Poison to Ivy

Every so often, however, a notoriously contaminated site comes along, one that raises the hackles of neighboring businesses and residents, threatens to slow down nearby redevelopment, and attracts no serious buyers. One such location is the triangular site at Phalen Boulevard and East Seventh Street on St. Paul’s East Side that was the local home to Indiana-based Globe Building Materials, a maker of roof shingles. The Globe plant closed in 2000; the company was liquidated a year later.

“It was an eyesore,” says Bill Martinez, senior commander for the St. Paul Police Department’s Eastern District, of the graffiti-covered Globe plant. “People congregated there—vagrants, homeless, and kids wanting to explore.”

Part of the Phalen Corridor Initiative, a public-private partnership redeveloping the industrial corridor on the East Side, the site is located in a once-booming area where Globe was joined by giants like Whirlpool and Hamm Brewing. Whirlpool shuttered its St. Paul plant in 1984 and Hamm was purchased by Stroh Brewing, which closed in 1997, leaving the East Side in dire need of jobs. The St. Paul Port Authority purchased the Globe site at auction for $329,000 shortly after the company filed for bankruptcy. So far, it has received $1.2 million for cleanup from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, $1.2 million from DEED, $600,000 from the Metropolitan Council, and $163,000 from the City of St. Paul; Ramsey County is considering providing a grant of $350,000. Local boosters hope that the 5.87-acre Globe site eventually will be home to businesses employing about 150 people and producing about $204,000 in property taxes.

But first it has to undergo what the site-cleanup industry calls “remediation.” This past summer, crews cleaned out 15 aboveground storage tanks on the site filled with tarry compounds and fuel oil. The heavy smell of petroleum greeted everyone who approached the property. Tar oozed from the walls of Globe’s 90,000-square-foot manufacturing facility, which had been cobbled together over a period of 100 years. Engineers say the tar probably came from tanks under the facility that had stored asphalt used for making shingles.

Remediation of the belowground contamination will mostly involve the cleanup and removal of soil and underground storage tanks. Over the years, structures including an old streetcar barn were demolished and buried on the property. Eric Hesse, project manager with Plymouth-based Liesch Associates, the consulting firm on the cleanup, estimates that 27,500 tons of buried concrete, brick, metal, and wood will eventually be uncovered. Some material will be crushed and recycled as excavation fill; the rest will be taken to landfill facilities or used in other projects as recycled materials. Another 10,500 tons of petroleum-contaminated soils and 17,000 tons of soil contaminated with tarry compounds will be removed, and an estimated 80,000 gallons of hardened tar-like substances will be removed from the underground tanks.

The stuff in the aboveground tanks “had a taffy-like consistency,” recalls Jim Harms, president of MidAmerica Technical & Environmental Services in Oakdale, one of the companies involved in the Globe cleanup. “It couldn’t be removed cold. It was labor intensive. First, the atmosphere in the tanks needed to be checked to be sure the tanks wouldn’t explode when we cut in to them. Then the oxygen levels in the tanks needed to be checked to be sure they were safe.” Next, workers wearing full-face respirators and other protective gear entered the tanks. “We basically used boiling water to liquefy the sludge, so we could pump it out with a vacuum truck,” Harms says.