On Fri Sep 9 12:37:55 CDT 2005 MPRB Commissioner Young posted under the
title:
"Selling off Gasworks Bluff", some comments which are significantly
lacking in
accuracy, in my opinion and experience.
(Young wrote):
"Here's the deal - the Park Board inherited that piece of land along
with other
riverfront land from Minnegasco. Along with fields and fields that once
housed
mountains of coal the land was cleaned up and is now part of the famous
Riverfront
developments that are occurring. This piece was so polluted that it was
encapsulated
with a cement pad. The City and the Park Board are liable for this land
and if anyone -
the citizens or the developers touch that cement padding we are talking
buckoo,
buckoo dollars of trouble for everyone.
Yes, take a glimpse at that Health Report. It isn't pretty. That land is
extremely
polluted to probably never be cleaned up for anybody to use.
This really isn't an instance of something getting swept under the rug.
This is a
rug that is nailed down and really can't be moved or touched."
(Johnson writes):
The pollution cited by Young hangs on the statement: "This piece was so
polluted that it was encapsulated with a cement pad...that cement
padding..."
First of all, the subject site is bordered by Riverview Tower on the
Southwest, by
the Tenth Avenue Bridge on the Northwest, by Bluff Street on the
Northeast, and
by 20th Avenue South on the Southeast.
The major feature of this land is a large concrete circle, 120 ft in
diameter. In my
opinion and experience, this was not poured to "encapsulate" anything. Why?
(a) This concrete circle was poured as the base/foundation for the large
black
round coalgas storage tank which sits exactly on this site (cf. Bob
Johnson post
on Sat Sep 10 19:43:19 CDT 2005 titled: "Photos showing site of the
so-called
"Bluff Street Park")
(b) The concrete is clearly aged so as to be of ca. 1920s type -
certainly not
of 1990s type when Minnegasco did serious remediation on the Minneapolis
Gas
Works factory site in the late 1990s.
(c) If the concrete had been poured to encapsulate pollution, the
probability is
low that a perfect circle would have been the surface shape of the "cement
pad".
(d) I owned and occupied an apartment (2205) on the next to the top
floor of
Riverview Tower from 01AUG1979 to 15APR2002. From that height I could see
whatever was happening below. There was certainly no concrete
encapsulation
project going on there. UM students used it as a free parking lot.
Downbluff to
the Northeast from Riverview Tower and the concrete circle was a temporary
thermal soil decontaminating plant during the late 1990s when Minnegasco
was
doing the pollution remediation, but that was certainly downbluff near
the present
West River Parkway street.
Thus, I conclude that everything in Commissioner Young's "here's the deal"
is suspect. Rational discussion of this issue deserves documentation to
support
the Commissioner's position.
Bob Johnson
Cedar-Riverside West Bank
W2/P10
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