

Even if the EPA's plan goes unchallenged in the courts or city government, it will still take well into 2008 for the agency to issue a final decision, Matzko says. Joe Petaccio Jr., who runs a printing business in the area, said Port Richmond residents are used to waiting.

"My real problem is [that] it was piled there and no one thought to gradually remove it," he says. "Now it'll take a fortune to fix it. They're doing this too late, when something could have been done years before."

(tom.namako@citypaper.net)