Camden’s clean-up of Tannery Park continues, redevelopment invitation bids to circulate

Lynda Clancy

Mon, 03/18/2019 - 6:00pm

CAMDEN — Almost 14 years after the first initiative to eliminate toxins from the Camden-owned parcel on Washington Street known as Tannery Park, another round of clean-up is soon to take place. This time, the town is hoping to collaborate with potential developers to move from decontamination of the 3.5 acre lot to its redevelopment, and a new mix of commercial and community use.

Currently, the town’s planning director, Jeremy Martin, is working with the Camden Economic Development Advisory Committee to craft a request for proposals for the parcel’s redevelopment. That RFP, to be circulated in the near future after the Camden Select Board gives its OK, will include the Tannery Park guiding principles (approved at Camden’s 2008 town meeting) that advise any redevelopment of the parcel.

Concurrently, work is to proceed on another soil decontamination effort. The planning process is to take approximately six months, but the actual work will take three to six weeks, said Environmental Engineer Stephen Dyer, who is with Ransom Consulting Engineers and Scientists, the Portland-based consultants who have been working with Camden on the soil and groundwater clean-up of the former tannery land since 2015.

He was at the March 12, 2019 Camden Select Board meeting to report on progress-to-date on the tannery soil and ground water decontamination.

The site, renamed Camden Tannery Park in 2018, has sat vacant, albeit not abandoned, since 2003, when the Camden acquired the land in a lien foreclosure (see brief history in box below).

Buildings were torn down in 2005 and the lot, with the Riverwalk pathway along the Megunticook River, is an anchor point in the neighborhood known as Millville. Citizens walk their dogs there, and during the warmer months, the Camden Farmer’s Market sets up shop on the lot.

At the regularly scheduled March 12 meeting, the Camden Select Board heard from engineer Dyer, who is now helping Camden deploy another grant, this time a $200,000 Environmental Protection Agency grant to further clean-up and market the lot.

The EPA had noted in April 2018 when awarding the grant that: “The 3.5-acre cleanup site operated as a woolen mill from 1887 to 1953 and then operated as a tannery until 1999. The site was acquired by the town for back taxes in 2003. Unsafe tannery structures were removed in 2004 using a municipal bond, and the town used its 2007 EPA Cleanup Grant to clean up the most contaminated portion of the site. However, more than half of the site is still contaminated with metals and other industrial contaminants. Grant funds also will be used to prepare public outreach materials, and hold community meetings.”

Those community meetings are to be held to inform the public about the clean-up efforts to date, and any future clean-up plans.

In 2017, Camden Town Manager Audra-Caler Bell wrote in her successful EPA grant application: “Over 100 years of heavy industrial operations has left a negative and blighted legacy on our target area and more importantly the working class residential neighborhood that surrounds the site. Despite our best efforts to cleanup and market the property, the Site remains contaminated and undeveloped, with potential interested parties rescinding interest due to the environmental conditions that remain on the Site.”

She continued: “In 2004, Camden issued a municipal bond to pay for the demolition and removal of the unsafe tannery structures; the Town is currently still repaying this debt.”

Dyer reported March 12 to the Board that in 2015-2016, his company had assessed the prior environmental remediation of the parcel and determined the site was moving toward successful decontamination. But, there is more to do.

In a 500-page 2016 Phase II Environmental Site Assessment report, Ransom consultants had written: “Based on the findings of our Phase I ESA, Ransom identified controlled recognized environmental conditions associated with documented soil and groundwater contamination at the Site, which was associated with historical Site operations as a tannery. Specifically, previous environmental investigations, which were conducted at the Site from 1996 to 2008, identified petroleum- and metals-impacted soil and/or groundwater at the property.”

That report noted that benzo(a)pyrene and arsenic were the most troublesome toxins at the site, but were limited in their presence.

According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information: Benzo[a]pyrene is a widespread environmental contaminant, “formed during incomplete combustion or pyrolysis of organic material. These substances are found in air, water, soils and sediments, generally at trace levels except near their sources. PAHs are present in some foods and in a few pharmaceutical products based on coal tar that are applied to the skin. Tobacco smoke contains high concentrations of PAHs.”

History of the tannery site, since 2003

“We have been talking about the tannery for years,” said Peter Gross, chairman of the Community Economic Development Advisory Committee, which was created in 2009 and charged with helping the town sell the 3.5-acre brownfield since partially cleaned, according to state and federal environmental agency guidelines.

He said that at a 2012 Select Board meeting when the town decided to engage someone to actively sell the property.

“It was the initial issue CEDAC took up when it [the municipal committee] was created,” he said, speaking to the Camden Select Board Monday evening, Nov. 27, 2012. “The downturn in the economy did not help marketing efforts.”

The Apollo Tannery, at 116 Washington Street, had closed its tanning business in 1999, following a fire and financial problems.

According to a environmental assessment report: “The Manufacturing Building was constructed in 1887, and operated as a woolen mill owned by the Camden Woolen Company. In 1953, the Site was acquired by Camden Tanning Company and began operation as a tannery, which included tanning and processing sheepskin. The property was leased to Apollo Tanning Ltd. (Apollo Tanning) in 1997, and continued its operation as a tanning facility. Apollo Tanning shut down operations in April 1999 and the property was put up for sale. Apollo Tanning filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in December 2000.”

In 2003, Camden acquired it in a lien foreclosure.

But Camden voters agreed to invest close to $1 million to clean up it. The town demolished the decrepit buildings, removed some contaminated soil and capoed more, hoping the vacant lot would eventually provide the community with a source of enterprise and employment.

For a brief period in 2006, a Florida-based investor offered to purchase the lot for $100,000 (a deal that was terminated).

In 2008, another town committee that preceded CEDAC, the Tannery Work Group, recommended the town sell the property in accordance with guiding principles and buyer/developer qualifications. Incentives proposed by the group included supplying a "land for jobs" rebate as a means of encouraging the creation of year-round jobs.

But the town wanted any potential buyer to create at least 24 new jobs, each each paying at least $40,000 in wages and benefits annually. Furthermore, preference was to given to businesses that would stimulate other new employers to come to Camden without taking customers from any already existing business in the town. A list of acceptable businesses was created, along with a list of those that should not be encouraged in the redeveloped site.

Acceptable businesses included bio-technology and life sciences; research and development; marine trades and boat building; higher education institutions; precision manufacturing and health care. Unacceptable businesses included outdoor boat storage; poultry, meat or seafood processing; auto repair shops and warehouse.

In 2009, CEDAC retained Chris Shrum and the then-Knox-Waldo Regional Economic Development Council, with the help of approximately $24,000 in marketing funds, to attract a buyer. At the same time, CEDAC began to focus on its broader mission to help Camden stimulate its economic engine and create year-round employment.

While those efforts were under way, a group of Camden residents also began working on the Camden Riverwalk, a pathway alongside Megunticook River. In 2008, Camden voters had approved creating a 25-foot-wide easement on the tannery land, keeping it forever under the feet of the public, for a walkway.

As the town and CEDAC pushed marketing the tannery site and its land for jobs concept, it placed an ad on Yahoo's financial website in 2010. B.D' Turman'd Entertainment LLC, whose principals were in Los Angeles and Milwaukee, responded, and pursued acquiring the land, proposing to construct there two sound stages to be used in film production.

The deal, as crafted by the town and the LLC principals, became controversial, and LLC pulled out. Reasons for terminating a purchase and sales agreement were attributed to the overly constrictive land configuration, size, and restrictions affecting title that would make it impossible for the business to develop the studios, adequate parking, office facilities and river improvements.

At the 2011 Camden Town Meeting, it was characterized by one resident as “Camden Follies, Act II.”

Renewed interest in the parcel arose in 2014 when North East Mobile Health Services indicated interest in part of the parcel. But Aug. 26, 2014, the ambulance service announced that it was backing out of talks with Camden.

In 2014, in a close nonbinding November vote, Camden residents indicated they wanted the Tannery land to be used for commercial/business purposes. The question on the ballot was: “Do you support using the Tannery property for commercial/business uses described in the Guiding Principles approved by the Town Meeting, or do you support using the Tannery property for park/open space?”

1,429 said they wanted it kept for commercial/business use

1,360 said they wanted it used as park/open space

Following the 2014 nonbinding referendum, the Select Board created the Tannery Work Group "to lead an inclusive, community-wide dialog to determine the preferred uses of the site."

The group was finalize objectives, rank preferences for concepts on the table, and plan for how to include the town in the discussion.

For 18 months, the Group worked, under the leadership of former town manager Roger Moody, and on March 21, 2017, the group presented its final recommendations and recommended the town pursue a federal brownfield grant to help refine the site.

The Ransom report noted that the presence of arsenic and benzo(a)pyrene at the tannery site, “are inferred to be associated with anthropogenic urban fill and/or oil and/or hazardous material releases during the Site’s former woolen mill and tannery use, including documented petroleum-impacted soils that remain in the vicinity of the former 10,000-gallon No. 6 UST and beneath the cover system of the VRAP Area.

“Therefore, impacted soil detected at concentrations above their respective MEDEP RAGs at the Site may pose an exposure risk to future residential occupants unless soil mitigation measures to prevent exposure to future Site occupants are implemented (e.g. low-permeable or impermeable soil cover systems or other barrier systems, remediation, etc.).”

The 2016 report said no volatile organic compounds, volatile petroleum hydrocarbons, extractable petroleum hydrocarbons, or target polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons were detected in the surficial soil samples collected, “from the Site at concentrations above their respective MEDEP RAGs for ‘Residential,’ ‘Outdoor Commercial Worker,’ or ‘Excavation/Construction Worker, exposure scenarios, with the exception of one PAH [benzo(a)pyrene] that was detected in a majority of the surficial soil samples collected across the Site.”

The report continued: “With the exception of arsenic, no analyzed metals were detected in the surficial soil samples collected from the Site at concentrations above their respective MEDEP RAGs for ‘Residential’, ‘Outdoor Commercial Worker’, or ‘Excavation/Construction Worker’ exposure scenarios. The detected arsenic concentrations in all surficial soil samples collected throughout the Site during this Phase II ESA exceeded its MEDEP RAGs for ‘Residential’ and ‘Outdoor Commercial Worker’ exposure scenarios, but did not exceed its ‘Excavation/Construction Worker’ RAG. In addition, the detected arsenic concentrations in surficial soils at the Site were slightly elevated in comparison to its site-specific background concentration.”

However, Dyer said, water, well and soil-boring tests, he said, indicated petroleum, chromium and solvent toxins had been removed.

A slurry wall, said Dyer, constructed in the initial 2008 clean-up, had been capturing any leaching solvents before entering Megunticook River, he said.

He reported that the most recent 2018 testing of water samples where the “groundwater becomes surface water,” indicated no contamination.

“Prior to circa 1950, process water from the Site was discharged directly to the Megunticook River through a sluiceway that ran underneath the Manufacturing Building,” according to the 2016 assessment. “It is assumed that wastewater from the facility was discharged untreated to the municipal wastewater treatment plant from the 1950s until 1982. In 1982, the Wastewater Treatment Building was constructed to pre-treat wastewater prior to discharge to the Town of Camden sanitary sewer system.”

At the March 12 meeting, Select Board member Alison McKellar asked Dyer about how the money was allocated for remediating which parts of the site.

She referenced a storage tank filled with old wool and steel, and asked how to ensure that the public knows where, “it is not safe to let your dog off the leash.”

Dyer responded that this brownfield grant was designated for removing contaminants and that other grants could be pursued for removing solid waste.

He did not disagree that the solid waste needed attention, and that “there are other programs out there.”

He said the town was a week away from submitting another grant to continue the soil clean-up at tannery lot.

His work also continues, and involves producing an Analysis of Brownfield Clean-up Alternatives (ABCA), which evaluates the project, “to make sure the clean-up works and does it cost effectively,” he said.

Part of Dyer’s job, under the $200,000 grant, is to schedule the clean-up, notify adjacent land owners and community organizations of cleanup schedules, hold a public meeting to educate and update the community regarding cleanup and proposed redevelopment; and prepare public outreach materials.”

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