Pollution
problems facing the residents of Love Grove
The Love Grove community was established in 1909. This community has withstood
the isolation of being bounded by a onetime busy railroad line and Burnt
Mill Creek. Burnt Mill Creek was onetime a raw sewer line for the city
of Wilmington. In the 30’s this open raw sewage was stopped from
flowing during the times the creek would backflow due to the tidal changes.
A lock and dam system was installed a short way upstream to check the
flow of “floating pickles” back into the predominantly white
neighborhoods. This is the history of how Love Grove has been treated
over the years.
The community suffered a small landfill along with the isolating borders
of restriction and constraint. This landfill is currently under study
for a Brownfield
cleanup and the formal study is due to be issued in October of this
year. There will be considerable clean-up necessary to outfit the old
landfill into a quaint neighborhood park. The earth movement and hauling
of vegetation and dirt will bring many trucks into the community and cause
dust to fall on the residents’ property and negatively effect those
with asthma and allergies.
The landfill, closed in 1972, but briefly reopened after hurricane Fran,
is rumored to hold waste from the old James Walker Hospital. If that is
true then some contaminates in the landfill could be more hazardous than
originally thought.
Many of the residents worked at the plywood mill. Southern Lumber manufactured
plywood on the site at the end of King Street. Mr. John Colucci, owner
of the Southern Lumber Company was a well-respected and generous man.
His successful business spanned many years. Mr. Willie Davis, 74 a lifelong
resident of Love Grove worked for Mr. Colucci for 34 years. He was there
in February 1952 when the mill caught fire and burned. He helped to bury
the remains on site. Mr. Davis also helped to bury many containers of
potential hazardous
materials used in the treatment and manufacturing of plywood. Burying
such materials would not have been illegal in those days. However the
barrels and drums containing those materials should be located and removed
in the interest of public safety.
The supposed hazardous waste is also of concern to the environmental integrity
of the water system. Burnt Mill Creek runs along side the property and
for the same reasons the community upstream did not want floating pickles
they certainly do not want caustic chemicals running upstream or into
their groundwater.
According to the 1996 site assessment survey done by the then property
owners Love Grove Associates, all of the boring samples taken from 1501
King Street, 1513 King Street and 1417 Corbett Street indicated contamination
of groundwater by TPH gasoline or total
petroleum hydrocarbons. This pollution was supposedly caused by underground
storage of gasoline. City staff has requested that a letter by the North
Carolina Department of Environmental and Natural Resources be delivered
to confirm any and all contaminates and the potential hazards
that might be caused by onsite chemicals.
It is unknown, at this time, whether any other potential contaminates
were surveyed or even if the soil or groundwater since the 1996 has suffered
any other pollution problems due to ruptured barrels or tanks used to
store the chemicals Mr. Davis vividly remembers burying. It is also unknown
what exactly is in those barrels and tanks Mr. Davis describes being underground
onsite. Resins, solvents and epoxies would have been used to make plywood
and could have been dumped on site along with chemicals used to treat
the lumber.
Traffic
problems facing the residents of Love Grove with the future development
of Clarendon Park
Currently, as mentioned above, the Love Grove community access is limited
to one road leading in. The main road, King Street is approximately 26
feet wide and travels over a railroad crossing that has neither flashing
lights or guardrails or any other warning device necessary to alert travelers
of a coming train. The train is reported to travel at 10 miles per hour.
West of King Street the train tracks curve making the visual sighting
of an oncoming train limited. Several times a day the train crosses the
road. Sometimes the train’s progress is halted for various reasons.
In the past, when the train stops for a lengthy period, residents have
had to have friends and family come to meet them on the opposite side
of the train tracks to ferry them to work or to doctors visits. The residents
have had to walk up the tracks past the head or tail of the train and
walk back around to King Street to meet their ride.
In the past two months alone the train has, according to residents, caused
emergency problems to residents on two separate occasions.
The width of the road can barely accommodate two moving cars with one
car being parked curbside. Residents frequently park curbside, they also
place trash receptacles along the curb. Children play in the streets.
Some street play by children include riding bikes, playing ball, skipping
rope, activities common to all communities especially ones with no sidewalks.
Because there are no sidewalks residents frequently walk in the road to
visit neighbors.
An increase of an estimated 500 residents to this community will undoubtedly
impact the number of vehicles traveling up and down King Street, the one
direct street leading back to the proposed Clarendon Park development.
Visitors, service vehicles and residents will easily create an additional
3,000 trips past Mr. Davis’s house. That could be more than three
cars per minute during the daylight hours.
The ten-minute delay, two or three times each day, by the train crossing
could easily back cars up more than 30 cars deep. This two or three time
inconvenience may someday turn into a nightmare even with out emergencies
because CSX owns the right of way and can bring as many trains thru the
crossing as slow or fast as they want.
And God forbid a derailment
or something disastrous happen that could cause an emergency evacuation.
Trains carrying toxins do derail and many times a year we hear of residents
having to be evacuated due to clouds of chemical toxins spewing from cracked
tankers. Where exactly would the residents go? How would they escape?
Comment has been made that residents of many communities have only one
way out. But are these residents bound by water? Landlocked? You could
argue, (and that argument has been made by the attorney representing the
developers of Clarendon Park) that Wrightsville Beach residents live with
only one access that frequently becomes blocked. This is true. It is also
true that there are police and fire, as well as other support services
on the island, that will enable the residents to deal with emergencies.
Many residents of Wrightsville Beach have medical and emergency training
and that can effectively deal with potential emergencies such as serious
injury or a life threatening attack of illness.
Minutes mean everything
to emergency responders. Fires can engulf a home in a matter of minutes,
lack of oxygen can cause certain death if treatment is not administered
in a few short minutes and violence can erupt into dangerous proportions
if not quelled within a few minutes.
There is legitimacy to this nearly hundred year-old community’s
need for another access before any more new development is allowed into
the community.
Fitting the NorthSide Plan into Clarendon Park
A lot has been made of the NorthSide
Plan. Some within the community say it has a distinct aroma of an
outline for gentrification. Those outsiders pushing the plan need to be
aware of the community’s concern and take steps that the proposed
plan’s outline deliberately focuses on a more inclusive directive.
There is little to no money from within the community to make the more
immediate changes that the NorthSide plan recommends. Care needs to be
taken as to who will make those immediate changes.
Community
outrage can easily erupt over little more than the name of the development
company that has taken charge of so many of these new plans. The name
Plantation
Builders is insensitive to a community of African Americans and the
descendants of the era of 1898. A little common sense and compassion will
go a long way in developing a healthy plan for a struggling community.
The Love Grove community is not that different than most of the other
neighboring communities. Economic
statistics of the entire Northside community indicate that 40% or
so are below the poverty status. Most rent the homes they live in for
around $300 per month. 40% of the residents own their own home. The average
house has a value of $61,000. The median household income is slightly
below $20,000 per year. Not much of a market
for ambitious developers and their product.
The developers of Clarendon Park describe the homes they want to build
as affordable. Priced from $90 – 125,000 these proposed homes will
be tough to sell to such a distressed market not to mention overcoming
the stigma of the environmental concerns and restrictions. Little qualified
interest will terminate the developers initial intentions for successfully
selling these 150 or so houses they want to sell to the Northside community
and may force them into offering these homes as rentals, many on a Section
8 basis.
Section 8 housing is
a necessary component to a struggling family’s means of existence.
The intentions are respected and are important to many of the less fortunate
among us. However, such a large grouping of these Section 8 houses, do
little for an already existing community. It creates a potential
for trouble. Rules will have to be stringently enforced. Management
issues become paramount to the safety and comfort of all neighbors.
Who is to say that after failing Stage One of the development another
buyer couldn’t come in to bail out the original developers and stack
multifamily units into this quiet Love Grove community that the R-3 zoning
allows?
The residents of Love Grove will then be faced with another environmental
concern. Crime problems and urban blight. How do we keep the 60 families
that have already suffered open sewage, a landfill, buried contaminates
and a landlocked community intact and thriving?
This seems to be a reverse gentrification reminiscent of the days long
ago when neighborhoods in the Northeast were threatened with talk of minority
infiltration to drive property values down. Developers would scoop up
the undervalued property and create instant wealth as they redeveloped
and resold the property of the residents that they displaced.
Recommendation
It seems prudent to table this rezoning. Request the developers to deliver
a detailed environmental impact study. I would suggest that they meet
with Mr. Willie Davis and have him show the developers’ team, of
environmental engineers, the exact location of the potentially dangerous
material that was buried on site. I would suggest that the city participate
in this study to confirm the findings.
Many times buyers of property, particularly property with such a close
proximity to a landfill and property that has at onetime been used in
manufacturing product such as treated lumber, will have a rider or a stipulation
in the contract with the seller that will excuse the purchaser from purchase
pending the findings of such an environmental study. Many lending institutions
also require such a study if they are to loan or make a mortgage responsibly
on such property. It would seem to be a natural course of business to
request such a study of a potential developer. And if this study has already
been done, how was it done, and to what extent the survey allowed to be
measured. Also it is important to know how recent this study was done,
in that many materials reported to be buried in the drums, could have
leached from the containers since the 1996 study was completed. Since
the barrels and containers have yet to be dug up and dealt with, these
containers could have ruptured since the 1996 study and could be a source
of serious contamination at present.
Since the 1996 assessment determined that the groundwater was unfit
for human contact it is reasonable to question the depth of the water
table on the site and how it perks. Should a heavy rainfall flood the
area or simply cause puddles, how contaminated would this water be and
what sort of hazard would this be to children playing in these puddles?
A study of case history can be found in the Pilot Mills development just
behind Peace College in Raleigh where the cotton mill contaminated the
soil with arsenic used to treat the fabric years ago. (which by the way,
arsenic is
also used to treat lumber) Even though the developer scooped out perhaps
many tens of thousands of cubic yards of contaminated soil off of the
site, they were required to pave over the entire development, eliminating
any human contact with potentially hazardous soil. Environmental contaminates
are serious issues.
Several other recommendations can be made regarding community impact.
I would suggest that a detailed impact study be done prior to approving
any R-3 or even R-5 rezoning in the Love Grove community.
Disturbingly veiled threats have been made about continuing use of the
property as light manufacturing. One of the principles of the Clarendon
Park developers stated some of these threats on a television newscast
recently.
Todd Toconis is one of the men developing
the neighboring property. His plan is to build about 140 single family
homes and duplexes. He plans to sell the homes for around $100,000. "I'm
disappointed that the neighbors feel that this is a bad project for them."
Toconis explained during an interview at his office on Front Street. "I
don't think that they realize the full depth of what could happen there
with the property being zoned light manufacturing." Todd says the
way the property had been zoned until now, he could have put in a garbage
dump, a topless bar, or a dog kennel and been completely within his rights.
WWAYTV3.com
It is this sort of insensitivity and commentary that hinders all progressive
efforts of change and creates an ever widening gap of distrust and lack
of commitment by members of the Northside community and those of sympathetic
concern.
Even though light manufacturing zoning does allow some not so community
friendly establishments, the community of Love Grove has lived with, since
its creation, light manufacturing businesses. Even today some residents
would love to see a small business or groups of business located on the
site. They feel the location of these manufacturing businesses will provide
jobs for the community and will add to the value of their property. Certain
environmentally friendly manufacturing businesses such as handcrafted
furniture, custom car refurbishing, boat building could employ several
of the young Love Grove residents entering the job market as well as provide
an attractive location for African American businesses to operate.
There would be no need for public transportation like there would be if
the Clarendon Park development is approved. No need for added police and
fire protection. No need for an immediate second entrance and exit.
The community of the Northside is not against light manufacturing. In
fact they welcome it. The community needs jobs and jobs that they can
walk to will be a major asset to any community.
Closing
Love Grove represents us all. We are all struggling to prosper and yet
still hold some of the neighborhood principles to heart. We want safe
communities, easy access, and quiet enjoyment of our property. We want
our property values to increase and our neighbors to prosper along with
us. We demand judicious, responsible and fair decisions by our elected
officials in order to protect us and to assure us the quality of life
that we are accustomed to living.
We would hope that you would give those residents of Love Grove the same
attention that you would in your own neighborhood or the neighborhood
of your youth and take the time necessary to assure the majority of them
that you have their interest at heart.
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