Morgantown Dominion Post
1 August 2007
By Cassie Shaner
Monongalia County Commission will meet in regular session at 10 a.m. today, in County Commission chambers at the Monongalia County Courthouse, 243 High St. A public hearing on the Brownfields cooperative agreement will be held at 10:15 a.m.
The Monongalia County Commission will hold a public meeting today regarding plans to team with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to clean up the former Quality Glass site.
The commission plans to negotiate a Brownfields cleanup cooperative agreement to tidy up the 3-acre parcel of land in the small Van Voorhis community, located at the bottom of Van Voorhis Road by the Monongahela River. Brownfields are properties that may be abandoned or underused due to the presence of a hazardous substance.
County Grant Coordinator Joanna Krafczyk said the county-owned Quality Glass site has been contaminated with toxic chemicals associated with the production of glass. She couldn't specify which chemicals might have contaminated the soil, but many old glass sites are contaminated due to early manufacturing methods that used lead.
The agreement will authorize the use of $200,000 in alreadyapproved EPA funding to clean up the contaminated land, Krafczyk said. Among other things, the money will pay for soil testing and allow the county to hire an environmental professional to determine how the site should be cleaned up.
Krafczyk said the public is invited to share ideas for how the riverfront property could be used later. Announcements will be published as the project progresses, she said, "to keep the community aware of the process."
If cleaned up and declared safe by the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources, Commissioner John Pyles said, the Quality Glass factory site could be used for recreational purposes, perhaps for a boat dock or fishing dock.
"It's not doing anybody any good the way it is," Pyles said. "It's a waste dump and it needs to be cleaned up."
Keith Osbourne, who worked at the plant with his father, has said the Quality Glass plant started in 1931 and closed in 1989. The plant made glass until the late 1970s, when foreign competition began driving domestic plants out of business. Work became spotty in the 1980s, and it closed in 1989.
Workers there made incandescent glass, opalescent globes and shades, and glass used in ceiling lights in those times.