By Morgan Pilz, Staff Writer

Grounds expected to open by next council session, says town administrator

(Jan. 30, 2020) Berlin Town Administrator Jeff Fleetwood expressed confidence that Heron Park will be able to reopen by the next mayor and Town Council meeting when he gave his report on the park during Monday’s meeting.

Fleetwood told the council and public about a groundwater evaluation required by the Maryland Department of the Environment under the area where the caustic soda spill first occurred.

“Obviously, it wasn’t something we could sit around and wait for, so the council approved that by whole vote and the cost is just under $13,000,” Mayor Gee Williams said during the meeting. “The process should be done within a couple weeks, around two weeks.”

The funds will come out of the contingency fund and not the town reserves, he added.

“Just so everyone understands, the correspondence that the town did receive from the Maryland Department of the Environment wasn’t, ‘Will you do this,’ it was, ‘You will do this,’ and they’d like testing to be initiated within 30 days of the correspondence,” Fleetwood said.

The testing will involve drilling three shallow wells (around 15 feet deep) near the original spill site.

“We are able to narrow it down to do the following work,” Fleetwood said. “Within [a particular area] what we proposed to do, EA Engineering will drill three shallow water wells … the perimeter wells will be drilled as well. But the wells that will be tested are the three shallow wells.

“We are testing for only the chemicals that were stored in that facility where the spill did occur,” he continued.

Fleetwood is confident that no chemicals will be detected.

“I’m not a scientist and I’m not an engineer, but when that spill did occur, that spill site, the chemical itself, was cleaned up and quite a bit of earth was removed from that site … all the way down to where it was a zero, or neutral pH level,” he said. “I feel very confident that the chemical did not seep into the groundwater.”

There will be a field test the day of the drilling, and results are expected to come back that day. If there are levels of any of the spill leftover, the other perimeter wells will be tested too, Fleetwood added.

The scope of work was submitted on Friday, Jan. 24, and the town is waiting on the department’s approval within a few days.

In addition to the work required by the Maryland Department of Environment, the town has also been removing debris from the site.