Apr 19, 2019 7 min read

Most of Cecil Township’s supervisors want to leave the former site of a coal mine and a chemical manufacturing operation alone, instead of helping to pay to clean up the land and take it over from a multinational corporation.

“I favor on the side of just leaving the property alone,” said supervisor Frank Egizio. “That’s my stance on it right now. Let a sleeping giant alone.”

He was referring to 87 acres of industrial land in Muse that the township agreed to purchase from ABB, a Swiss technology firm, in an agreement supervisors voted to approve in November 2017. They planned to build a new public works building to keep pace with growth in the local government.

Now, a different majority on the five-member board doesn’t support the plan to buy the land on Muse-Bishop Road.

Under the deal, the township said it would buy the property from ABB for $10. In exchange, the township agreed to pay for the first $450,000 – not counting attorney’s fees and work by township employees – toward remediation on the site. The company will be on the hook for the rest.

Officials are planning a public meeting at 7 p.m. April 25 in the township building to discuss the contract.

The sale won’t be final until after the state Department of Environmental Protection finds the site has met standards under Act 2. The law allows owners of contaminated sites to reclaim them and get relief from liability, with DEP approval.

Supporters say it would allow the township to acquire vacant property that officials said had been appraised as having a fair market value of $1.2 million.

Supervisors Chairman Eric Sivavec and Tom Casciola voted with then-supervisor Elizabeth Cowden – who lost an election to Ron Fleeher that year – in favor of the purchase.

But Egizio and Cindy Fisher – who initially voted against the deal – plusFleeher say there are too much uncertainty around the plans.

“It’s just not worth the risk at the end of the day,” Fisher said.

Casciola said the process would allow the township to prevent arsenic from washing off a 35-acre coal-waste pile he said is on the property.

“That’s the goal, to knock them down, cap them and then there won’t be any erosion off that slate dump anymore,” he said.

Sivavec agreed.

“It’s very important for us not to do nothing. We have to get the results back and find out what the experts say and then we can make a determination and come to a solution,” he said. “Right now we are at the gathering-of-the-facts stage, to come up with the correct solution for Cecil Township and its residents.”

An attorney for the township said it appears so far that remediation is feasible.

“All indications from our environmental consultant is that an Act 2 release from environmental liability is achievable,” said David Mongillo of Tucker Arensburg, which is representing the township. “There’s no Act 2 release yet, but from what everyone is saying, it looks like it is going to be achievable.

“The environmental issues do look like they’re going to be able to be cleaned up,” Mongillo added. “There still is some more testing and more assessment of the site that has to be done.”

Language in the sale agreement protects the township from environmental liability not covered by Act 2 for 12 years from the release date.

A related consent order and agreement among the township, DEP and ABB outlines the history of the site since 1923, when H.C. Frick Coal Co. opened a mine there. U.S. Steel closed it 30 years later.

In 1953, another company put a chemical recovery and recycling operation there until Combustion Engineering bought the land in 1968.

Its subsidiary CE Cast mainly used the property to manufacture chemical additives and equipment until 1985, when its business was sold and the land leased to another company.

In 1987, ABB bought Combustion Engineering. By then, regulators had found the site to be so polluted that DEP’s predecessor, the Department of Environmental Resources, and CE Cast had executed a consent order in 1980 that required the company to remove contaminated soil and drums from an area beside a creek on the property.

The company moved that material to an on-site landfill, which was moved in 2009.

“By the mid-1990s, over 90 (above-ground storage tanks) and at least three underground storage tanks, which were used to store raw product and fuel, had been removed from the site as part of the facility closure,” according to the 2017 agreement.

In 1995 and ’96, some 20,000 cubic yards of soil were removed, treated and returned to the site.

Groundwater remediation wasn’t part of that process.

Based on soil testing, the DEP signed off on the work in 1996. According to the 2017 consent order, that approval “assumed that soils would remain on-site, and prior to any excavation of the soil an evaluation must be made of its suitability for other uses.”

DEP did grant Act 2 release for the remediated soil in 2007.

Still, Fleeher – who said he was working for his father, a builder, at the property in 1974 and ’75 – remains skeptical. While he was there, he said he saw workers use heavy equipment to crush drums of something and cover them up with red dog.

“There was a bunch of them that went down a mine shaft,” Fleeher recalled. “They ain’t never going to get them. I just think we need to totally stay away from this.”

Fisher said that land should “be left to sit” and “supervisors need to be careful about what we’re getting ourselves involved in.”

An ABB representative said in an email that the firm got the property through “legacy ownership changes.”

“While several oil wells are owned and operated at the site by a third party, ABB does not own the mineral rights to the property which impacts the appraisal value,” the statement added. “The cost evaluation for the remediation of the site is similar to the current appraised value of the property.”

Sivavec cited the Waterfront, a sprawling outdoor mall on the site of a former steel works outside Pittsburgh, and the mixed-use Newbury Market development on the site of an old chemical plant in South Fayette Township as success stories.

“There’s just so many projects going on throughout the region as far as getting rid of some of these industrial hazards from the past that we need to learn that process with the grants,” he said.

Casciola said officials plan to use 10 acres of the site for the new public works building, and another five for a future public safety facility.

He said officials had spoken with the Washington County Redevelopment Authority about getting the authority’s help in eventually subdividing the rest of the property into smaller parcels to find private owners and get them back on the tax rolls.

Authority executive director William McGowen didn’t return a message seeking comment.

Other supervisors said the board had discussed other versions of the plans.

Egizio said he thought the property could contain other township facilities because there’s not enough space in existing ones.

Fisher said the only proposed facility she’d been told about was for public works. She didn’t know about the talks with the redevelopment authority, either.

“Truthfully, it’s kind of upsetting that Tom and Eric would go to the press with plans that they’ve never even talked to their fellow board members about,” Fisher said.