voices: the community speaks of Nantucket and GHYC

Wendy & John Penn
45 Pine Street
Nantucket, MA 02554

Conservation Commission
37 Washington Street
Nantucket MA, 02554

April 14th, 2004

Gentlemen:

As part-time residents, and concerned citizens of Nantucket, we respectfully submit that any development of the Boatyard may be very harmful to the environment and the entire community without proper haz-mat containment of various pollutants known to be used at this location over the past 70+ years. The boatyard has had industrial waterfront activity that by its very nature allowed a wide range of pollutants to be used in the course of normal activity. Many of these pollutants were not known at that time to be carcinogenic or harmful to the environment pre-environmental law several decades ago.

It appears a bit fool hardy to build a restaurant and allow young children to play in an area that has been an industrial site for this long. Here in New York we have seen a number of dry cleaning establishments and gas stations try to be "re-developed" as restaurant sites and coffee shops only to be condemned by the EPA as too contaminated to serve for that purpose and required to clean up the site but remain in the same industrial business that the site has been in for decades. The challenge for this site appears two-fold: first the containment of all the hazardous materials during the demolition and construction and then determining if this site be fit for use after it is developed to serve food and allow young children to play there.

To us it would appear that the boatyard has many hazardous materials contained on this site:

I - Ingredients: the actual building materials - ASBESTOS - siding, roofing, flooring, and heating plant insulation. Since these buildings all have LEAD Paint that also needs to be properly contained as we have done with other old structures in town such as tenting or coating these surfaces before deconstruction.


II - Fall-out dust from years of sanding bottom paint off hulls: §HEAVY METALS, Arsenic, Chrome, Zinc, etc. must be in all the cracks and crevices of these old buildings and framing, in the concrete, as well as in the exposed soil and the soil now capped with concrete in the main yard. (The thought of allowing the concrete from this site to be ground up and used as road fill is highly questionable given it's ability to contaminate our water table.)


III - Leaching of PETROLEUM products: gasoline, paint thinner and benzene into the porous surface of concrete and into the soil under the concrete

Prior to permitting the demolition of any of these buildings or the re-landscaping of this property it would appear wise and prudent to have the EPA or other governing bodies determine the toxicity of the materials on this site and the proper way to contain these hazardous materials properly to have them shipped off island to ensure that they do not contaminate the water table or the community in any way.

The developer has claimed that they are benevolent and want to do what is right for our community, we hope that is true. However, since the town's research was vastly different from the developer's regarding the eel grass, we feel compelled to raise these questions. It appears to us that it is necessary to have the proper town, county, state and federal governing agencies objectively test this site and determine the proper way to proceed before anything is done to remove any materials from this site. We hope that you agree that before this "Pandora's Box" is opened upon the community that all concerns can be 100% satisfied at the state and federal levels before anything is disturbed at this site.

Sincerely,

John P. Penn