Hamilton Park, Jersey City, N.J.

Jersey City, NJ – The Hamilton Park neighborhood is one of the most desirable places to live in this old city at the river’s edge. Over the past twenty-five years it has become a trendy place for commuters and young families to call home. But recently the city’s industrial past resurfaced — literally.

During a long-awaited renovation that began this summer, routine soil testing found lead in portions of the park. Though the amount of lead was on par with other urban areas, it registered above the state maximum for residential districts.

“Even though the levels were not off the charts, they didn’t correspond to the residential levels that we wanted to uphold,” said Jersey City landscape architect, Brian Weller.

The result? More tests and more contamination.

Arsenic was found in the northern sections of the park. The amount in the soil was small, 25 – 26 parts per million, but that is 27% more the maximum permitted by New Jersey.

High exposure to lead can cause developmental and other problems in children and elevated levels of arsenic can cause neurological problems or death.

How did such hazards end up in a city park in one of Jersey City’s most desirable areas? Glenn Wrigley, Jersey City’s chief architect, speculated that there have been many different ways this kind of contamination could have been deposited here over the century and a half since it was opened.

Hamilton Park, a 5.56-acre square, was first established in the 1850s and functioned the same way it does now — as a small respite for wealthy, urban families. Over the next 100 years, however, Jersey City became heavily industrialized. In 1927 the Holland Tunnel, funneling cars and trucks into Manhattan, was finished just half a mile from the park. This is probably where some of the contamination comes from, according to Wrigley.

Other sources date back even farther in history. “Lots of people used to burn coal here and the ash in the air from that practice would have contained lead,” he said. And years ago, arsenic was used as a chemical preservative for wood. “There may have been a wooden structure there at some point,” Wrigley said. “Also, arsenic used to be used in pesticides. It would be reasonable to think that some older pesticides were used there, too.”

However, Wrigley conceded, nobody really knows how the contaminants got there. But there was a neighborhood consensus about what to do with it.

In early September Wrigley met with 50 local residents at a Hamilton Park Neighborhood Association meeting and outlined remediation options for the park: portions could be capped with filter fabric and clean topsoil to contain the contamination, or all the soil could be removed and replaced.

Wrigley recommended capping the site, noting that full soil removal would both cost more (around $1 million, compared to between $75,000 – $100,000 for capping) and would mean cutting down about 30 trees from the park. He said that contractors would make sure the filter meets state standards.

In an email, Sam Stoia, a former president of the neighborhood association, said the city did a great job explaining the pros and cons of capping versus removal. “They went as far as to get community consensus on two options for treatment,” Stoia said in the email. “I thought that was going beyond their duty.”

Still, at least one local resident thinks that the city should remove all contaminated soil. Karen Vonstappenbeck lives across the street from Hamilton Park with her family. Sitting outside with her children as they ate after-school snacks, Vonstappenbeck said she knew about the contamination but hadn’t known about the community meeting. “I cannot believe they would even consider not just cleaning it up,” she said, shaking her head.

To that, Wrigley countered, “Nobody has approached me with that complaint directly. The only reasonable response is that we are following state protocol. We’ve discussed options with the public and we believe this is the most responsible manner in which to proceed.”

Wrigley put the amount of pollution in the park in context, saying the level of contamination is relatively low and unlikely to be dangerous to people.

“If you had one million grains of sand, only 26 of them would be arsenic,” he said. “You would have to, literally, eat the dirt for 30 years to be in danger.”

The Remedial Action Plan, a document that outlines the city’s strategy for capping Hamilton Park as well as the park’s history, was approved by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection on October 9th.

The renovation at Hamilton Park continued in the rest of the square while the remediation proposal was being reviewed. City officials expect the renovation to be completed by late March or early April.

When the work is done and the digging equipment is finally gone, people in the neighborhood will be able to use the historic park the way so many previous generations have enjoyed it.

But there will be one restriction: “You can’t just go in there and plant a tree wherever you want anymore,” said Weller, the city architect. Because the contaminated soil will remain in the park beneath the topsoil of the cap, digging will be tightly controlled. “There will be absolutely no extracurricular digging,” Weller said.