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State regulators stand poised to approve a highly-criticized cleanup plan for a site on the College Point waterfront that will eventually be transformed into a large housing development – a plan that one community activist called “a disaster waiting to happen.”

The plan was proposed to the State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) by an engineer for a developer who wants to build 86 two-family homes at the 8.5-acre site next to McNeil Park at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 121st Street on the College Point waterfront.

The site – which has been owned by College Point Properties, Inc. for over a decade – is filled with construction debris, spilled oil, petroleum and PCBs. The engineer’s remediation plan calls for surface removal of pollutants, as well as the removal of free product oil from existing and new wells.

The plan also calls for the installation of a plastic sheet over the remaining landfill, which would be covered by two feet of clean soil and includes a clause that places the responsibility of future cleanups on the homeowners who will live there. According to the plan, homeowners would be responsible for reporting to the DEC every year.

Although the DEC would not comment on whether they support the plan, the public comment period ended this week, and a fact sheet released by the agency said it is “ready to approve the remedial action plan” following a period of public feedback.

Community watchdogs said they were not notified of the public comment period – which began in April – and now that they have reviewed the cleanup plan, call it an environmental and human health disaster waiting to happen. According to one critic, the College Point waterfront could become the next Love Canal.

Paul Graziano, an urban planner and civic activist, said nearly the entire area slated for development was created solely by dumping waste into the East River from 1963 to 1978. “Here you have a case where literally out of this 8.5-acre site, seven acres are illegal landfill of the kind that would never be allowed today,” he said.

The Tribune secured a copy of the cleanup proposal written by Roger Wilhelm, an engineer from the Environmental Technology Group, who was commissioned by the developer to orchestrate the cleanup and win the approval of the DEC for residential construction on the site.

In the report, Wilhelm identifies the landfill as consisting of bridge parts, automobile parts and other metals, as well as “concrete and other inorganic materials.” A stint as an automobile burning ground in the early 1970s left the area littered with charred chaises and spilled oil.

Analysis of hotspots on the site – the worst polluted areas – uncovered petroleum compounds identified in the report only as “industrial byproducts.” “Its viscosity is similar to molasses,” Wilhelm reported, also noting that soils soaked in the ooze “have a characteristic pungent smell.”

Initial analysis also found three times the levels of PCBs at the site than is allowed by the federal government.
Wilhelm admits in the proposal that the cleanup cannot meet DEC standards without enormous expense to the property owner. “To achieve the remedy levels would require the removal of all soils from the site and the replacement with new soils. This approach is impracticable from an engineering perspective,” he wrote.

Wilhelm also indicated to the DEC that approval of the plan has become pressing. “[T]he site may be impacted by proposed zoning changes. There is an urgency to begin development on the site in order to retain the present zoning approvals,” he wrote.