Town Finds Out About Asbestos Threat Five Years after Fact
April 5th, 2007
A suburban Philadelphia township that’s home to a long-defunct shopping center, has just learned that the state Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) fined the center’s owner five years ago for rampant asbestos violations.
According to an article in the Bucks County Courier Times, in April and May 2002 a federal inspector visited the demolition site of the Levittown Shopping Center and saw asbestos-containing material “strewn on the ground throughout the shopping center, piled in open Dumpsters, and left hanging from building ceilings and walls.” The EPA inspector later issued a fine in the amount of $34,700 against the owner, developer, and contractor but the township or county was never informed about the violations.
Neither were the neighbors who live, work, and play near the shopping center, notes the article, which include a Catholic church and elementary school and a publicly-funded senior citizen home. Furthermore, no tests were done to see if the cancer-causing material had impacted the air, soil or water at the site, according to Donna Heron, an EPA spokeswoman.
A local state representative, John T. Galloway, recently learned about the violations and fines while searching for state grants that might be available to assist the township in finally completing renovations of the shopping center, which has sat in disarray for years.
The EPA told Galloway that the owner was not required to notify the town or county of the violations.
“I want to know exactly what happened,” he said. “I want to know who knew, when did they know and what the ramifications are. We don’t know what the ramifications have been because no one was told,” Galloway told the newspaper.
Executive Director of the local Clean Air Council, Joe Minott, also believes that the EPA had a duty to inform local residents about the health risks involved with inhaling asbestos fibers, especially given the proximity of the shopping center to the school. So does newly-elected State Representative Patrick Murphy.
“To me it’s an outrage that they wouldn’t even contact [Tullytown] officials,” Murphy said. “I believe in an open and responsive government. That’s how I run my office and I would expect and demand the EPA and other federal agencies to do the same.”
DLC Management Corporation, the developer of the new Levittown Town Center and the company who paid about two-thirds of the fine, issued this statement earlier this week. “DLC is committed to complying with all applicable federal, state and local laws, and DLC will continue to take all steps necessary to ensure that future construction activities and operations at the Levittown Shopping Center comply with all applicable legal requirements,” the statement read.
