The industrial site in Southeast Washington on which the proposed baseball stadium would be built has sustained some environmental contamination over the years, and more could be discovered once construction of the ballpark begins, according to interviews and District documents.
But a top D.C. health official said that, based on experiences with development of other parcels in the area, any required cleanup should be manageable. City officials said current property owners, not the District government, would be required to pay the cleanup costs under federal law. The D.C. Health Department does not yet have an estimate of those costs nor an idea of how long the cleanup could take.
Last week, some D.C. Council members expressed concern that if environmental problems were discovered at the site, the city could risk missing a March 1, 2008, deadline for completing the new stadium, which would trigger a payment of compensatory damages to Major League Baseball.
The most extensive records on contamination within the stadium footprint are in a June 2000 report describing the presence of petroleum products in the soil and groundwater at 60 P St. SE, a tract that has been used as an asphalt plant since about 1950. The study was conducted by an engineering firm at the request of the Health Department.
The study, obtained under the D.C. Freedom of Information Act, identified several petroleum compounds that were above the levels permitted by the department. Two types of fuel oil, including diesel fuel, had been released into the environment from underground storage tanks on the site, according to the report. It said that soil samples also contained elevated levels of benzene, among other fuel-related contaminants.
The report said the health risks associated with the contamination at the site "are very low because there are no complete exposure pathways," although it noted that the risk assessments were based in part on the assumption that the site would continue to be used for industrial purposes.
Health Department officials said the property is one of five in the stadium footprint where leaking underground storage tanks have been shut down and removed since the mid-1990s in accordance with federal and District requirements.
In 1995, for example, Anacostia Ready Mix Plant, a concrete company, removed a leaking 15,000-gallon heating oil tank from its facility at 1522 South Capitol St. SE, said James Collier, chief of the environmental quality for the D.C. Health Department.
"As we go forward, we may find other things in the ground," Collier said. "But we don't know yet whether they will be excavating -- whether the stadium will sit above or below the ground."
He added, however, that based on the history of other development in the area, which turned up contaminants such as mercury and coal tar, "there is nothing there at the stadium site that is not manageable with the proper consideration."
The Health Department said no active underground storage tanks exist in the area that are registered with the agency.
Collier added that the agency's environmental records for the stadium site are far from complete, going back only 15 to 20 years.
Chris Bender, spokesman for the Office of Planning and Economic Development, said the District believes that federal environmental law makes the owners of any contaminated land responsible for paying for the cleanup, even if the city takes control of the land through eminent domain.
Bender said the city also might pursue the option of trying to get property owners to sign agreements to cover the cost of cleaning up contamination discovered after a land sale. Or, the District could take out insurance in case potentially hazardous materials are found on a piece of land after the city has taken possession of it, he said.
Jeff Marshall, vice president of SCS Engineers in Reston, an environmental engineering and remediation firm, said it is "nearly impossible to find a piece of land that big that does not have some environmental issues that need to be addressed."
Marshall noted that given the old age of many of the buildings on the stadium site, "it is a high probability that there is some asbestos, but there are experts who can readily deal with this."
Majid Manzari, professor of civil engineering at George Washington University, said it will be important for those involved in the stadium project to test various levels of soil.
"They will need to survey the soil properties within the first six feet or so to analyze for the chemical composition of the potentially hazardous material that is in there," Manzari said. "Seasonal fluctuations of the groundwater table can distribute these chemicals to the different levels."
He added that the removal of underground storage tanks could become a structural issue for the stadium construction team.
"Anything you backfill with, even if it is a high-quality soil, is not good to build on directly unless you use deep foundations because the new soil will not be compact enough," he said.
Staff researcher Bobbye Pratt contributed to this report.
