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Burlington’s early industrial history involved lumber milling and
treatment, woodworking, boatbuilding, and machine shops. Heating was
by wood and coal, lighting by kerosene and gas, and there was no
solid waste management system. Rail was evolving as the dominant
mode of transport, and trolley cars served the major corridors in
the City.
Accordingly, one can find residues in Burlington’s soils from
wood preservatives, paints, solvents, coal tar (a by-product of coal
gasification), petroleum products, and a mix of substances
associated with rail transport. Other sources of contamination that
can be found include dry cleaning fluid, coolants, and other
compounds from spills, chemicals left from tanneries,
slaughterhouses, and rendering operations, arsenic from wood
processing, lead from paint and gasoline, and a broad array of
chemicals and pesticides left over from years of unregulated use.
As the City grew, the Old North End became home to distinct
neighborhoods of immigrant workers attracted to employment at local
woolen mills and on the waterfront. In each neighborhood, one might
find small food stores offering gasoline, rendering plants,
tanneries, metalworking shops, automotive sales and repair shops,
drycleaners, scrap yards, boatbuilding and repair shops, roofers,
woodworking and furniture manufacturing: all enterprises that
utilized petroleum products, solvents, and toxic chemicals. In many
cases, floor drains carried contamination into a drywell or through
the City’s stormwater system into Lake Champlain.
Over time, Burlington’s landscape was also being physically
changed. Once a long sand crescent, fill was placed along the
shoreline of Lake Champlain from Oakledge to North Beach creating
over 60 Acres of “new” land. The filled lands evolved from a lumber
port, to a railyard, and in the mid-twentieth century, a bulk
petroleum storage facility. At it’s peak, 83 above ground storage
tanks were located in Burlington. Through a court action and series
of acquisitions, the City now owns most of the lands impacted by
this history, removed all the above ground tanks, and has been
undertaking a multi-year clean up and restoration effort.
Ravines, gulleys, and streams across the City were filled in over
the years with rubble, trash, fly ash, and fill from unknown
locations. West of Pine street, a barge canal was dug out, and has
changed configurations over time. Large amounts of sawdust can still
be found in Pine Street soils from lumber processing for shipment
via barge through the Champlain Canal system to points south.
In the early and mid twentieth century, heavier industry began to
establish in Burlington, especially in the South End. A manufactured
gas plant on Pine Street deposited coal tar sludge on it’s property,
eventually leeching into the groundwater and creating the Pine
Street Barge Canal Superfund Site. General Electric, Bell Aircraft
and it’s successors manufactured military armaments and hardware,
creating a landfill polluted with solvent sand metal tailings, now
closed, capped, and being monitored. Smaller manufacturing sites
created localized pockets of solvent and petroleum contamination.
The rail yard likely has contamination in the subsurface soils,
dating back to the mid-1800’s. A series of actions in recent years
reduced the hazards at the site, but any excavation in the future
may reveal contamination. Similarly, there are a number of
properties in the Pine Street and Flynn Avenue corridors that have
subsurface contamination, known and unknown, that would come to
light if redevelopment and excavation took place.
Hazardous substances can arrive by air, such as mercury, others
are naturally occurring, like arsenic. High levels of lead can be
found along the drip lines of older homes from lead paint, and along
edges of roadways from leaded gas exhaust.
In 1970, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was signed
into law and the Environmental Protection Agency created. The
environmental movement of the 1970’s, the Love Canal disaster and
subsequent creation of Superfund further increased public awareness
about hazardous materials and potential impacts on environmental and
human health.
Since the enactment of NEPA, federal standards regulating the
vast majority of pollutants have evolved and expanded, as has the
myriad regulations that attempt to control the manufacture,
management, documentation, transport, and disposal of hazardous
materials.
Over time, additional federal regulations specific to landfills,
hazardous waste management, pesticide regulation, petroleum
releases, and other areas have been created. A system has evolved
where USEPA maintains broad authority over the regulation of
hazardous materials, while individual states enact environmental
laws (based on NEPA principles), manage and take enforcement actions
on hazardous sites. While USEPA maintains the right to directly
regulate any contaminated site, it generally will only become
involved if a site is designated for Superfund status, is extremely
high profile, or in response to citizen complaints about a state’s
inaction on a contaminated site.
NEPA created the “polluter pays” principle that still guides
federal and state environmental law. This principle means that the
generator of any hazardous material that could cause damage to human
health and the environment is responsible for the that material from
“cradle to grave”. Thus, when these materials are released into the
environment, the party who released the substance (regardless of
intent or date of release) is not absolved of liability when a
property changes hands over time.
While very effective in theory, it can be difficult or impossible
to implement the “polluter pays” principle. Many contaminated
properties have chains of title going back many years, with multiple
owners and unclear records as to the source of hazardous materials
releases. In many cases it can be difficult, if not impossible, to
find responsible parties and force them to perform cleanups. To
further complicate matters, owners sometimes have no idea about
contamination on their property until excavation takes place or an
assessment is performed, usually in advance of a property sale. The
costs and liabilities involved with cleanup are often beyond the
means of property owners, and responsible parties impossible to
find. As a result, there are of thousands of underutilized,
stigmatized, and/or vacant “brownfield” properties across the
country.
Contamination disproportionately impacts low income neighborhoods
across the country. Thus brownfields redevelopment has implications
reaching beyond economics: too often, those least able to respond to
contamination issues have to deal with vacant lots and blighted
neighborhoods. Compounding this problem, it is extremely difficult
to reverse trends of disinvestment when city planners, developers,
and community leaders are faced with extremely expensive pollution
assessments and cleanups before development can occur.
In the past decade, a nationwide effort has been underway to
reclaim brownfields, and since 1996, the City of Burlington has been
aggressively addressing this issue with Environmental Protection
Agency monies and other resources.
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