This project looks into the environmental issue of water pollution. Water is paramount to human and wildlife survival and when it is polluted it can cause different health complications. Water can be polluted in a number of ways, and in our case our project team is looking into the effects of heavy metal contamination in ground water. More specifically, the groundwater around the abandoned Easton Iron Works site. There are contaminated plots on the former Easton Iron Works property. The soil is contaminated with groundwater and trace elements of heavy metals. Easton Iron and Metal property is reserving an area, a few contaminated plots (groundwater and trace elements of heavy metals and such) to be put aside and treated with alternative organic clean up practices, such as bio mitigation and mycorrhizal mitigation.
The Easton Iron Works site once served as an inspiration for metal work sculpture, Karl Stirner, however; it is now fenced off with crumbling buildings and overgrown plants. The site is located between 1111-1113, 1164 Bushkill Drive spanning along the Bushkill creek. Mayor Sal Panto stated, “I always felt that whole drive could be the next major development area for light industrial and office park.” Due to the potential of environmental contamination many developers have not shown interest in developing this brownfield. Due to this lack of interest in developing, the city of Easton has made plans to purchase the 14-acre site and develop it to be part of the Karl Stirner Arts trail. However, before this can begin it is necessary to perform environmental site assessment.
Easton eventually plans to take over the Easton Iron Works site and will be first conveyed to the Easton redevelopment authority according to a purchase agreement. According to the agreement the city will hold debt service and carry costs while the redevelopment board will have ownership of the title. The purchase of the land will cost $750,000 and will become part of Easton’s parks and recreation program.
As students at Lafayette we spend a great deal of time living in the Easton community and therefore have vested interest in community improvements. Majoring in Engineering Studies at Lafayette provides us with skills that allow us to address complex problems within communities and devise creative solutions for solving them. These skills will be important when developing a plan for bioremediation of the Easton Iron Works as this project involves coming up with creative solutions to addressing an environmental problem within the Easton community. Engineering Studies majors create solid socio-technical perspectives when addressing problems that are important when considering the migration of the Easton Iron Works pollution.
Director of the Community Based Teaching Program and Chairman of the Karl Stirner Arts Trail , Jim Toia, believes that the Easton Iron Works site is a great opportunity to create a beautiful public space for the community to enjoy. The development of this property has the potential to provide great opportunities for the Easton community. Jim Toia states, “Easton Iron & Metal site will create a trail loop for community events like 5K runs and bicycle races, and the rail bridge connection means trail users will never have to cross a public road.” If we can complete a successful study of the site for bio remediation our project group could provide the City of Easton with valuable information to transform the iron works site. Future engineering studies capstone groups could have the opportunity to collaborate with the art department at Lafayette to transform the abandoned iron works site into public space for all Easton community members to use and enjoy. The interdisciplinary coursework that engineering studies majors complete would make them ideal candidates for this project as it requires the collaboration of different disciplines in order to be successful.
The goal of this project is to eventually turn the rundown Easton Iron Works site into a public space that is available to the entire community. This requires cleaning up and beautifying the site as the vegetation there is overgrown and there are abandoned buildings and trailers that need to be removed. When creating these public sites it is important to consider the culture of Easton to create a space that is welcoming to all. Making this into a public space would do a lot for the Easton community as it improves the beauty and appearance of the city. When cities contain sites that are run down and there are abandoned buildings it creates a community that is less desirable to live in. By not only improving the environmental quality of the site and improving the appearance as well as the functionality of this abandoned site we are providing a valuable service to the community.
The Easton Iron and Metal property poses greater risk of water contamination due to its location next to the Bushkill Creek and close proximity to the Delaware River. The Easton water
Figure 1.1: Overhead view of the Easton Iron Works site via Google Maps
treatment plant sources its water from the Delaware river as do other cities that are near the Delaware. Other important components of our research will involve assessments on how contaminated groundwater impacts the Bushkill Creek and its wildlife, how our project would impact local businesses and residences, and cost assessments.
Figure 1.2: Overhead view of the Easton Iron Works site via Google Maps
Our Group’s goal is to implement organic clean up practices such as bio mitigation and mycorrhizal mitigation. To provide background, bio mitigation is the use of microalgae to mitigate effects of pollution and Mycorrhizal Mitigation is the use of fungi to mitigate effects of pollution. We would create a zone of study where we can monitor and compare strategies and success rates. This will involve mapping the plot and visiting the site. We have identified different challenges to our goal such as understanding the site, the logistics, the research plan, and the ongoing management of such a bio mitigation approach.
While there are different ways to cleanup environmentally contaminated sites, bio remediation would be one of the most effective ways to do so in the case of the Easton Iron Works site. This is because the characteristics of bio remediation having a low cost and ability to adapt to site specific conditions. Bioremediation sets out to modify environmental conditions in order to promote the growth of microorganisms to cleanse organic and inorganic contaminants in the soil. This practice is commonly used in wastewater treatment plants as part of the process to clean sewage water. After the microorganisms have digested the contaminants they release it back into the environment as carbon dioxide and water. The technical analysis section of the report provides an in depth look at the bioremediation process.
In order to be the most successful in our analysis of the problem of contaminated plots on the former Easton Iron Works property that are contaminating the soil with groundwater and trace elements of heavy metals, we have to consider different contexts that affect our project. These include social, policy/political, technical, and economic context analyses. When considering the social context of our project, the politics of the City of Easton are paramount to consider because they are in charge of making decisions such as choosing to invest in an environmental remediation job. The policy context behind our project includes looking at the decision makers behind this effort which in our case is the city of Easton. The technical context of our project includes exploring different design elements of creating a successful plan for environmental reclamation of the Easton Iron Works site. This section dives in depth into bioremediation as a form of environmental reclamation using case studies from other environmental sites to help us understand the scope of reclamation needed at the Easton Iron Works site. Environmental projects such as these require an economical analysis to determine if the costs of the project justify the different community benefits of environmental improvements. Financing environmental projects is always hard because their benefits often are not tangible and as noticeable as other sorts of City improvement projects. Setting the stage for a cost estimate summary in one of the steps our group will take to help understand the money needed to fund this project. By looking at different contexts our team will be able to create a well designed project that is well rounded and has benefits that are equitable for everyone in the community.
The City of Easton is working to help facilitate this cleanup. The director of public services for the City of Easton is Dave Hopkins and when spoken to about this remediation to the site he states, “While the end use(s) of the site continue to be refined with no definitive direction thus far, the short term plan is to demo all of the existing buildings sometime in the next 6-8 months. Immediately following the demo we will begin the environmental work to remediate the site in accordance with Act 2 and the specific cleanup plan that we are in the early stages of developing.” When there are different entities all cooperating to complete a project such as the state of Pennsylvania and the City of Easton, progress can be slowed down through collective action problems. Our plan can help this issue by providing readers with valuable information about bioremediation and the different aspects of the project and the city.
The City of Easton has received funding of $1 million dollars from the state of Pennsylvania through the Industrial Site Reuse Program (ISRP). This program gives grants and low-interest loan financing to perform environmental site assessment and remediation work at former industrial sites in the state of Pennsylvania. The loan that the City of Easton received is the maximum amount of money that the program will dedicate to industrial sites to be environmentally cleaned up. This gives perspective into the costs associated with cleaning up industrial sites. Because Easton is receiving funding from the state, Pennsylvania will have guidelines for remediation and Easton cannot move forward with their plans until approved by the state.
Addressing environmental problems of an abandoned site is never easy as there are different stakeholders involved with different perspectives as to how to approach the problem. In our case the main stakeholders are the City of Easton, the owners of the Iron and Metal property, and the state of Pennsylvania. The cooperation between stakeholders is important for successful implementation because everyone has different perspectives and approaches to environmental issues.
Our ultimate goal is to provide an outline for future students to follow in order to carry out a bio mitigation study at the Easton Iron Works property through the lens of the following research questions: What are long term environmental effects of heavy metal contamination? What kind of timeline of contamination is relevant to the Easton Iron Works Sites? Who are the current stakeholders involved in bio mitigation and remedial efforts to clean up the Easton Iron Works? How does solving this problem fit into the ideals of progress for the City of Easton? What design elements have to be in place to achieve the goal of bioremediation? Coming up with solutions to these questions will allow our group to have a better understanding of the scope of the issue in order to create a successful plan to remediation of the Easton Iron and Metal property. The study of these questions requires attention to culture, economics, technical features, and policy.
We have outlined three different goals that can guide our capstone group to create a successful environmental remediation of the Easton Iron Works site.
- Analyze different scopes of the issues and solutions at the Easton Iron and Metal property.
- Develop an environmentally responsible and effective bioremediation plan.
- Set precedents in the City of Easton about taking action against environmental issues.
By creating a zone of study where we can monitor and compare strategies and success rates, we will be able to gather information to pass along to future Engineering Studies Capstone Project groups so that they can carry out the project in its later stages. The framework of this project will be established by our project team and the future of this project will be determined by later groups, but the goal that we have in mind throughout all future iterations of this project is to actually monitor and test these bio mitigation methods on a plot or plots at the Easton Iron Works property. By analyzing different scopes of the issues and solutions, our project team can develop an environmentally responsible and effective plan to complete a bio remediation plan of the Easton Iron and Metal property that can set precedents in the City of Easton about taking action against environmental issues.
Next: Social Context (EIM)