Progress has stopped on the Perry Police Department’s sally port due to the discovery of contaminated soil on the construction site.
Perry City Administrator Sven Peterson told the Perry City Council at Monday’s meeting about the “unforeseen issue with previous environmental stuff going on near the site.” The issue involves contamination from a long-abandoned utility property.
“North of the fire department,” Peterson said, “there was a coal tar site of MidAmerican Energy. It was thought that was all cleaned up, but I think some leaked into a tile line and then came down into our site once that tile was broken open during excavation.”
Between the 1850s and the 1950s, many small towns produced gas lighting by extracting gas from soft coal. One of the byproducts of the extraction was coal tar, which is still used in some roofing and paving jobs.
MidAmerican Energy apparently stored a large heap of coal tar on its Perry grounds. Coal tar is believed to give off volatile chemical compounds, such as benzenes, ethyl benzenes, pyrenes and toluenes, into the adjacent soil, and many of the compounds are suspected to cause cancer.
Work on the project stopped for several weeks after crews detected the coal tar and while soil tests were conducted.
“Those tests came back,” Peterson said, “and it does prove that it most likely is MidAmerican’s responsibility, so we’ll be working with them for the expenses of that cleanup.”
Matt Ferrier, the city’s engineering consultant with Bolton and Menk, said “part of that process will be that we’ll have to have environmental specialists there with us as we’re removing that dirt to make sure we’ve gotten it all. We’ll be working with Impact 7G to help us do that.”
Peterson said once the contaminated soil is removed, the project should “get back on track. Last week the structure showed up on site, so that’s there and ready to start going up once all the footings are in.”
Construction of the 6,300 square foot sally port began in July by Altoona-based JAS Concrete. The $500,000 project was expected to be completed this summer.
