Pollock Park Pollution Clean-Up Must Come First

Photos by Evan Brandt

Once the contamination is removed from Pollock Park, the borough will try to get funding to implement this master plan for a new park.

Updating and improving Pollock Park has become complicated after an environmental study of the two-acre site found heavy metal and other chemical contamination beneath the soil.

Nevertheless, having a master plan in place will help attract funding to pay for the park once the clean-up has occurred.

The clean-up will take at least 14 to 16 months from now according to Joseph Kraycik, a consulting geoscienctist with Environmental Standards, the Valley Forge-based firm that discovered the contamination.

Parks and Recreation Director Michael Lenhart addresses
environmental concerns during the Pollock Park meeting.

Funding for the clean-up could come from a variety of sources, said Michael Lenhart, Pottstown's director of parks and recreation. In fact, he said, he has already gathered the paperwork for the first grant application to the federal government.

Because the park is now considered a "brownfield," a name for former industrial sites that have contamination, it may actually be easier to attract funding to pay for the park, once the clean-up is done, said Lenhart.

And they're going to need it.

Because now that the park will be taken down to soil, all the trees,m pavement and vegetation removed, the estimated price has jumped from $300,000 to $600,000.

Residents also posed questions and expressed concern about the clean-up, whether they would be exposed and whether any previous exposure might have caused long-term health problems.

There were no immediate answers.

Here are the Tweets from the meeting.