LINCOLN — First Avenue Park seemed to have everything for the close knit community nearby — open spaces to play, ball fields and plenty of room for having fun.But the recent disclosure of lead contamination discovered in the park has residents worried.
Federal and local officials say soil contaminated with lead was found along the right side of the baseball field inside First Avenue Park.
“I didn’t know they found lead in the park,” said Lincoln resident Daniel Smith, 43. “We mostly use it for softball.”
The right side of the baseball field is close to a basketball court and a playground for small children. The basketball court and playground sit between the contamination in the park and the brass foundry site responsible for the lead contamination.
“My (grand) kids go up there now and play,” said Alphelia Robbins, who lives next to the park. “They probably just need to stop going up there. I’m going to tell them not to go up there and play anymore.”
Teresa Carmichael said a rumor about lead contamination in the park recently surfaced around the neighborhood, and since that time, some people have stopped going there.
“We have a lot of kids during the summer to go down there and shoot hoops, adults, too,” Carmichael said. “Since that rumor, nobody hardly uses the park.”
Sherryl Caronaro, a public affairs specialist for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said soil samples collected two months ago indicate soil in the First Avenue Park baseball field is contaminated with lead. She also said the contamination is in the right outfield.
First Avenue residents only recently learned the old Lincoln Metals/Heartland Faucet brass foundry and the area along the north side of the property was contaminated with high levels of lead.
EPA officials say foundry sand, which was found more than a mile away in a drainage ditch leading from the foundry to Blue Eye Creek, is contaminated with high levels of lead.
First Avenue residents first learned of the lead contamination when EPA officials approached them in May about testing the soil in their yards even though documents obtained by The Daily Home show officials with the Alabama Department of Environmental Management knew of the lead contamination more than three years ago. No records could be located showing that ADEM ever informed residents living around the foundry of their test findings.
ADEM documents reveal that when the Heartland Faucet declared bankruptcy in 2001, the company not only left behind a large debt owed to the First National Bank of Talladega, but piles of hazardous waste at the old brass foundry site.
“If they were going to close down, they should have at least cleaned up before they left,” Carmichael said.
She also questions why ADEM officials didn’t tell residents of the lead contamination in and around the old foundry.
“If they knew it, why weren’t we told before now?” Carmichael asked, saying the information could have been vital if someone had become ill and had to go to a doctor.
The foundry was a part of the First Avenue Park community.
Robbins said when she was a young girl she played in and around the foundry site.
“I played down there at the plant,” she said. “We’d play house, and put up sheets to make tents.”
Smith said he also played near the foundry.
“I was playing in that park (First Avenue Park) ever since I was a little boy,” he said. “We played all up and down the railroad track when we were kids.”
First Avenue area residents are still a little uneasy after learning about the lead contamination in their community park, and many residents are awaiting test results from soil samples collected by the EPA from their own yards.
“I just want it cleaned up and out of the community,” Carmichael said.
Smith agreed.
“It needs to be removed,” he said.
