SYLACAUGA Residents will have the opportunity Wednesday to learn about an assessment of possible contamination the Alabama Department of Environmental Management is conducting on a former city landfill.At the public meeting, which will take place from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. at City Hall, residents can ask questions about the assessment, voice concerns over the property, located at the corner of Alabama 148 and Taft Brown Road, and give the agency information on its history, said spokesman Clint Niemeyer.
The meeting, which is required whenever the agency conducts such assessments, known as brown-field assessments, will be "an open forum for the exchange of information," Niemeyer said.
Municipalities can request such assessments whenever there is the actual or suspected presence of hazardous materials on property such as former industrial and business sites, he said.
The agency conducts the assessments using federal money granted from the Environmental Protection Agency, he said.
If an assessment shows no contamination, a property can be redeveloped and put to productive use. In the case of contaminated property, an assessment can assist efforts to clean it up, said department spokesman Scott Hughes.
There is no evidence to indicate the presence of hazardous substances at the Sylacauga property, about 12.5 acres, but the department has not taken any samples there, something it plans to start doing on March 22, Niemeyer said.
This will mark the beginning of the assessment's second phase, during which the department will test groundwater, surface water, surface soil and nearby sections of Crooked Creek and Tallasseehatchee Creek for hazardous substances, he said.
The first phase took place during March of last year, when the department looked into the property's usage and history. This information was passed on to the EPA, he said.
The property served as a landfill from 1969-1974. The city chose this location because a hole from an unsuccessful attempt to mine copper already existed there, he said.
The only thing sitting on the property is a pump house of the Sylacauga Utilities Board, he said.
The city asked for the assessment in the late 1990s while it was considering using the property for a new animal shelter, which was eventually located in the Sylacauga Industrial Park, said city planner Tommy Rumsey.
The city had discovered contamination that is, trash from the landfill on the property and wanted to know if the property was usable for the shelter, Rumsey said.
Problems with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, in Anniston delayed the department's assessment of the Sylacauga property, he said.
Prior to the shelter consideration, the city considered using the property for its Street Department building and other municipal buildings, he said.
He feels the city cannot build anything on the property unless the contamination is removed. If city officials choose to build there, the trash will have to be dug up, moved and new dirt put in. Additional EPA approval will also be required, he said.
The city has no idea of the extent of the contamination, and the assessment will help delineate the area of the trash, he said.
Council president Doug Murphree said the city currently has no plans for the property but the assessment will still help the city in determining whether the land is usable.
