At a long-awaited public meeting to discuss the contaminated McDonald's site at 43rd and Market streets, shouting and name calling by residents stole part of the spotlight from talk of the environmental clean-up process.
Representatives from McDonald's Corp., the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the city's law and health departments gathered Aug. 15 to field questions from about 50 community members. The residents were concerned about the handling of a hazardous dry-cleaning chemical a previous occupant had left on the site.
"McDonald's has acted like an invading army in our community," area resident Richard Rogers said during the meeting, which was requested by the city. By undertaking the voluntary clean-up, McDonald's will get a state waiver from future liability.
High concentrations of tetrachloroethene, also known as PCE, were found in the soil when an underground storage tank was discovered during excavation in February. Construction was halted, but residents have complained that they were not officially informed about the contamination until May, and that the bulk of the remediation has yet to begin.
However, McDonald's regional vice president David Murphy said his company was justified in not completing clean-up earlier.
"The decision to best clean this up cannot be made very quickly," Murphy said, noting the highly technical nature of the procedure.
Residents were concerned that during the removal of 450 tons of contaminated soil, the remainder of which will be treated on location, clouds of potentially harmful dust enveloped their houses. McDonald's officials admitted that they might have been in error.
"There are standard construction processes during large movements of dirt to keep the dust down, typically the spraying of water," McDonald's construction project manager Scott Lang said. "That did not happen."
Lang said that this precaution was not taken because the digging occurred during winter months, when the contractor had not anticipated dust being a problem.
City senior environmental attorney Patrick O'Neill added that the project had received only one citation for excessive dust, which he described as a "relatively standard, almost common violation."
The method proposed to remove the remaining contaminants, none of which were found at the surface, is called soil vapor extraction. This will involve drilling wells in the ground, inserting plastic pipe and then using a blower to pull the noxious gas through the pores in the soil and into a carbon-based treatment system before venting it to the atmosphere.
A prototype of this system was temporarily installed earlier this month, and upon receiving the test results and making any necessary revisions to its cleanup plan, McDonald's will submit a final design to the Department of Environmental Protection within 60 days for approval. Contaminated groundwater beneath the site, which is not used for drinking, will be monitored and treated in the future if necessary.
Some members of the activist group Neighbors Against McPenntrification found the McDonald's presentation too technical for much of the audience.
"If they're not familiar with chemistry, they don't know what that stuff is," group member Robbin Davis told the McDonald's panel.
Others suggested that even with the clean-up, a better use should be found for the site. But some welcomed the Golden Arches.
"The statement that the residents... don't want this McDonald's is false," said Andrea Foster of the West Park Residents' Council, whose son works at an area McDonald's. "If anything, it will bring jobs to this community."
Murphy said that construction would resume by year-end, pending a go-ahead on the environmental plan. Not doing so would render useless the economics of the clean-up, which is boosting the project's price tag nearly $500,000, to about $2.5 million.
Nevertheless, he still felt it was a safe investment.
"There's plenty of people in this neighborhood that will show up at our restaurant," Murphy said. "It's going to be a successful site."
