MANCHESTER — A black, mulch-covered field is about all that remains of the 5 acres on Pine Street where three houses built on a 50-year-old burn dump sat just a few months ago.
Department of Public Works crews finished leveling and stabilizing the lot Monday, after the department demolished 158 and 160 Pine St. earlier this month with the help of a rented excavator.
Public Works Director Steven Kenney said crews spent Monday spreading rotting wood chips over the field to hold the hard-packed soil down.
Kenney said the area acts like a "dust bowl" without the cover. The department hopes to seed the area in the coming weeks.
"We're not going to go crazy landscaping," said Kenney. "We want to stabilize (the area)."
The demolition, according to Kenney, cost the town slightly under $10,000, while the excavator rental cost the town $2,000. The project included hiring Scott Oil to remove the oil and gas furnaces in both houses, decommissioning the septic systems, and collecting whatever salvage the site had to offer.
Kenney said he doesn't expect the town to make off with any more than a few hundred dollars from copper and steel salvage. He conceded that people had "helped themselves" to most of 158 and 160 Pine St.'s metals and fixtures before the town demolished the houses.
He believed that people entered the buildings through the holes made in them during Police and Fire Department drills in the buildings during late June.
"There wasn't much," said Kenney, "the houses were pretty stripped before we got in."
He expects the town to make $300 to $400 off the recycled metals.
The town's cleanup project began in late 2008, after the state Department of Environmental Protection named the town responsible for the hazard site in April of that year. The state agency called the site a hazard due to high levels of lead, arsenic and cadmium in soil up to the surface level.
Soil testing, performed by Woodard and Curran, began in September 2008, and continued through this year. The engineer who performed the testing could not be reached for comment.
During the April 2009 Town Meeting, Manchester residents approved spending $2.4 million to buy the houses and relocate the Gessner, Lauder, and Mains families from 156, 158 and 160 Pine St.
Only one house, 156 Pine St., sold. The town offered the property for less than $11,000 and the new buyer had the home moved to 136 Pine St. in January.
According to Kenney and Town Administrator Wayne Melville, the town is looking to cap and seal the lot, but does not have a definite time frame for doing so.
"Hazard sites are always difficult to clean," Kenney said.
A capping procedure would require 2 feet of fill placed on top of the original landscape, separated by a layer to keep one from the other. The cap would allow the new area to serve limited use as a recreational field or hiking trails.
Though the town stands a long way from deciding what to do with the lot, Melville said testing still has to be done in the area.
"They have to clean up the site before they can figure out what to do with it," said Parks and Recreation Director Matt Casparius.
Steven Fletcher can be reached at 978-283-7000 x3447, or gt_reporter@gloucestertimes.com.
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