Categorized | Business, Health, Safety

Occidental Wants To Empty Fire Water Reservoir

Posted on 30 June 2010. Tags: , , , , , ,

SANATOGA PA – The owner of the former Occidental Chemical and Firestone Tire properties at the south end of Armand Hammer Boulevard has asked Lower Pottsgrove (PA) Township for permission to empty what is described as a large reservoir of clean water intended for fire-fighting use on the site that is being re-developed as a commercial and industrial park.

A new sign at its entrance welcomes visitors to the Tri-County Commerce Park on the former Occidental Chemical property off Armand Hammer Boulevard. Its main warehouse building is in the background at right.

Both the township Planning Commission and the Board of Commissioners were told this month of the request by Glenn Springs Holdings Inc., the company responsible for the clean-up and transformation of what was once considered a collection of parcels contaminated by hazardous waste that resulted from years of manufacturing there.

A public conditional use hearing on the proposal has been scheduled by commissioners for July 22 (2010; Thursday) at 6:45 p.m. in the municipal building, 2199 Buchert Rd., Pottstown PA. The hearing and commissioners’ approval are needed because the holding pond is within the Schuylkill River floodplain, township Assistant Manager Alyson Elliott explained.

State and federal agencies also may comment on the request.

Township planners, who will not rule on the proposal but heard about it during their June 21 meeting, estimated the pond may contain as much as 5 million gallons of water. “Where is it all going to go?,” Planning Commissioner William Wolfgang wondered. “Do they plan to pump it into the Schuylkill?,” he asked. Answers to both questions weren’t available at the time, but likely will be for the public hearing, Elliott said.

Occidental, its affiliates, and other parties have spent years and millions of dollars to find and remove hazardous materials from the site; tear down several buildings and improve others; and generally remake the properties under government inspection into a more attractive environment for business use.

Occidental is the latest owner of the 257-acre industrial property that since the 1940s has been home to the Jacobs Aircraft Engine Company, Firestone, and Hooker Chemicals and Plastics. Much of the hazardous waste buried there resulted from the manufacture of polyvinyl chloride compounds used in a variety of plastics. A portion of the land was declared a federal Superfund property, which Occidental agreed to clean under Environmental Protection Agency supervision. Glenn Springs is an Occidental subsidiary.

Now marketed as the Tri-County Commerce Park, the properties are home to five companies who use warehouse space there for tires, shipping distribution, and a packaging center. “They’ve put a lot of investment over there,” Commissioner Bruce Foltz said of Glenn Springs during that board’s June 17 meeting. “There’s a lot of usable open space, and a lot of potential,” he noted.

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