Town officials on Tuesday approved another $84,000 for the remediation of contaminated soils at the former Irwin House site.
The funds—to be paid to the Stamford Wrecking Company following a 3-0 vote by the Board of Selectmen—hopefully will be the final payment in a demolition and abatement project budgeted for about $770,000 all in, according to Joe Zagarenski, senior engineer in the Department of Public Works.
The overall project is coming in about $29,000 over that spending plan, he told the selectmen at their regular meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference.
Asked when the public can expect to see green grass on the site of the former Irwin House, Zagarenski said in October-November — so long as no further contaminants turn up.
“I don’t suspect we’re going to find anything, but if we’re trying to find the clean limits and we hit into another area that’s [contaminated]—I don’t see it, I don’t foresee it happening, but there is that [chance],” he said. “We have a licensed environmental professional watching this happen that has to sign off for the EPA at the end. So their license is on the line.”
Selectman Steve Karl said, “So just so everybody knows then, this potentially may not be the end. So that has to be said. There’s a small chance that you could still have more [work to do].”
Karl, First Selectman Dionna Carlson and Selectman Amy Murphy Carroll voted 3-0 in favor of the new contract. (The project currently has about $55,000 of contingency funding left, and the $84,000 approval from this week makes up the difference in the estimated $139,000 cost of the remediation, Zagarenski said.)
Town officials have been tracking the remediation at Irwin closely since the demolition of the main house and garage wrapped up in December. The brick house, built between 1961 and 1963, stood on property once owned by IBM founder Thomas Watson Sr.
Earlier this year, officials found a third, “undocumented” underground tank at the site that had to be removed (the tank may have been connected to a former bomb shelter on the Weed Street property).
Zagarenski said this week that the soils found to be contaminated appear to be “where they used to dump the coal ashes.”
“It’s more indicative of coal ash than actual oil,” Zagarenski said. The soils must be removed and shipped to a certified disposal company, which is in Massachusetts, he said.
The selectmen noted that when the town looked into the cost of preserving Irwin House, the cost for exterior work (windows and roof) alone came in around $2 million.
Murphy Carroll asked where the additional $29,000 is coming from. Zagarenski said there are funds in a closed project related to the Town Hall Annex.