Sustainable Land Development Today - April 2008 - (Page 21) maintained the fabric of the community. Such a development would address a large, long-vacant, environmentally impacted site, improve property values in the adjoining neighborhoods, create much needed new housing stock for middle-income residents in the urban core area of the city, and return a large piece of property to the City’s tax rolls. contaminated soil elevated costs and was at odds with the city’s emphasis on sustainable design and was not economically feasible. Professional Ingenuity With the approval of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ), Dr. Harless and his team designed regulatory specifications for an alternative, sustainable, on-site solution. They had clean soil excavated from The Challenge In 1997, the City of Monroe teamed with Crosswinds Communities to bring its dream to reality: Mason Run was born, but the growing-up part would not be easy. The property was contaminated by about 42 acres of cinder/ash fill averaging two feet in depth, coal pile residuals, and areas of soil contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), gasoline, lead, arsenic, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and other hazardous constituents. It also was the location of 350,000 square feet of buried plant basements, and the buried foundations and vaults of a wastewater treatment plant, constructed on and filled with industrial and cinder/ash fill. Remediating the more than 140,000 cubic yards of contaminated cinder/ash fill, the chemically impacted soil, and the impacted fill and residual industrial contamination in and around the basements and other structures did not pose a significant technical challenge for brownfield professional James M. Harless, Ph.D., C.H.M.M., R.B.P. (Soil and Materials Engineers, Inc., Plymouth, MI). He and his team also took on the challenge posed by more than 110,000 cubic yards of fill and concrete in the 350,000 square feet of buried basements, pits, footings, foundations, and other structures that had to be removed before homes could be constructed, as well as the bedrock a dozen feet below grade that had to be dealt with. The real challenge was logistics…and significant costs. The initial cost estimate for preparing the site was $9-10 million, including the cost of replacing the two-foot-deep layer of cinder/ash fill that covered the 42 acres site with clean soil to facilitate utility installation. A typical approach to dig, haul, dispose, and replace the beneath the road rights-of-way (ROW) and parks and had the cinder/ash fill excavated from the residential lots. Then they had the cinder/ash fill encapsulated as inert fill beneath the pavement in roadway ROWs, and under at least two feet of landscaped, clean soil in the parks. The native soil they had removed from the ROWs and parks was then installed as a replacement for the impacted, coal-ash fill removed from residential lots. Stormwater Management Systems Our Product Line Includes: ° Detention Protect downstream channels from erosion. • Recharge Preserve existing ground water table elevation. • Infiltration Temporarily store WQv allowing infiltration into soil. • Filtration Remove 80% TSS, nutrients, hydrocarbons and trace metals. • Separation Remove suspended solids, free floating oil and debris. www.rotondo-es.com Circle 195 • or www.SLDTonline.com/webcard www.SLDTonline.com 21 http://www.rotondo-es.com http://www.rotondo-es.com http://www.SLDTonline.com/webcard http://www.SLDTonline.com
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