Tow Path Trail Completion Likely Many Years from Reality - Down to 2/3 a of a Mile

Well written article regarding the Harshaw site. It looks as if the only thing that will expedite this process is if something posed a threat to homeland security. In actuality, constant pressure on congress and senate are the only likely things that will make this happen sooner,

Reposted from Cleveland.com:
Radioactive industrial site stands in way of completing Cleveland's Towpath Trail | Metro - cleveland.com - cleveland.com

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Radioactive industrial site stands in way of completing Cleveland's Towpath Trail

By Michael Scott

January 26, 2010, 9:00AM

John Kuntz, The Plain DealerRadioactive material signs are posted on the fence perimeter around the old Harshaw Chemical Plant that used to refine uranium during World War II. The Ohio Canal Corridor is trying to finish the last leg of the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail routing it by the former chemical plant.CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Uranium-235 has a radioactive half-life of roughly 700 million years.

Tim Donovan is afraid it might take that long to find a way to get the Towpath Trail built through Cleveland.

But Donovan, the director of the Ohio Canal Corridor, is also now more desperate than ever to find a way across 55 acres along the Cuyahoga River to build one of the final legs of the long-anticipated hiking and biking trail.

There's only one thing standing in his way -- radioactive soil.

Worse, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said in a lengthy report Jan. 20 that the site will not host the Towpath Trail anytime soon.

That conclusion was made even though remaining uranium and other radioactive materials in the soil at the former Harshaw Chemical site just south of the Harvard-Denison bridge are not deemed too dangerous to prevent the land being used for passive recreation.

 Federal officials said last week they will follow a methodical, predetermined process that will likely mean another four or five years before the planning and cleanup of the property is complete.

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Workers at Harshaw had refined uranium for the production of atomic bombs during World War II -- part of the then-mysterious Manhattan Project -- leaving behind a microscopic-but-lethal legacy of their wartime work.

How long Cleveland's radioactive past will obstruct the hiking and bicycling path of its future might depend on whether Donovan and others can sway the federal agency to accelerate its work -- or if he can find another way around the site.

"If you look at the Towpath Trail as a whole, we've got 88 of 101 miles complete and open to the public," Donovan said. "But apparently it will still be a long, long march to the sea.

"This might end up the most difficult two-thirds of a mile of trail to be built in America."

John Kuntz, The PDTim Donovan, director of the Ohio Canal Corridor, points out how a future leg of the Towpath Trail might run under the Harvard-Denison Bridge in Cleveland. Donovan is seeking a way to connect the trail from Harvard Avenue toward Steelyard Commons, but can't cross a property that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says still has radioactive contamination from the refining of uranium in World War II.Meanwhile, the remaining pieces of what will be the northernmost end of the trail are either under design or will be shortly, once land is purchased -- at a cost that could reach another $47 million, he said. The group will be seeking federal money under theGreat Lakes Restoration Initiativeto help pay for some of those costs.

The Ohio Canal Corridor group will hold a public hearing in March on the design for the segment from Steelyard Commons north to Literary Avenue and the group is about to buy 11 acres of land near Scranton Avenue that would host the final leg.

"If those things happen, we'll be cutting ribbon and using that portion of the trail," he said. "But what happens with the Harshaw piece will depend on how quickly we can get the Army Corps to move."

But moving quickly at a site where more than 1,500 workers once refined uranium for atomic bombs simply isn't likely, federal officials and contractors hired to investigate the site said this week.

From 1944 to 1959, the company was contracted by the Manhattan Engineering District and the Atomic Energy Commission to refine uranium, which was then shipped to Oak Ridge, Tenn.

The commission OK'd the site for "unrestricted use" a year later, but later reports showed that the company had discharged some 4,000 pounds of radioactive uranium-fluoride particles into the air each year and that that traces of uranium and other compounds remained in the buildings and soil on site, according to records.

Eventually, federal authorities placed Harshaw in the Superfund cleanup program and paid out more than $5.5 million to former workers who were contaminated and their families, a spokesman said.

Plain Dealer fileFederal authorities and hired contractors have been working to clean up the former Harshaw Chemical site in Cleveland for more than a decade. Workers shown here in 2003 were conducting tests at the site and some contaminated materials were taken away as recently as 2008.The Army Corps released its first assessment of Harshaw in April 2001, a more detailed investigation in 2006 (which revealed the presence of another radioactive element, thorium) and finally a 1,000-page update in late 2009.

A summary of that report was shared with residents and public officials Jan. 20. A copy of the full document is on file at the Brooklyn branch of the Cuyahoga County Public Library, 4480 Ridge Road or online.

It ultimately concludes that there remains "no imminent threat to human health or the environment" at the site, which is now used only sparingly by two other industrial landowners.

"But that does not mean there aren't long-term health risks, depending on the land use," said Jeff DeVaughn of private contractor Science Applications International Corp. of Twinsburg, which has overseen the investigation and cleanup since 2001. "If the land were to be used for a resident or a farmer -- the most sensitive land use there is -- with little kids running around eating dirt, the standard for cleanup is much higher.

"But when you get into recreational, people don't spend as much time there, they move through quickly, so that lessens their exposure, which is why the level of risk changes."

And there lies any hope Donovan and others have for completing the trail from Harvard Avenue north to Steelyard Commons.

"That's what we need to get the Army Corps to understand -- that there is a public consensus that this land will be used for a recreational trail," Donovan said. "Otherwise, if they end up cleaning it up to an agricultural standard and fence it off five years from now, it may never get used for anything.

"I don't think anybody wants that."

History of the Towpath

 The current Towpath Trail -- even incomplete -- is a nod to Ohio's 19th century history.

The Ohio & Erie Canal, a network of waterways connecting the state to the big cities back East, enjoyed a relatively short, but mighty place in U.S. history -- opening in the early 1800s, but losing its value with the advent of the railroad in the 1860s.

Plain Dealer fileThe Towpath Trail, looking north behind the Steelyard Commons, borders a series of railroad tracks on the east side and loading docks of stores on the west side in Cleveland, just south of the Tremont neighborhood. Past the Steelyard Commons, the Towpath Trail runs uphill to West 14th Street past an exit ramp from the Jennings Freeway. Planners are trying to figure a way to connect the Steelyard segment to Harvard Avenue, but are being stalled at the former Harshaw Chemical site.

The remnants of that network are preserved in the Ohio and Erie Canal Historic District and theCuyahoga Valley National Parkstill operates one of the locks for visitors.

The Towpath Trail -- a planned 101-mile path following the historic Ohio & Erie Canal from New Philadelphia through the national park and into Cleveland to the lake -- is already complete except for a few urban or industrial fragments in Cleveland and short spans in Akron and Barberton.

The first segment, nearly 20 miles through the national park, opened in 1993. The national park now boasts of more than 2 million annual visitors on its scenic portion of the trail.

More than $85 million has since been spent by various government agencies, nonprofits and private landowners to buy land and build and maintain the trails, either paved or hard-packed stone often through the rural landscape in several counties.

Several new legs have been completed recently. Trail planners in August 2008 opened a new bridge over Ohio 59 in Akron, connecting that city north all the way to Harvard Avenue in Cleveland.

Akron also dedicated a unique floating section of the Towpath in 2009, a third-of-a-mile wooden pathway across wetlands near Summit Lake in south Akron.

In Cleveland, developer Mitchell Schneider spent $1 million to build the segment of the trail behind his Steelyard Commons.

Then, late in 2009, The Trust for Public Land said it had closed a $3.2 million deal to preserve 1.3 miles of abandoned rail bed on the west bank of the Flats for a future trail network -- a segment that would join with the Towpath Trail.