Arsenic-laced hill riles Royal Palm homeowner {HEADLINE2} Officials
0 Comments | Palm Beach Post, Aug 29, 2010 | by JASON SCHULTZ
An 18-foot hill full of arsenic-laced dirt has become a mountain of unrest for Tim Wadell, who says he feels that the village is stepping on him.
“It’s like they just took a dump in my back yard and they aren’t going to do anything about it,” said Wadell, who has expressed alarm ever since the village deposited the mound behind his home on Meadowlark Drive.
The hill, just a few feet beyond Wadell’s property line, arose last year as part of construction of the village’s multimillion- dollar Royal Palm Beach Commons Park. Village officials have called the 160-acre project, being created on a former golf course, the crown jewel of their parks system.
But part of the first phase of earthwork required excavating arsenic-laden soil from the golf course’s tee boxes and greens. Herbicides containing arsenic have been used on golf courses for years, Village Engineer Chris Marsh said.
When the village changed the land use from a golf course to a park, state environmental rules required it to excavate and contain about 20,000 cubic yards of the contaminated soil, Marsh said.
Wadell said he was concerned to find out that the dirt pile is full of arsenic.
“I’m not comfortable having that in my back yard,” he told village council members at a meeting Aug. 19. “Don’t let money take issue over what I feel is my family’s safety.”
Wadell wants the hill removed, saying it is ugly, will hurt his property values and might harm his family’s health.
“I just don’t know why you singled out my house,” he said.
But Marsh told the council it would cost $1.65 million to remove the hill and dispose of the contaminated soil at the Palm Beach County landfill. He said it also would delay construction by nine months.
The council members voted 4-1 not to remove the hill, saying they understood Wadell’s concerns but that removal was just too expensive.
“The cost will affect everyone who lives in the village,” Councilwoman Martha Webster said. “That is unreasonable.”
She said having the park behind Wadell’s house will increase his property value, not hurt it — even with the hill.
Village Manager Ray Liggins said the dirt had to go somewhere and just happened to end up behind Wadell’s home, where he has lived for two years.
The soil on the hill is contained in a 20-millimeter-thick plastic liner, similar to what is used to line ponds, with 4 feet of fill on top of it, Marsh said. He said groundwater on the site is still polluted with arsenic because of runoff from when it was a golf course, but over time that contamination should diminish because the tainted soil is contained.
Liggins said the soil is less risky than when it was part of the golf course.
“I don’t want you to think there is this huge threat to human health out there. That doesn’t exist,” Liggins said
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