By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
Work has stopped at the AvalonBay construction site on Witherspoon Street, as chemicals were found in crushed concrete and other material that were due to hauled away.
The town said Tuesday that the company had notified them last week it had found the presence of polychlorinated biphenyl, or PCBs, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. AvalonBay, which is building 280 residential units in five buildings at the site of the former University Hospital, did further testing. Results are expected in two weeks, the town said.
“In the interim, AvalonBay has fully covered all stockpiled materials and has been wetting the site down daily,” the town said in a statement. A public health advisory has not been issued, although the outcome of the additional tests will inform what next steps are taken from an environmental perspective, the town said.
According to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, PCBs are “man-made organic chemicals known as chlorinated hydrocarbons.”
“PCBs were domestically manufactured from 1929 until their manufacture was banned in 1979,” according to the EPA. “Due to their non-flammability, chemical stability, high boiling point, and electrical insulating properties, PCBs were used in hundreds of industrial and commercial applications including electrical, heat transfer, and hydraulic equipment; as plasticizers in paints, plastics, and rubber products; in pigments, dyes, and carbonless copy paper; and many other industrial applications.”
The EPA said that PAHs are chemicals that can either be “found naturally in the environment but they can also be man-made” and are “created when products like coal, oil, gas, and garbage are burned but the burning process is not complete.”
The EPA said PAHs can enter the body when people breathe them. Tests on lab animals found that airborne exposure to PAHs caused tumors, the EPA said.
Authorities with the state Department of Environmental Protection and the Mercer County Department of Health were notified about the matter, the town said. Town administrator Marc D. Dashield said Tuesday that the state is the controlling environmental agency.
“Until the results of AvalonBay’s secondary testing are received and reviewed, the municipality will not speculate about the conditions of the stockpiled materials,” the town’s statement read.
The town said Avalon Bay “continues keep the stockpiled materials covered and continues to wet down the site for dust control.” AvalonBay vice presidents Ronald Ladell and Jon Vogel did not return phone calls seeking comment.
“Our staff is monitoring the situation, and right now we’re waiting for the results to come back,” Mayor Liz Lempert said Wednesday. “I think the thing that you want to do is you assume the worst and you act accordingly. So the best thing to do at this point, if there is truly contamination in those piles, is to keep them wetted down, to keep them covered.”
Council President Bernard P. Miller said Wednesday that he was “disappointed by the lack of information by AvalonBay and that they have not been forthcoming.”
“This is clearly a situation where we want them to be forthcoming with us and tell us what the results are as soon as they have them. They’ve told us that they would,” Mayor Lempert said of the company.
She was asked if this issue validated the concerns that officials had that AvalonBay should be doing more environmental testing at the site beyond what the state requires. The company last year sued the town over the matter, with both sides reaching a compromise during court-ordered mediation.
“There was a discussion at the time where the council was pushing for more testing and they were pushing for less,” Mayor Lempert said. “Council tried to do the best that it could at the time. And we’re doing everything that we can.”
Councilwoman Jo S. Butler said Thursday that the town installed dust monitors and had hired an environmental expert to monitor the demolition of the former hospital. “We went well beyond what was required,” she said.
