State Loan To Help Town Effort To Find

A New Use For Batchelder Property

By Andrew Gorosko

The town has received additional state loan money to complete conceptual planning for a cleanup of the contaminated Batchelder industrial site, in preparation for the eventual reuse of the Swamp Road “brownfield” property.

First Selectman Herbert Rosenthal said the town has received an additional $15,000 in state loan money for planning on how best to dispose of metallic dross piles on the 31-acre site near the intersection of Swamp Road and Botsford Hill Road.

The $15,000 loan brings to $45,000 the amount the town has received from the state to gauge the nature and extent of work needed to environmentally reclaim the site, according to Mr Rosenthal. The loan is from the state’s Special Contaminated Properties Remediation and Insurance Fund (SCPRIF), a fund used to cover planning costs for reclaiming brownfields, which are industrially contaminated properties.

The $15,000 loan will be used to test whether metals in the dross piles can be recycled instead of being discarded, Mr Rosenthal said. Recycling the material would be much less expensive than discarding it, thus reducing the site’s overall cleanup costs. Under the metal testing plan, six trailer loads of scrap metal from the dross piles on the Batchelder site will be shipped to a metals recycling firm in Virginia to learn whether it would be economically practical to recycle the material.

Most of the material in the dross piles is thought to be aluminum, according to Arthur Bogen, president of Down to Earth, LLC, a Milford environmental consulting firm which the town has hired to coordinate conceptual planning for reclamation of the Batchelder site.

“This is the last piece of the puzzle… to put a remedial action plan together,” Mr Rosenthal said. Mr Rosenthal noted that since the Charles Batchelder Company’s financial collapse in the 1980s, the town has not collected property taxes on the site. No taxes have been paid on the site since 1984, he said. The property, which has an approximately $1.6 million tax-assessed value, would be paying more than $46,000 in property taxes annually, he said. The property is adjacent to Wickes Lumber.

Last year, the town chose Handex of Connecticut, a Monroe environmental consulting firm, to develop environmental cleanup plans for the contaminated property where Batchelder’s aluminum smelting operations ended in 1987. The plan addresses the economic viability of rehabilitating the property.

Work has included testing the extent of contamination at a fire pond, landfill, and dross piles on the property. The study, which provides alternative methods to clean up the site, will provide firm cost estimates for property restoration work.

 In 1997, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) removed certain types of toxic waste from the site, including heavy metals and solvents. Petroleum-based groundwater contamination problems remain, however.

The EPA fenced off the contaminated site to prohibit access. The EPA’s new fence line lies within an older deteriorated fence line.

The cleanup problem is complicated by the bankruptcy protection that Batchelder was granted by US Bankruptcy Court and financial claims that have been filed against the company by its creditors. Besides resolving health issues posed by the presence of contaminants on the property, a cleanup would make the site suitable for industrial reuse and would strengthen the town’s tax rolls.

The town has been working with the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) for three years in addressing how the sprawling property can be cleaned up and again become a revenue-producing facility. The site holds a 100,000-square-foot building.

The Housatonic Railroad, a Canaan-based railroad which has a spur line on the Batchelder property, has expressed interested in having some industry locate there that would need rail service. Several industrial firms have expressed interest in the property, but they want to know how much money it would cost to clean up the site to bring it to a point where it is suitable for new industrial uses.

The site lends itself to becoming a light assembly complex or a warehouse/distribution center. Parts of an existing 100,000-square-foot industrial building on the site may be reusable, according to Mr Bogen.

The site contains a rail spur. It is relatively close to Interstate-84. It is level. It has industrial zoning. Under current zoning regulations, up to 400,000 square feet of enclosed industrial space could exist on the site.

On March 5, Mr Bogen said a final version of the pollution cleanup plan should be ready in about two months. Overall cleanup costs will be based, in part, on whether scrap material from the dross piles can be recycled, he said.

The cleanup plan is intended to clearly state the reclamation costs for the site in order to make the property more attractive for industrial redevelopment, he said. The cleanup plan, known as a conceptual remedial action plan, will provide cost alternatives for various ways to reclaim the property, Mr Bogen said.

The reclamation of brownfields is a complex and time-consuming process, Mr Bogen noted.