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Internet Links To Gas Works Sites Presently Undergoing Public AttentionOnce discovered in the course of urban renewal, land redevelopment or infrastructure improvement, former manufactured gas plants quickly rise to public attention and activities generally go to quick resolution, not always to favor the environment or public health, however.Here are a selection of Internet sites that will allow you to judge the broad spectrum of response versus non-response. Professor Hatheway would like to know of other links and will consider putting them up on this website for everyone's benefit. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
The Archives (Click here to view other
archived sites under
public scrutiny)--------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Feb --
2008: "Public
Place" -- an historic New York City (Brooklyn) gas works by another name...After simmering on the pot of potential remediation for nigh onto 20 years (since 1980), the site of the historic (1859) Citizens Gas Light Company's 12th Ward Gas Works (AKA Carroll Gardens Station), bordered by the vintage 4th Place and Hoyt and Smith Streets (now 5th & Smith Streets) and fronting on Gowanus Creek (the 1867 Canal was designed by Army Engineer Major David Douglas and took 20 years of negotiation to result in its dredged construction, from 1849), has entered active redevelopment under the new name of Public Place, as a City-authorized private-sector project. The site is complex, not only geologically but also for its past history, which includes the February 1894 explosion of a 40,000 gal naphtha tank (naphtha was a coal-gas residual product), the presence of a U.S. Government toluene recovery plant in World War I, and the heavy-oil conversions of the plant's carburetted water gas generating equipment in the early 1930s. Brooklyn Union Gas Company, the successor owner, decommissioned the plant in 1959 and passed the land to the City, by condemnation, in 1975. This FMGP has been under remedial investigation by several consultants, for the past 23 years (since 1985), as a degree of remedial responsibility passed from BUG to KeySpan, and now to National Grid. The 1892 representation on the Brooklyn City 12th Ward street map (click for large version) shows the large gas yard with three gas holders. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jan -- 2008: SEPA shows interest in the Ripley, Michigan FMGPThe EPA has been conducting a "quiet" resurgence of its once-aggressive campaign to characterize and remediate FMGPs, pretty much shut down in 1993. Since the spring of 2006, individual towns and cities (smaller than larger) have been targeted to move on troublesome riverside or lakeside FMGPS exhibiting gasworks dumps in which toxic plant residuals and wastes are in direct contact with surface waters. The Ripley gasworks site was operated from 1904 through about 1955 and still features its two old gas-making buildings, each significant of the time and architecture, and of the differences between the two gas-manufacturing processes in use there; coal-gas and carburetted water gas. You can follow the story from the interest shown in the "Mining Gazette" of the Upper Peninsula. (full story) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Jan -- 2008: Austin, Minnesota:
The 1905-1935 Austin Light & Heating Co. gas works thermal desorption
treatment is reported upon by the Austin Post-Bulletin (Nathan
Howard; 16 Jan, 2008), with a view of the mobile treatment unit. Given proper
site and waste characterization, competent thermal desorption program offers a
high degree of risk reduction for citizens and the environment and it is a
pleasure to learn that this alternative has been employed. Contaminated site
soils are being removed and desorbed from a 4-foot-thick geologically-controlled
stratum lying at 8-12 feet below the existing ground surface. The unit is
processing the "impacted" soil and PAH tars and light oils at 25 tons per hour
and the treated (at 1,800 degrees F) soils should be safe to return to the
ground for completion of this phase of site remediation. Site exploration and
remedial activities have been going on for at least eight years by Prof. Hatheway's account. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jan -- 2007:
British Gas Works Cleanup Law Undergoes Potentially Sweeping ChangesThe United Kingdom put a Contaminated Land Policy in place in 1980, the year of CERCLA (SUPERFUND) in the United States, and gas works were then noted as general targets of remedial consideration. This was a full four years before the USEPA began to press gasworks owners to declare their sites for remedial assessment. Since that time, however, UK law has allowed gas works to be treated under the general responsibility of the privatized national gas industry. In the process, the many (perhaps 50 percent) derelict gas plants never owned or operated by British Gas plc have languished apart from Britain's strong "polluter pays" remediation policy. Just as you might expect, those pesky backyard gardeners (Bawtry, near Doncaster, Yorkshire) and those developer and infrastructure backhoes are making new discoveries of old and forgotten gas works and other coal-tar sites. Two landmark cases : 1) 2005 (Circular Facilities [London] Ltd. v. Sevenoakes District Council) and; 2) 2006 (National Grid Gas v. Environment Agency) have focused on the remedial responsibilities of those parties judged by government agencies as "knowing permitters;" roughtly equivalent to the American "responsible parties." National Grid is appealing the High Court judgment to the House of Lords, directed by the High Court, to assure a thoughtful review of the generally broad cleanup implications. Property Law Barrister Anna Rabin (London) discusses the future remedial implications of the litigation to date: (full story) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dec -- 2006: Scottish Government Removes 34 Private Homes Resting on Invergordon Gasworks
Site The Scottish Executive has allocated three-quarters of a million pounds to purchase 34 small homes that had been built atop an unremediated former town gas plant. New domiciles have been provided and the gasworks is now slated for remediation and redevelopment. Public funds have been employed here due to the lack of identification of "knowing permitters" who created the pollution. (full story) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dec -- 2006: Bay Shore, NY
Residents Sue KeySpanSome Irate Home owners in Bay Shore, and in the Incorporated Village of Brightwaters, Town of Islip, Suffolk County, New York have introduced litigation against KeySpan, the former Brooklyn Union Gas Company, for the damages suffered from the presence of gas works residuals and wastes below their residences. $40+ million is the estimated clean-up costs for the mile long underground plume of contaminated water produced by now defunct Long Island Lighting Co. manufactured gas plant. Video report on Long Island News 12. (full TV interview) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sept -- 2006:
Much
Consternation over Stuyvesant Town & Peter Cooper Village, on Manhattan IslandThe huge housing complex known as Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, in the lower east side of Manhattan, was constructed between 1945 and 1947, ostensibly to provide big city housing for returning veterans of World War II. This mammoth 80 acre complex was built directly over the unremediated remains of three pioneer New York City gas works, razed to a foot below existing grade. Twenty-two thousand people have lived in these famous mid-rise apartment blocks (some 110 separate buildings) now for 60 years, mostly without knowledge of what lurks below their domiciles. Early in 2006, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, the original developer and only owner to date, put the complex up for bid and the best estimate is that about $ 2.5 billion dollars will be offered by the successful bidder. NYSDEC has not yet declared its intent as to what degree of environmental remediation will be required to recognize this considerable environmental and public health threat. (full story) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aug -- 2006:
Local Gasworks Redevelop Action in Britain Case of the Former Rochester, Chatham
& Gillingham Gas Co. gasworks, Kent County (Greater London)The Derelict Rochester Gasworks, an FMGP orphaned from those acknowledged by Lattice Group, moved forward as the focal point of the massive Thames Gateway redevelopment. £32 million will be spent on brownfield 39 ha. gasworks cleanup, making way for its part in the Medway Renaissance Project, to provide later area-housing for 100,000 people. Some light-oil bioremediation of 1 and 2-ring PAH soil contamination was employed and huge amounts of Thames River channel dredge spoil makes up the landscaping backfill. The actual management and financing has become an obligation of the South East of England Development Agency, and before the £500 redevelopment million project can get under way, the public bodies are funding the £32 million cleanup with the help of cash from the Department of Local Government and the Regions. Everybody's betting an enhanced economy to return the costs through future tax revenues. Meanwhile it would seem that "known permitters" are largely "off the hook" for paying for this outlay. (full story) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
June -- 2006: Public School #156 Sits On Top Of Toxic Site In
Mott Haven, New YorkMott Haven, NY WCBS-TV (full TV interview) Political reporter Marcia Kramer reports on a public school in South Bronx which sits on a toxic site and the school board plans to build four more schools on that same site. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jan
-- 2005: Residents
React To Gas Works Wastes At Pawtucket, R.I. Pawtucket, R.I. (full story & photos) Concerned gas plant neighbors at Pawtucket, Rhode Island have mounted a reasoned and planned investigation into potential presence of dumped and migrated off-site toxic wastes from the former (1885) Tidewater Gas Works of the Blackstone Valley Gas & Electric Co. This reasoned concern is becoming a model for citizen participation where
local residents have come to feel “left out” of the regulatory deliberations
over cleanup of gas works coal tars and other toxic residuals from gas
manufacturing. (click
to continue) The Nocatee-Hull Creosote site (1931-1952) likely is typical of many of these
abandoned wood treatment sites, in which the ground became saturated with
spilled, leaked and discharged treatment-fluid residues. According to the cited
(below) newspaper coverage, this was one of the more primitive types of
treatment, in which the wood was soaked in pits dug into the ground, rather than
primarily preserved by placement in pressure-injection chambers on the ground
surface. Regardless of the manner of treatment, all wood preservation sites
employing coal-tars are subject to consideration as representing locations of
potential human and environmental threats. Some of the sites were close to the
yielding forests and relative further from population centers, and the heavy,
preservation-soaked wood was shipped off the centers of supply. The Nocatee-Hull
site represents such a site, one for which the magnitude of numbers of potential
human receptors is relatively small and therefore the shear numbers of affected
people appear to have led to its relegation to a low priority for cleanup.
BY MARY JO FELDSTEIN
A
former manufactured gas plant in Scranton has been identified by the
Other Gas Works Sites Presently Undergoing Public AttentionProfessor Hatheway would like to know of other links and will consider putting them up on this website for everyone's benefit.
Here is a former manufactured gas plant, of the Pacific Coast Oil Gas variety, known then as Lake Station, constructed in 1937 and decomissioned in 1960. The owner, Seattle Gas Light Co., donated the gas works to the City of Seattle in the early 1970s and the site has been proclaimed safe enough for daily visitations by citizens. It seems that most visitors are joggers and dog-walkers, but the old Compressor House has been cleaned-up and serves as a brightly-attractive children's energy-absorbing playground. The compressors are clean and brightly painted and undamageable from kid-climbing. By no means is the site completely safe from the environmental and public health standpoint, but institutional controls have limited access to those portions of the site felt by the City to represent incidental dangers to visitors. Visit the site at http://www.seattlephotographs.com/photos/gasworks_park/Gasworks_Park_photo_gallery.htm http://www.cityofseattle.net/parks/parkspaces/GASWORKS.htm EXCELLENT website with 360 degree Virtual tours. You will need to have Apple Quicktime installed to view them, but they are a must see: http://www.vrseattle.com/html/vrlist.php?cat_id=64 Arial Photograph: http://www.cityofseattle.net/parks/_images/maps/gasworks.jpg Map: http://www.cityofseattle.net/parks/history/GasWorksPark.pdf "Brownfields to Parks Examples, 1998, Gas Works Park, Seattle, WA The Trust
for Public Land AOL City Guide: Seattle - Gas Works Park
By-product recovery of valuable ammonia and PAH compounds was perfected in the early 1890s by the Belgians who marketed their technology throughout Europe and in North America. The result was the By-Product Coke Oven Plant, making gas for sale by owning utilities ("Utility Plant") or as a commercial venture to make coke (from the roasting of coal) for sale to industry ("Merchant Plant") and to market the by-product gas to local utilities for distribution in their own systems. Consequently not all derelict coke- oven plant sites are owned by the utility industry. The first American by-product coke oven plant was constructed at Syracuse, New York in 1895 and a steady rise in their popularity quickly followed, culminating with an outbreak of plants
The
former manufactured gas plant was installed in 1896 and apparently
decommissioned in 1924 as consolidation of manufactured gas at Chicago eclipsed
the works with higher-pressure carburetted water gas piped to Oak Park from
central stations in Chicago. On demolition, the gas works site was donated to
the City of Oak Park and was converted to Barrie Park, about 3.5 acres of public
ground and playing fields. The north side of the plant site abuts the Eisenhower
Expressway, at Lombard Avenue.
http://vil.oak-park.il.us (using the Barrie Park link) http://www.vil.oak-park.il.us.
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