Contaminated soil excavated from a former gas plant site in Seaside will be trucked away over local streets, despite pleas from concerned residents and elected officials to remove the stuff by barge instead.
An 18-month project to remediate the site - owned by National Grid - along Beach Channel Drive and Beach 108th St. is expected to produce 80,000 cubic yards of toxin-laden dirt, a National Grid official said.
Starting in September, the official said, an estimated 30 trucks a day will pass through local streets on their way to the Verrazano Bridge to disposal sites inland.
"They way they handle this is not going to work," said Lew Simon, Democratic district leader of the 23rd Assembly District.
Simon is among the many residents worried that the project might worsen traffic congestion on the peninsula, which has only two major thoroughfares.
"This project really frightens me. There are schools in the community," Simon said. "God forbid a truck jackknifes."
At a meeting with state and company officials last week, Simon, head of the Good Government Democratic Club, asked officials to barge the waste through Jamaica Bay.
But an official with the state Department of Environmental Conservation said that barging the soil would double the cost of the $35 million project and delay plans for an additional year.
"We deem it technically infeasible," said Douglas MacNeal, an environmental engineer for the state agency.
"The area is not large enough to accommodate the size barge we would be using," said MacNeal, noting that a ship is already docked at the gas plant site. "There is not enough room for both ships."
Transporting the waste by way of water also poses the risk of spillage, MacNeal said.
Assemblywoman Audrey Pheffer, who did not attend last week's meeting, initially wanted the soil to be barged out, but now agrees with the DEC.
"Part of the problem with anything like this is the fear factor. The barging had too many avenues that could become a danger," said Pheffer, who noted that trucking would be faster and therefore safer.
One of the peninsula's two main roads would have to be shut down in order to move the trucks from the gas plant site to the barge.
"They fill the trucks up and spray a [sealing] foam on top of the dirt then put a tarp over it," said Community Board 14 District Manager Jonathan Gaska. "It seems more plausible than losing one lane ... for the year and a half it will take for them to do this."
