Look, Ma, No More Pigeon Dung!
Ever wonder what seven tons of pigeon guano looks like? Or smells like? Keep wondering.
That's the amount of pigeon crap that was hauled from inside the former Moran Generating Station on Burlington's waterfront. No, it couldn't be composted. And no, it wasn't hazardous waste.
City officials are hosting an open house this weekend to give people a sneak peek inside the brick behemoth now that months of environmental clean-up are over.
Roughly $200,000 worth of environmental work has been done inside the building, which Larry Kupferman, director of the city's Community and Economic Development Office, said is remarkable given that the Moran was run for decades as a coal-fired electric plant.
"I think that speaks to how well the plant was decommissioned," said Kupferman. The plant was taken offline in the 1980s.
As Seven Days reported recently, the city's decades-long effort to redevelop the Moran Plant received a boost from the Vermont legislature. This past session, lawmakers extended the life of a special tax district, allowing the city to recoup new tax revenues and invest them right back into public infrastructure improvements on and near the waterfront.
The city has ambitious plans for transforming the Moran into a complex featuring a sailing center, a children’s museum, a restaurant and rooftop terraces. In addition, Ice Factor, a Scotland-based company, intends to build a family adventure center that will include a large ice-climbing wall, zip lines, dry-climbing walls and more. The city’s bike path will be realigned and more surface parking added. The existing skate park will be moved and expanded, and a summer splash park — which will double as an outdoor skating rink in the winter — is also part of the plan.
“The open house is a chance for the public to learn more about this and other progress on the project, see the revised building and site designs, and even take a glimpse inside the building,” said Kupferman.
The first phase of environmental clean-up at the Moran building was completed last week. In April, the City received a $100,000 grant from the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to begin cleaning the inside of the building. That work included removing asbestos, stabilizing lead-based paint, getting rid of pigeon guano and pumping residual water from the basement.
This work will allow the interior reconstruction to begin, city officials said.
The DEC-funded work comes on the heels of a $105,000 grant from the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission for environmental assessment and stabilization — including the construction this past winter of underwater dams in the intake and outflow sluiceways to separate the building permanently from Lake Champlain.
Exterior clean-up, which will mostly involve removing or capping shallow soil contaminants, will be dealt with during redevelopment of the site.
Open House Details
CEDO will host an open house at the Moran building on Saturday, October 3, 11 a.m. - 3 p.m., to provide information to the community about the redevelopment project. There will be light refreshments, updates on progress, multimedia displays of the most current building and site designs, and limited access to the building.
Holy SHIT!
Posted by: Gregory Stern | October 01, 2009 at 03:04 PM