Environmental contamination raises questions about testing, remediation and continued pollution
By Beth Sluys
Northside News
About 410 of the 425 acres in the Oscar Mayer Special Area Plan (OMSAP) lie within the boundaries of the Sherman Neighborhood. Just before the plan was brought to the Madison Common Council this summer, Sherman neighbors were asked a series of questions by city planning staff about the planning process.
The Sherman Neighborhood Association (SNA) responded that neighborhood members felt “marginalized in the process, and we don’t understand why. The plan is almost entirely within the boundaries of Sherman Neighborhood, but city staff has repeatedly ignored that in discussion. We feel like the requests to change the plan we have made — save all 30 acres of the Hartmeyer Natural Area, ensure that extensive environmental testing is done, and reconsider placement of the bus barn — are pretty simple in light of the scope of the rest of the plan. But no matter how many people speak up, we can’t seem to get the city to listen. It’s like the plan was going ahead according to someone else’s vision, and the community involvement part was really perfunctory.”
More recently, Renee Walk, co-chair of the SNA, stated that the neighborhood’s position on the bus barn facility is “whoever occupies the space, a significant remediation needs to happen to ensure that current and future neighbors have a safe environment in which to live.”
The 2017 closing of Oscar Mayer’s 72-acre industrial site opened the hopeful and creative thinking of area residents. They imagined potential community amenities such as retail shops, businesses that provide living wage jobs, a technology hub, a STEM high school, a research center, a grocery store, a theater space, a home to public art, a museum and a hotel for out-of-town guests arriving from the airport. They imagined preservation of the 30-acre Hartmeyer property and a well-connected bike path and greenway. From the outset, attendees at OSCAR focus groups shared their concerns about contamination and made clear that complete remediation of the Oscar Mayer site would be required.
The Oscar Mayer property was seen as a potential connecting point for area neighborhoods, which viewed the redevelopment as a positive influence for the community. Focus group attendees said they wanted amenities that offered community vibrancy for an area of Madison that has long been heavily industrial. These were conversations in the fall of 2017, before the Oscar Mayer Strategic Assessment Committee (OMSAC) started its work.
Findings from the 2017 focus groups were presented to the OMSAC and are incorporated in the final special area plan as a graphic image but not in substantive changes to the plan.
In 2018 and 2019, the city hosted focus groups for under-represented members of the community, primarily people of color, to provide an opportunity for all voices to be heard. Attendees had similar ideas about the redevelopment of the area. Some of the main themes included green and open space, bike friendly, diversity in the neighborhood, jobs, improving public transportation, a cultural arts district, and being able to walk, explore, shop, eat and bring the family to the area. Also presented were ideas to create an economic engine that would ignite commerce and create opportunity.
Unfortunately, none of the attendees were offered information about contamination at Oscar Mayer, so any concerns they might have had were never heard. When asked if the contamination information was shared with the participants of these sessions, the consultant’s answer during a Sustainable Madison Committee meeting was a resounding “No.”
City planners and their consultants did not openly engage the public and also area businesses in a conversation about the proposed Metro Transit satellite facility (bus barn). The OMSAP was presented as being a separate process outside the Metro facility purview and the bus barn would have its own separate process. In the entire OMSAP document, there is one sentence related to the bus barn: “Maintain the north end of the Oscar Mayer site as predominantly employment uses, potentially including a new Metro Transit satellite facility.” So while the OMSAP plans for employment, the jobs brought to the Northside for the bus barn are existing jobs.
Meanwhile, in the environmental exclusion application presented to the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) in November 2019, Metro indicated significant public engagement had taken place. In reality, when the bus barn was raised as a concern by neighborhoods and the public at large during the special area plan process, the topic was sidelined.
Because of the lack of public engagement related to placing the bus barn on the north end of the Oscar Mayer site, despite it being within the boundaries of the Oscar Mayer Special Area, residents and community leaders took up the issue. Maria Powell, director of the Midwest Environmental Justice Organization, Chet Hermansen and other local business leaders, and Dolores Kester, a retired attorney — all Northsiders — questioned the accuracy of information presented to the FTA. They did not agree that a robust public engagement process had occurred. They noted there was additional environmental information that was not available when the application was submitted that should be considered by the FTA. As a result, the FTA has paused the process.
The city only recently created a webpage for public information and co-hosted a public meeting with the Northside Planning Council focusing on the site’s contamination. A second meeting to share information about the bus barn was held Nov. 5, almost a year to the day after the application was submitted to the FTA claiming a great deal of public outreach had taken place. Few people attended or asked questions, most likely due to the public being more engaged over the presidential election results.
Environmental conditions related to the Oscar Mayer site continue to cause concern for area residents, businesses, city staff and government leaders. The soil and groundwater, as well as the air in the buildings slated for Metro workers, contain toxic chemicals and asbestos. There is evidence of a plume of toxic chemicals under the bus barn buildings.
During the Nov. 5 meeting, City Engineer Brynn Bemis stated that when Oscar Mayer was operating, “it drew a lot of the contamination released on the property down deep instead of allowing it to go out into the neighbors.”
Because toxic chemicals were found in the groundwater at Oscar Mayer, the Wisconsin DNR closed use of the high-capacity wells around 2006. Oscar Mayer used millions of gallons of groundwater during its operations. The current groundwater level has been rising as a result of this closure, as well as increased rainfall due to climate change. We need to know the depth and extent of the contamination plume to make sure it has not been allowed to “go out to the neighbors.”
Still, Metro claims this is the best site for the bus barn based on a January 2019 facility analysis that did not include costs related to clean up of the site and the buildings. During these budgetary hard times, is it wise for city leaders to purchase property that is underscored with contamination from over 100 years of industrial use?
The city received a grant for community assessment of contaminated sites, but the grant will primarily be used to assess sites along Park Street. So while the city claims to have a $200,000 grant for environmental assessments, most of those dollars are focused on south side redevelopment sites.
While Oscar Mayer may have been home to our bologna, the site was also home to a military dump, tanks of saran for making plastics, pesticide production, petroleum tanks, ethylene dichloride tanks, hydraulic oil spills, and ammonia spills that killed fish in Starkweather Creek and the Yahara River. Before implementation of environmental laws in the 1970s, it was common practice to dump liquids down the drains. We know better now, but are left with this legacy.
There are still many concerns related to the Oscar Mayer site, including the current landowner’s denial of access to do testing until a letter of intent to purchase is adopted by the Madison Common Council. It seems the city is willing to purchase a highly contaminated site without a total and complete picture of the extent of the plumes that lie underneath it and may have migrated off-site. Testing for chemicals like PCBs and PFAS should be included. Ongoing negotiations are underway with the current owners of the property and, at this juncture, the letter of intent to purchase is slated to be on the Common Council agenda Dec. 1.
Any pollutants migrating under the ground or escaping into the air or exposed during construction could impact the adjacent neighborhoods. The city needs to know what is in the ground on all of the property they are considering for the bus barn. The city must ensure a safe work environment free of toxic vapors for Metro workers, to include ongoing monitoring of all buildings to guarantee their long-term safety.
A recent walk-through inspection of Building 43 by city staff led to the discovery of a large asbestos issue. What other contamination issues could be discovered if a full-scale site investigation was conducted?
We also are concerned for area neighbors because those chemical vapors may be traveling off-site along old sewer pipes, stormwater pipes and utility corridors. Trichloroethylene is a contaminant of great concern to the DNR and is the reason they closed all of the Oscar Mayer wells. It has been found at high levels at the site.
These conduit pathways must be assessed before the city puts good money toward a site that could cost Madison taxpayers —health and safety as well as financially — for years to come. We need to understand the entire system at play under the property before we commit to purchasing a Pandora’s box of contamination.
Many issues related to the contamination will impact area neighborhoods, the site slated for a tiny house village, and seniors and low-income working families who will be offered affordable housing nearby.
If it is true that the city is planning to only house electric buses at the site, then why did Alder Abbas ask about a plan for a Metro filling station at this location? That would guarantee diesel bus traffic to the site. With traffic on Aberg Avenue already a big issue for public safety, noise and air pollution, the Metro plan adds hundreds of buses.
The OMSAP projects the addition of 4,000 new residents to the area by 2040, which would mean thousands of new vehicle trips on Aberg Avenue. The current owners of the property also want to keep access to Aberg Avenue open for uses yet to be determined on the southern portion of the property via an access road. How can this be of any benefit to the neighborhoods that lie just north of the site and the proposed affordable housing located next to the site? Is it fair to house working poor families, the elderly and homeless on Aberg Avenue next to this level of traffic and contamination?
City planners included one sentence in the OMSAP related to the Metro facility, but there is another sentence that carries a resounding message: “Address racial justice and social equity during the OMSAP redevelopment process, which must include assessing and preventing human exposures to toxic chemicals at the site and/or released from the site among all people and particularly at-risk low income people and people of color.” (OMSAP, page 53)
If you have concerns or comments you want to share regarding the proposed Metro bus barn at the Oscar Mayer site, please email our alderpersons at allalders@cityofmadison.com and Jason Ciavarella of the Federal Transit Administration at Jason.ciavarella@dot.gov.