By Tony Richards
Editor-in-Chief

Petroleum contamination along the Harlem River waterfront will delay the construction of replacement ballfields that are part of the new Yankee Stadium project.

On October 24, Joshua Laird, assistant commissioner for planning and natural resources for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, announced at the general meeting of Community Board 4 that oil tanks had been discovered on the site of the Bronx Terminal Market. Accordingly, the completion of 2007 for waterfront facilities, published in the Parks Department’s Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) in Feburary has been pushed back to 2008 for the completion of ballfields, 2009 for the completion of the waterfront park, and 2011 for the completion of tennis courts on the waterfront site.

The Parks Deparment has promised to dispose of all contamination in accordance with state and federal laws. Laird also announced at the meeting that the ballfields behind Yankee Stadium in Macombs Dam Park would be kept in place until construction of the replacement facilities had been completed.

The report of oil tanks is only the latest of many discoveries of existing or potential pollution on the site of the new stadium project. The FEIS from February mentions four “known or suspected” petroleum storage tanks in Macombs Dam Park, the current stadium site, west of the Bronx Terminal Market, and underneath the site of Parking Lot 6 at 157th Street and River Avenue. 

The report also details petroleum contamination in soil and water beneath parking lots 5 (northeast corner of River Avenue and 157th Street) and 6,  an oil spill at 939 Woodycrest Avenue in 2003 that “may have affected groundwater and soil in the Northwest part of the project area,”  and the prevalence of old buildings throughout the project site that may contain asbestos or lead-based paint. 

A “slightly elevated concentration” of methane was found near the southwest corner of the stadium. The report says the methane is “not expected” to present an explosion risk.

In spite of this previous extensive knowledge of contamination on the project site, Laird said oil contamination along the waterfront site itself was only suspected at the time the FEIS was written. “The tanks are a new twist,” Laird said. “The report reveals the likelihood of contamination at the [waterfront] site. It wasn’t widespread contamination.” 
Laird bristled at the suggestion that , in retrospect, it may have been unrealistic to assign a completion date of 2007 for the waterfront replacement parks, given the extent of contamination that was known or suspected throughout the project site. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is we keep our pledge to have ballfields available to the community,” Laird said. “The estimates we made at the time of the EIS were all made in good faith based on what we thought they could do.”

Lori O’ Connell, spokesperson for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the organization that will oversee clean-up efforts, said the contaminated materials did not likely pose a health threat to the public—yet. “The contamination found thus far is located in the subsurface,” O’ Connell said by email. “and seems not to pose a direct threat to the public health or the environment.

However, she added that once contaminated materials were unearthed by construction, there was a risk of adverse affects being suffered as a result of construction workers and residents coming into contact with, or breathing in, the pollutants.

O’ Connell said that in order to prevent such adverse affects, all materials must be disposed of in a way that didn’t stir up dust, odors, or volatile organic compounds, and added precautionary measures when dealing with this sort of contamination sometimes include wetting the hazardous materials to prevent them from becoming airborne in the form of dust, and equipping construction workers with safety masks. 

O’ Connell also said that it might prove necessary to institute a Community Air Monitoring Program, in which both the health department and the Department of Environmental Conservation take air samples.

Vanessa Truell and Maria Simmons contributed to this report.