Lambert Kay needs more work and studies

WINSTED — Additional studies and remediation need to be conducted on the former Lambert Kay property, according to Robert Simmons, Chief Hydrogeologist of HRP Associates.Simmons spoke and gave a presentation to the Board of Selectmen at its meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 20.HRP Associates was hired by the town to assist the investigation and remediation of the property, which started in November.At the meeting, Simmons said that several assessments have been completed, including the building’s Hazmat Study, Phase 1 Environmental Site Assessment and a Data Gap report.According to Simmons, the Environmental Site Assessment revealed a number of environmental conditions that, he said, could be problematic to the overall cleanup of the property.“These are pretty significant from an environmental perspective,” Simmons said.Simmons said that the property includes several PCB transformers.According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) website at www.epa.gov, a PCB transformer is an electrical transformer that contains polychlorinated biphenyls, which were used in electrical transformers manufactured between 1929 and 1977 due to being fire retardants. PCBs are listed by the EPA as toxic substances.“We also have oily staining breaking into the stream near the property,” Simmons said. “There is some staining beneath the outfalls into the stream from the [property’s] storm drain system. There is also some staining next to one of the transformers. Previous reports identified, but did not follow up on, the fact that we found floating oil in one of the monitoring wells on the property.”As for undocumented parts of the property, Simmons said that there are four underground tanks below the property, but the company has records on only two of them.Simmons added that there are several slump and drainage structures on the property itself that have not been evaluated.Simmons said that the Data Gap report found even more issues with the property.“There is a great extent of known contamination where we found things, even where we found oil in the ground, that have not been completely defined,” he said. “For example, if they plated nickel [in the building], then nickel should go on the list of things we should be looking at. Lambert Kay is a place where they made pet products, including all those things they would put around our dog’s necks in the seventies and eighties to keep fleas away. It’s a pesticide that was used on the site mixed into the extruded plastics to make the collars. There has been no analysis on site to see if this material has been released.”Simmons went on to say that the presence of fill material on the site was not evaluated, the groundwater assessment for the site is incomplete and there is inaccurate mapping on the building site.As for where the project goes from here, Simmons said that the town needs to find alternative pricing for laboratory work in order to finish the assessment of the site.“We need this to address how we will clean this all up,” he said. “Unfortunately, when we did the original assessment, we ran our contract numbers with the town and it turns out we needed more money to finish this. More money that was available in the MBAI [Municipal Brownfield Assessment and Inventory Grant Program] funding. Complicating this, there is a significant amount of work that still needs to be done.”Simmons said that some portions of the building cannot be accessed until various materials are removed.“There is so much debris, including furniture and clothing, you name it,” Simmons said. “We need to get that material cleaned out of there. Complicating that, according to our hazmat survey, we have three areas of the building where we have asbestos that has fallen off the pipes, deteriorated and is laying on the floors. Those areas may make it unsafe to move all of the other material out of the building.”Finally, Simmons said that a Remedial Action Plan [RAP] would need to be developed after all of the investigations in the site are completed.“But we can’t do that until we finish everything else up,” he said. “We have to fully analyze the site. “We have a previously developed RAP, but it does not address a lot of the issues and potential issues on the property. We want to move forward on it.”According to Simmons, the town received $100,000 in MBAI grant funding for data analysis and studies for the project. Of that, Simmons said, $75,650 remains.In July, the state awarded the town a $500,000 grant from the state’s Small Town Economic Assistance Program (STEAP). Of that, Simmons said, $485,000 remains.While Simmons said that it appears the MBAI grant would be able to cover assessment costs, any remedial estimate for the site would likely require additional funding sources.However, Simmons said that there is not enough data at this point in time to estimate additional expenses.The former pet food property has been vacant since 2002, when operations were shut down.That same year, voters at a town meeting approved the purchase of the building by the town for $1.Last June, Arizona company XS4D submitted a bid for the building that was approved by the selectmen.The company’s bid for $15,000 was chosen over Brooks Ventures’ original proposal, which did not have a bid price.However, XS4D’s proposal fell apart later that July due to various controversial circumstances.In September, after XS4D’s proposal fell apart, Brooks Ventures re-submitted their proposal with a bid of $25,000 plus a 50 percent reimbursement of any remediation grant funds used for the property, to a maximum of $250,000.A town meeting to approve the company’s purchase of the building, which is required by town charter to sell property, has not been held in the ensuing months since the proposal was submitted to the town.