Borough board OKs more abatement at event center

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NAUGATUCK — Borough officials are moving forward with additional abatement work at the Naugatuck Event Center.

In October, the Board of Mayor and Burgesses awarded a bid to Northeast Environmental of Naugatuck for $46,000 to abate hazardous materials from areas in the event center on Rubber Avenue, a former pump house and an underground vault.

At its Dec. 3 meeting, the board authorized a change order for Northeast Environmental to perform an additional $37,500 worth of abatement. Officials designated an additional 1,000 plus feet of asbestos piping that workers can now remove.

“We’re going to be taking the asbestos off the piping in the basement that’s associated with the bathrooms. We’re going to expand the asbestos removal into the building, one to the right as you walk in where that plumbing line is found,” Public Works Director James Stewart said. “At that point pretty much remove all the asbestos in that lump.”

The borough is paying for the work with a $100,000 Environmental Protection Agency grant that is managed by the Naugatuck Valley Council of Governments.

Officials plan to have all of the work at the event center done by the end of January, Stewart said.

The board also approved an additional $4,000 for Down to Earth LLC, a Naugatuck-based engineering which has a contract in place for $11,125. The company will serve as a licensed environmental consultant to the monitor, report and test during the cleanup.

“Obviously there’s a lot more work we’re doing now, a lot more testing, a lot more oversight, more areas,” Stewart said.

The borough purchased the former General DataComm building, which is now the event center, and adjacent parking lot for $2 million in 2013. The plan is to eventually develop the property, known locally as parcels A and B, into a transit-oriented development with a mix of commercial and residential uses.

The board last week also approved a contract with Red Technologies LLC of Bloomfield for $322,050 to dispose of polluted materials that were removed from Parcel C at the corner of Maple and Water streets. The borough will pay for the disposal with a grant from the state Department of Economic and Community Development.

The borough used to own the lot, which is now the site of a roughly 35,000-square-foot building, before selling it to developers a couple of years ago. The borough was responsible for abatement on Parcel C and stockpiled some low-level contaminated soil on Parcel B as officials looked for options to dispose of it.

Naugatuck workers will load Red Technologies trucks with public work’s equipment, Stewart said. The company will then dispose of the materials.