Police Racism Probe, Quarry, Town Center, Were All on New Hanover Supervisors' Table Thursday

Photos by Evan Brandt

Land development, and developments (or lack thereof) of racism in the township police department are the items to come out of last night's township supervisors meeting.

Gibraltar Rock

One long-standing land development that has captured the attention of New Hanover residents is the Gibraltar Rock Quarry.

Township Solicitor Andrew Bellwoar updated the supervisors, and the public, noting that the to the massive project.

township -- and Paradise Watchdogs/Ban the Qaurry -- challenged the issuing of mining permits

He said there was recently a five-day trial before the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board and briefs from all sides were filed. In the meantime, additional well and soil tests are being required at the adjacent hazardous clean-up site where groundwater pollution has added to concerns about the quarry.

The site south off Hoffmansville Road is a proposed 241-acre rock quarry and crushing operation on 302 acres of land.

In 2015, Gibraltar Rock purchased 82 acres adjacent to the Good's Oil site, moving potential quarry operations even closer to the site of the groundwater contamination which ultimately resulted in a $2 million extension of the public water system to 27 homes whose wells had been contaminated.

Township Manager Jamie Gwynn's spreadsheet of various changes made to the Town Center project.

Town Center

Township Manager Jamie Gwynn said a request by Supervisor Marie Livelsberger -- for a review of all the various variations of the New Hanover Town Center project -- revealed a whole set of inconsistencies.

Town Center is proposed along Swamp Pike where the
New Hanover Airport was once located.

In fact, there were so many, that he had to put together a two-page spreadsheet, show how, since the project received preliminary site plan approval in 2007, the acreage, the number of housing units, the square footage of commercial property, the number of parking spaces and even the amount of open space, have been inconstant flux.

"The numbers keep changing," he said. "There are math errors," some of which seem to be driven by the fact that the developers are not always counting "flex units," which have commercial on the first floor and apartments on the upper floors, when they calculate the number of housing units.

The crowd at last week's joint meeting.

"Our consultants have to keep navigating all these changes in the plan," said Gwynn, noting that the plan is now on its eighth revision. The latest version, said Gwynn, has a total of 779 housing units and eight fewer acres of open space, among other changes.

More than 100 people attended a joint supervisors and planning commission meeting last week where requests for 28 variances from township requirements from developer R.P. Wynstone were reviewed.

Supervisor's Chairman Charles D. Garner Jr. urged residents to stay involved and said Gwynn's analysis shows the complexity of the issues with which the township is contending.

"It's difficult for the five of us to get our arms around something that has been around for this long," said Garner. "We all know that this is an important project and I urge people to attend meetings where it is formally discussed."

Romig Road

The supervisors also approved a two-year extension for the preliminary approval granted t the project at 2481 Romig Road, but only after a robust discussion of stormwater issues.

I would give you the basics on this, but I can't find it anywhere on the township's most excellent website. And since everyone in the room seemed to know what it was but me, they never bothered to say how many acres, how many units or any of that quasi-important stuff.

What was clear is that neighbors of the project are worried about what impact the project will have on their wells, on stormwater and, of course, on traffic.

You'll all have to wait for The Mercury story on this one after I get the lay of the land.

NAACP and Investigation of Racism in the Police Dept. 

Tyrone Robinson, standing, reads a statement from the 

Pottstown chapter of the NAACP regarding its

involvement of the investigation of the police department

Yes, I admit, I "buried the lead," as they say in my business. But I had to keep you reading didn't I?

For those of you who have been asleep for the last five months, New Hanover made headlines in a bad way in when a Sept. 12 expose in Philly Voice magazine reported accusations of racism by Police Chief Kevin McKeon and Sgt. William Moyer.

The township launched an investigation and hired an outside attorney to conduct it, but almost immediately confirmed the results may never be known.

This is due to both the confidentiality of personnel matters, and of investigations. The only thing likely to become public is if disciplinary action is taken.

But that dynamic was disrupted the following month when the Pottstown chapter of the NAACP showed up at the meeting and offered to help with the investigation, noting that some potential victims might be more willing to talk to them than to someone representing the township.

Last night, several members showed up and Tyrone Robinson read a statement from the chapter complaining, among other things, that while they had provided information to the township, the flow of information had been mostly one way.

Robinson said Township Manager Jamie Gwynn and Solicitor Andrew Bellwoar had visited the chapter in Pottstown once, and chapter members had been to the township twice.

"But the township has given us nothing," said Robinson. "We asked to see a video we were told shows something of the alleged effromm incident, and we wasked for two other documents. We received no response to our request of Nov. 13 for those things and no response to two follow-up calls" to Bellwoar.

In that same Nov. 13 "private meeting with two supervisors, the solicitor and the township manager, we reported that it had been brought to our attention that racial slurs were allegedly used by police officers. That is of great concern to the Pottstown branch of the NAACP."

Here is video of the full statement:

"We have read the New Hanover Police Department mission statement, and we expect the township to live up to those ideals," said Robinson.

Township Supervisors Chairman Charles D. Garner Jr. assured them that the board had not lost sight of the issue. 

And with that, click here to read the Tweets from last night's meeting.

A Chapter Closes on Quarry Zoning Hearings

Last night's zoning hearing meeting on the proposed expansion of the Gibraltar Rock Quarry is probably more significant for what it represents than what happened.

What happened is it's the last one. The zoning hearing board will issue its decision in August.

What it represents is the closing of a chapter in the quarry's ongoing saga in its attempt to win township approval and begin operations.

For most of the hearings that I have managed to attend, the primary question with which the zoning hearing board must wrestle is one of pollution, not its usual balliwick.

Small wonder, the expert paid by the quarry says there is no risk ("within reasonable scientific certainty") that the pumping of hundreds of thousands of gallons of water from the second quarry pit on the north side of Hoffmansville Road, adjacent to the Good Oil groundwater contamination site that the chemicals in question will be pumped into the quarry, and then into the tributary of Swamp Creek.

The experts paid by the township and the Paradise Watchdogs group put the potential risk much higher.

In the end, its the members of the zoning board who have to decide.

In the meantime, quarry attorney Stephen Harris said he believes the discharge permit for the original quarry, already approved by the zoning board, will be issued by the state in 30 to 60 days.

Then it's a question of how quickly the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection's mining office in Pottsville issues a new mining permit that the digging can begin.

Here are the Tweets:

Zoning Hearing Digs Deeper into Quarry Issues

Photos by Evan Brandt

This map shows the first quarry proposal on the left, which has already received zoning approval, and the second, called GR-IV, on the right, which is the subject of the current zoning hearings in New Hanover. Hoffmansville Road splits the two sites. The road at the bottom of the maps is Church and Coleflesh Road is at the right.

The seemingly endless zoning hearings on the 18 acres that Gibraltar Rock would like to open as a second quarry site continued Thursday night with an expert paid by the quarry company disputing testimony from an expert paid by the township.

By strange coincidence, they disagree on several key points.

Currently at issue is the proximity of the site, called GR-IV, to the former Good's Oil site off Route 663, north north of Big Road, the source of significant groundwater contamination in the area.

For months, the two sides have been arguing about whether a quarry operation would have an effect on the contamination or not.

This map, created by the quarry company's consultant, 

EarthRes, shows the area of groundwater draw-down

for each 50-foot level quarry digs.

The quarry expert insists the flow of the contamination "plume" is flowing southwest, under Route 663.

The township expert says the action of pumping groundwater out of the deepening hole in the ground may well draw the chemical contamination into the pit and thus discharged into a tributary of Swamp Creek, which empties into Perkiomen Creek, a source of public drinking water.

Thursday night was scheduled for Lou Vittorio, the quarry's expert from the firm EarthRes, to rebut testimony from the township's witness, Toby Kessler, from Gilmore Associates.

At the next hearing, on April 6, at 6:30 p.m., Vittorio will be cross-examined by the township's special attorney on the case, Robert Brant.

Among the more notable things Vittorio said are that the state recently asked the company to update the chemicals it will test for in its monitoring wells around the proposed quarry site.

This request, which Vittorio said the company has agreed to, comes on the heels of the discovery in July of a concrete vault on the Good's Oil property containing many of the chemicals which polluted neighbors wells as well as some new ones -- primarily pesticides and petroleum products.

He also said that not only does the quarry's discharge permit from the

Gibraltar Rock witness Lou Vittorino, in the foreground,

testifies Thursday to the New Hanover Zoning Hearing Board.

Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection need to be renewed every five years -- when the state can make changes to the monitoring and treatment requirements with which the quarry must comply -- but also every time the quarry opens a new "lift," which is another 50 feet down.

His point is that "in the unlikely event" that contamination reaches the quarry pit, there are many opportunities for the state to react and impose new restrictions or a treatment regimen.

Kessler has already testified that the company's treatment regiment is inadequate for the chemicals in question, particularly a suspected carcinogen called 1,4 dioxane.

The hearing ended with Ross Snook, a relatively new arrival in the 17-year quarry saga, who was earlier this week appointed as chairman of the township's newly reinvigorated Environmental Advisory County.

Some of Lee Hallman's samples.

He submitted evidence from the federal Agency for Toxic Substances Disease Registry which he was prevented from submitted two months ago on the grounds of a technicality.

The evidence had to do with the health effects of groundwater contamination at Camp Lejune, a Marine Corps base in North Carolina, and the health effects linked to that contamination. Snook's point is that the Lejune chemicals are similar to the chemicals at issue at the Good's Oil site, such as volatile organic compounds like TriChlorEthylene, or TCE.

He also brought along a man named Lee Hallman, who briefly outlined some of the pre-historic Native American artifacts found on the site of both the first and second quarry proposal sites.

He also brought along samples which he said could be as old as 9,000 years, adding "the site is crucial to Pennsylvania pre-history, which we know so little about."

However his testimony was undermined when he admitted he did not know that the Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Commission has already declared that the quarry operation will not cause any harm to the state's archaeological resources.

DEP Took 8,000 Gallons of Pollution Off Oil Site

Photos by Evan Brandt

Barely 30 people attended the public hearing Tuesday night regarding the state's clean-up of the former home heating oil site that was the source of contamination of many area drinking water wells.

The hearing, held at Boyertown Junior High East in New Hanover, was specific to the discovery and draining of a buried pit on the site from which more than 8,000 gallons of dangerous chemicals were removed in July.

The DEP discovered the pit as the result of a deposition given by the property's effective owner Ethan Good (legally the property is owned by trusts under Good's control) in legal proceedings in which he agreed to pay for the clean-up there.

The operation at the site along Route 663, 334 Layfield Road, was once known as Swann Oil, and then the Good Oil Co.

DEP photo of the pit at the Good Oil property

Colin Wade, the DEP official in charge of the investigation of the site, said the liquid found in the pit contained "weathered petroleum, chlorinated solvents, pesticides" and a by-product of petroleum known as poly-aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs.

Responding to a question from state Rep. Marcy Toepel, R-147th Dist., Wade said that contrary to what she had first been told, the materials taken out of the pit are "similar" to the pollutants which leached into the groundwater and poisoned area wells.

The discovery of that pollution in 2011, resulted in public water being extended to numerous homes in the area at a cost of $2 million in taxpayer dollars. (This is the money Good has agreed to pay back.)

Wade also said the estimated cost of the removal was about $150,000 and that the contaminants were incinerated off-site at a licensed disposal facility.

State Rep. Marcy Toepel asks a question.

Also, pipes that emptied into the pit, and which seemed to have come from the garage at the facility, where a truck washing operation as well as heating oil storage and sales were once housed, were also discovered.

When asked by Chris Mullaney, an attorney for the Ban the Quarry group, why it took so long to find something so many people seemed to know about, Wade said DEP interviewed former employees and longtime residents, but could not located the pit, which was buried 10-feet underground -- this despite using ground-penetrating radar.

"It's always difficult to find out where people dumped something 40 years ago," said Wade.

DEP Official Colin Wade speaks at the hearing.

Accordingly, Wade said while the discovery of the pit indicates DEP has found one location of "significant" pollution, it will continue to investigate the site and search for more potential sources of contamination.

Mullaney suggested that DEP expand its search to property Gibraltar Rock purchased from Good in December, 2014 that is adjacent to the contamination site and is currently being proposed for expanded quarry operations.

"It's unbelievable, the quantity, variety and intensity of the chemicals found on in the samples," Mullaney said. He added that the Ban the Quarry group is concerned Gibraltar's proposed quarry operation will draw more chemicals out of the ground water and into the open, posing a further threat.

The map on this map shows the area of groundwater

contamination. The proposed quarry operations can be

seen adjacent to the contamination area.

"We hope it doesn't happen, but we're worried," he said.

"It's frightening not to have this (Good Oil) property totally clean before they start quarrying," Bob Meyers said Tuesday.

Currently, the New Hanover Zoning Hearing Board is taking testimony about Gibraltar's proposed expanded quarry operations onto the site adjacent to the former Good Oil.

Experts for Gibraltar said the operation would not draw much if any further pollution, which an expert hired by the township maintains that is a very real possibility and that the methods proposed for treating any contamination found are inadequate.

The next hearing is scheduled for Jan. 5 at 6:30 p.m. at the township building and William "Ross" Snook, the newly appointed chairman of the township's environmental advisory council, is expected to testify.

In the meantime, here are the Tweets from Tuesday night's meeting.

Town's Expert Cross Examined by Quarry Attorney

Image from last month's presentation by Toby Kessler on the potential for quarry operations at the Gibraltar Rock site to exacerbate the pollution at the adjacent Good's Oil Company site of Route 663.

The attorney for Gibraltar Rock had his turn Thursday night, using his cross-examination at a zoning hearing to try to poke holes in last month's testimony by an expert hired by New Hanover Township that operations from a proposed quarry expansion could exacerbate groundwater pollution there.

The attorney, Stephen Harris, was cross-examining Toby Kessler, a hydro-geologist with Gimore and Assoc., a firm the township hired to assess the threat of the contamination spreading.

Prior to Kessler's testimony, an expert from EarthRes, the firm hired by Gibraltar Rock to answer the same set of questions, testified that there was little chance the quarry expansion would affect the groundwater contamination.

The contamination in question came from the from the former Good's Oil Company site on Route 663. The contamination with TCE and 1,4 dioxane, two potential carcinogens, ruined several wells and required a $2 million extension of the public water system to provide safe drinking water to residents there.

Recently, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection reached an agreement with Ethan Good, who controls the trusts which own the property, to pay for the installation of the new water system and the clean-up costs.

Harris delivered news on that front as well.

He said the DEP has located the concrete pit in which the chemicals were stored and drained it. He said a public hearing to explain those action to the public will be held Dec. 6 at 7 p.m. at Boyertown Junior High West.

Harris also tried to use Kessler's previous testimony about the clean-up of the EPA Superfund site in which the former Bally Case & Cooler Co. polluted wells that supplied the borough of Bally's water supply.

He noted that the levels of 1,4 dioxane the EPA permits to be discharged into the West Branch of Perkiomen Creek, a stream classified as cleaner than Swamp Creek, is higher than the highest levels of contamination found at the Hoff site.

Harris also inferred that since the tributary of Swamp Creek into which the quarry expansion would discharge is not currently a source of public drinking water, a higher pollution clean-up standard might not be required.

The next zoning hearing on the subject was set for Jan. 5 at 6:30 p.m. in the township building, during which residents will be permitted to testify.

Discharge, Distrust and Polluted Groundwater

Photo by Evan Brandt

What remained of the crowd by the time it came for the formal public haring for the renewal of the NPDES permit for the Gibraltar Rock Quarry in the auditorium of Boyertown Junior High East Tuesday.

The public hearing Tuesday evening for the renewal of the discharge permit for the proposed Gibraltar Rock Quarry was part town hall and part formal hearing.

It began with a presentation of the reason everyone was there (which I missed) and then a parade of residents, officials, layers and experts talking about the wisdom of beginning operations of a rock quarry near to a site where groundwater contamination has been found.

It was broken into three parts.

The first and third parts were question and answer period, with residents asking questions and actually getting answers on the spot. But it was "off the record."

In the middle was the formal public hearing, with folks testifying, the court recorder taking it all down and officials from the Department of Environmental Protection saying "thank you for your comments."

Throughout it all, no one from the public came to speak in favor of the quarry, or the potential its operations have to discharge groundwater polluted with a dangerous alphabet soup of chemical pollutants into a stream that empties into Swamp Creek.

Photo by Evan Brandt

The Gibraltar Rock quarry maps to which speakers and experts referred.

Mostly, what people seemed to be trying to determine, was how bad the pollution is, what DEP is prepared to do about it, and the potential impact the quarry operations would have on the contamination seeping through the groundwater at the former Good's Oil site off Layfield Road (Route 663).

What was also clear is that the experts do not seem to agree.

While the expert from EarthRes, the firm hired by Gibraltar to study the area assured residents and officials the contaminated groundwater from Good's is moving away from the site, the engineering firm and consultant hired by New Hanover Township asserted the opposite.

And, not surprisingly, it also became increasingly clear how the entire issue has been compartmentalized within DEP, so that only certain aspects of the proposed quarry and its proximity to the contaminated site are considered at any one time, by any particular agency.

So while resident after resident came to the microphone to talk about their concerns about the potential contamination and impact of the quarry operations, they were repeatedly told something like: "we're only here to discuss the NPDES permit, please confine your comments to that issue."

FYI, NPDES stands for -- ironically perhaps -- the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System and is a federal permit, administered by the state, to protect the nation's rivers and streams from too much pollution.

Nothing was resolved, the state insists it is still undecided about renewing the discharge permit, or the mining permit.

What was learned, however, from DEP official Ragesh Patel, that the state plans to reveal its plans for cleaning up the Good's Oil site by the end of the year, or early in 2017.

So without further ado, we present the Tweets -- and mostly the preserved live video from the hearing's various parts:

Going to (Geo-Hydrology) School in New Hanover

First of all, allow me to wax on a bit about what a charming locale was chosen for a municipal meeting, the old historic schoolhouse in New Hanover.

It had the two things I most appreciate in a historic site -- authenticity and air conditioning.

(During a recent visit to FDR's historic home in New Hyde Park, we entered the mansion only to be told the air conditioning had broken down. It was hard to appreciate history when your glasses kept fogging up.)

Secondly, bravo to the township supervisors for saying they don't know enough about the science of  potential contamination being released by Gibraltar Rock';s quarrying. (It's not often you hear a politician say they don't know enough.)

Thirdly, a second bravo for saying they need to learn more, and then inviting someone who knows more to teach them. (They just moved from "politicians" to "concerned public officials" in my playbook.)

And fourthly, congrats to them for voting Monday night to have solicitor Paul Bauer write to the DEP and essentially ask "why aren't you doing more about this."

During last night's meeting, Bauer opined that the DEP should have stepped in when Gibraltar Rock bought 18 acres of land from the owner of the contaminated former oil site in December.

We'll see where it goes from here people.

Here are the Tweets from the meeting.

New Hanover Quarry May Release Contaminated Groundwater says Geologist, Hyrdologist

Sometimes it pays to hang in there until the end.

This was certainly the case for the four-hour township supervisors meeting I attended Monday night.

What I didn't know going in was that there was an appeal of a code enforcement action at the top of the agenda that ended up taking almost two hours.

The interesting thing about it was that the person making the appeal was William Moyer, a sergeant with the New Hanover Police Department.

A water drain he put in year sago, with the verbal OK of the code officer at the time and in order to protect his already water-logged neighbors from getting ever more of his run-off, was suddenly declared illegal because it was causing an icy condition on Reifsnyder Road.

Rather, said his lawyer, the problem was caused by the settling of Colonial Drive.

Anyway it was long and painfully dull, except, of course, to the people whose lives are affected by it.

And then, aaaaaallllllll the way at the end of the meeting, Ross Snook of Sanatoga Road, a geologist, hydrologist and waste expert, told the board that the groundwater contamination beneath the former Good's Oil site is being held back by crystaline bedrock.

That bedrock will be fractured by blasting for the neighboring quarry fighting for approval for more than a decade, and when the quarry draws groundwater for their operation, it will suck contaminated groundwater into the rest of the aquifer, compounding the pollution problem, Snook said.

We'll be following up on this, of course.

For now, here are the Tweets.

New Hanover Gets the Twitter Treatment

Columbus Day meant no borough council meeting Monday night.

(It will be held today, Tuesday, Oct. 14)

So that left me with the choice of East Coventry whose meeting agenda, no offense, looked like it could put frenzied wolverines to sleep, or New Hanover.

There was no agenda posted, so it was a total crap shoot.

But we know our way around crap here at the Digital Notebook and we're nothing if not willing to take a chance. So we did.

Was it the right choice? You be the judge....