Council's Rezones Section of Commerce Park
By Art Harvath
After a lengthy debate the Huntington city council finally rezoned a section of the Commerce Park development project from I-1 to C-1, which could allow for a subsidized housing project on the controversial site. The council voted 7-3 Monday to rezone the property located in the city’s west end. Councilmen Jim Ritter, Tom McCallister and Charlie Thompson voted against the rezoning Ordinance. Councilman Larry Patterson did not attend the meeting.
The state Department of Environment Protection must now approve the site for residential use. Bob Childers, owner of the site, is voluntarily cleaning the site under the State’s Voluntary Remediation Program of contaminated sites.
David Farley, a state DEP environmental inspector, questioned whether the site was suitable for a housing development where children would be playing. He said the property had been used as an industrial site since 1927 and it has been subjected to a number of chemicals used in heavy equipment repair, paint and solvents. Farley said he would expect those solvents to be in the ground water below the site.
“When they get into remediation it allows them to deal with this outside of a regulatory application like I would apply,” said Farley. “I’ve seen about every industrial site in the state…In the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s things were not done very well.”
John Meeks, a senior geologist with Triad Engineering and a licensed remediation specialist, told the council he is the licensed remediation specialist responsible for the Commerce Park site. Meeks said his firm has worked four years at the project. Childers hired Triad to oversee the Voluntary Remediation. The state DEP recently awarded a $113,000 contract to Triad for Phase Two testing of the Black Diamond site, which is adjacent to the Commerce Park development. Childers also owns the Black Diamond site.
“This is a four year process that we are now in, and I know that you guys are about 30 minutes into it ” Meeks told the council. Meeks said that PCB’s were not detected at Commerce Park. Previous studies have revealed other contaminants at the site, including lead and other solvents now banned by the federal and state environmental protection departments.
“There are hundreds and hundreds of samples that have come from this site and been analyzed, and certainly all of the ground water monitoring wells have been analyzed, and the ground water monitoring wells are in their third year of analysis,” said Meeks. He told the council that there were parts of the site that were contaminated. However, Meeks did not bring the data with him to the council meeting.
“I wish I had known we were going to get into the complexities of this because I would love to show you charts and maps and graphs and all that good stuff, but I don't have them with me,” said Meeks. He told the council that he can face criminal penalties for falsifying or not reporting the results of his studies to the proper environmental authorities.
Huntington resident Frances Jackson, a member of the Huntington Planning Commission who voted against the rezoning of the site, asked Farley if he would put his children in a proposed child care center at the Commerce Park site.
“No I would not,” answered Farley.