Feds build mile-long, underground wall in Gainesville
Hello from Gainesville, Florida. It's Monday, October 12, and you're listening to StreetSmart. I'm Lillian Hamman. StreetSmart is a weekly podcast from Mainstreet Daily News where we cover local news that informs, engages, and inspires listeners like you. Here's the top headlines we're following.
Lillian:The GRU Authority will remain in charge of Gainesville utilities after a decision from a Florida appeals court. The judges said the city lacks the power to change its charter and get rid of a section that was specially placed by the legislature. The city commission could appeal.
Lillian:The School Board of Alachua County officially moved forward with the purchase of Citizens Field, but a new plan considered at the last minute means the stadium will be the home field for Gainesville High School and Eastside while Beulchult will get its own stadium on its campus.
Lillian:Gainesville celebrated the $25,000,000 Choice Neighborhoods grant from the federal government. Administered through Gainesville Housing Authority, the grant will fuel the rehabilitation of housing stock and help provide new units in East Gainesville.
Lillian:The Infotech building at Celebration Pointe sold for $11,000,000 in late September. It's the largest commercial real estate deal in Alachua County for the last several years by both price and square footage. The corporation that bought the building is a subsidiary of Gainesville based Trimark Properties who also owns a majority of the Seagle Building.
Lillian:Florida Gateway College in Lake City received a $3,000,000 federal grant for a new construction trade center. It's the largest grant in the college's history.
Lillian:A Williston dad leads Ace Hardware's nationwide Super Dad contest. The title of Super Dad plus $25,000 and a spot in a commercial for the company is on the line. To learn more about how you can vote for Williston's Matthew Martell or for any other information on these stories, visit mainstreetdailynews.com. Each day, we're adding new information to keep you informed, and it's all free with no paywall.
Lillian:Thanks for our generous members. Welcome to another episode of the StreetSmart podcast.
Lillian:I'm Lillian Hamman, and my cohost Seth and I are much smarter, wiser, and stronger this week than we were last because of our faithful feedback from members who showed up to our panel last week.
Seth:Yeah. Was a great event with members and readers, and I was at a city of Gainesville and Gainesville Housing Authority event across town and was able to slide in just in time to take a seat in the audience and, listen as Lillian, along with Nick and Walker and our publisher, JC Derrick, you know, kinda talked about what they're doing, what they're working on, but then also just solicited that community feedback on, hey, what can we do better? What do you want to see more coverage of or topics of concern for you? So it's a great way to help build community news by actually listening to the community in person, being together, and we'll let you all know when we're planning another one of those in the future.
Lillian:Alright. For this week's feature story, we're gonna need everyone to put on their hard hats and headlamps. We're gonna go deep down underground in the city of Gainesville. Seth, what you got for us this week?
Seth:Yeah. So this was kind of an interesting one in that I've not done the story on this yet. And it's always exciting to me when I get to learn some new things. It's something I've heard about, but I've not actually... There's not been any kind of news that's been happening with it.
Seth:And that is the Superfund site in Gainesville, which is the Cabot Koppers Superfund site. It's off of Northwest 23rd Avenue. So if you're on Main Street and you go west on 23rd, it's kind of right there to the north, very close to Ward's Supermarket. And, you know, from the street, it just kind of looks like there's a fence and there's, you know, a big field and trees, but it was a wood processing site for decades. And it came before the city commission, the US Environmental Protection Agency brought it forward and said, hey, we're planning on starting to move forward with some remediation to kind of clean out some of the contamination that's been there or potential contamination and make sure it's locked in place and doesn't affect anything.
Seth:And the EPA has had this on their list since the 1970s or 80s. It kind of popped up on the federal list of Superfund sites. And then there were some community meetings back in the 90s and 2000s. And so that's been a process over decades, and the Cabot portion of the site is fully remediated and now is being reused. But this is the Koppers portion.
Seth:It's about 90 acres right in the middle of Gainesville that is completely unused for the time being.
Lillian:And Seth, when you've been talking to me about this, you've been saying Koppers, that's not Copper Mine. Right? We don't have copper in Gainesville to mine?
Seth:Right. None that I know of. I'm sure if there were, somebody would have found it before us. So this is Koppers and was the name. It's with a k.
Seth:So it's k o p p e r s. And that's the name of the site. And there's actually another property associated with this super fund site called the Municipal Storage Yard. And it's about 37 acres owned by the city of Gainesville, and it's just north of this copper site. And that's also included in these recent remediation efforts that are gonna be going forward.
Seth:So the EPA said their plan is to build a wall, but it's not gonna be an above ground wall like what we normally think of. It's going to be a 65 foot underground wall, But it's gonna be a mile long.
Lillian:65 feet down in the ground?
Seth:Yeah. At least 65 feet because because it's underground, I'm not sure where that 65 number starts. But it's basically, instead of, you know, a mile long, it's gonna be a circle. And so there's basically four sites on the property. That's where buildings were and that's where, I guess, the most contamination or potential contamination would come from.
Seth:And so it's basically going to encircle those four buildings underground in order to hold in the groundwater so that anything in the area doesn't kind of keep moving into the Florida aquifer. And the EPA has been regularly testing the site for a long time and continues to do that and will continue to do that. It's not something where it's gonna be done in the next year. Know, it's still got some steps to go through, but it's moving forward and there's maybe an end to end site whereas there hasn't been in the past. And the speaker for the EPA told the city commission, you know, it's gonna be an underground wall, right, because it's going down into the aquifer and it's gonna finally settle at the bottom in a layer of clay to kinda keep that groundwater locked in, and then the EPA will put a cap on it.
Seth:And so, that cap won't allow any rainwater to go in or any of that, you know, groundwater that they're trying to trap to flow over. And then, on top of that, there'll probably be some soil fill, some clean fill, and then you won't be able to tell from the top that it's there for the most part. And you remember Depot Park was also a super fun site that got remediated, you know, over a long process, just celebrated ten years of being Depot Park. And that was also, you know, a lot of soil was taken out there, a lot of clean fill placed back in there.
Lillian:How much is that kind of wall going to cost?
Seth:The wall itself, I'm not sure. I was able to find back in 2013. There was a kind of agreement between the owners of the site, which is Beazer East and the EPA for $55,000,000 for remediation. So I'm not sure how much the wall cost, if they were thinking about a wall back then, or if that's changed over time. But it's definitely a lot of money to do this kind of work.
Seth:Now, with the copper site is that municipal, yard that I mentioned. And so they're gonna be cleaning that out too. There's some soil piles there, and so they're gonna be taking those soil piles and some of the the topsoil in the area and placing it kind of inside that wall that they're gonna cap. And so that will kind of finish the work for the municipal storage yard and allow the city of Gainesville to move forward with anything they would wanna do with that 37 acre site. There's also gonna be a lot of tree clearing happening and so that's something that the EPA employee said would probably be the most noticeable thing for neighbors is, you know, tree clearing near the boundaries of the property and just the noise from that.
Seth:But they're gonna be holding a community meeting on October 21, And we'll have the link in the show notes to the story, and then the story has all of those details if you'd like to attend. But it's something that's gonna be starting this fall potentially and last into next year.
Lillian:And what could future use of all that land look like?
Seth:Yeah. They were very clear that they're going to remediate this property to commercial and industrial standards. So there will never be housing on this property. And so it can't be used for anything residential, but that commercial, industrial, you know, seems like there are options there. You know, that could include recreational, like what we just talked about with Depot Park.
Seth:The mayor asked, you know, so, you know, on top of that cap, where the wall is gonna be, you know, could you have something like a basketball court or other things? And they said, you know, yeah, probably a possibility. Just had to wait and see and kind of figure out what the engineering will allow. I will say, looking at the map, which is also on our story of that site and kind of where the wall is going to be underground, it takes up a chunk of that property. I mean, one mile as a circle.
Seth:It's a rough circle. It's kinda like... Looks like one of those thick figure drawings of a house where you have a square and a triangle on top. It's a, you know, square and then comes to a point on one end. And it takes up, you know, the majority of the site.
Seth:So if you couldn't do anything on top of it, it'd be pretty constrained. But I do know the city commission talked in the past about that as once it's fully remediated, a site for the Hogtown Medieval Fair being a large open tract of land right inside city limits. They are currently gonna be up at the Gainesville Raceway this year for the first time is the plan. And they've kind of just been moving around for the last ten years or so since the fairgrounds was sold by the county. So that's one potential option.
Seth:And who knows, we'll have to just wait and see on that.
Lillian:When in doubt, put jousters on it.
Seth:Yeah. That wall won't bother the horses at all, will it? They're used to jumping them.
Lillian:That's right.
Seth:Alright. Let's jump straight into our news forecast and then the event segment. The Archer, Alachua, and Newberry City Commissions will meet on Monday. Alachua will vote on a new contract with Duke Energy, and Newberry will vote on rezoning the Easton Newbury Sports Complex into a public facility. Palatua County will hold its regular meeting on Tuesday.
Seth:It starts at 11:30AM at the Downtown County Administration Building and is livestreamed on the county website. The Gainesville Regional Utilities Authority has its monthly meeting on Wednesday evening at its headquarters near Depot Park. The Gainesville City Commission will convene on Thursday. The morning session starts at 10AM, and the afternoon portion launches at 1PM. The High Spring City Commission will also meet on Thursday at 06:30PM at the city's Civic Center to discuss whether to keep or dissolve its fire and police department.
Lillian:Now for our event segment with plenty of family friendly events lined up during the bye week for Florida Gators football.
Lillian:The GCM Fall Food Festival is kicking off at 05:30PM on Thursday at the Alachua County Sports And Events Center. The indoor event will feature more than 40 participating restaurants with tasting portions available for $3 each. $5 admission and tasting tickets can be purchased through the GCM app.
Lillian:Frog Song Organics Roselle Festival starts at one pm on Saturday at the farm in Hawthorne. The festival celebrates all things Roselle Hibiscus with you pick, workshops, live music, local vendors, and farm tours.
Lillian:MacIntosh's 1890s Festival will run on Saturday starting at 8AM. The festival is one of Florida's most established events with more than 30,000 attendees. You can shop, explore, and discover unique items that can't be found anywhere else. Plant lovers can go to the fall horticulture expo at 9AM on Saturday at the Alachua County Agriculture and Equestrian Center. The free event sponsored by Alachua County, Gainesville Garden Club, UFIFAS, and Florida Master Gardening features plant vendors, gardening exhibits, a keynote speaker with an orchid showcase, snake education, and activities for kids.
Lillian:Seth, whatever will Gainesville do without a Gator football game this weekend?
Seth:Yeah. They'll have to figure something out, but it's always funny early in, you know, August when we start getting emails for all these community events. Like, man, October 17, everybody's playing... Oh, that's the Gators Bye weekend. Yeah.
Seth:So everyone's gonna have their fall event that weekend. The... Although, this fall one will be off, which is the, book sale. The Friends of Library book sale will be the following weekend, but, of course, you know, Gators football can't compete with that. So it doesn't really matter.
Lillian:That's right.
Seth:Get your football schedules around the fall book sale.
Lillian:Yeah. And that's all we've got for this week's StreetSmart podcast brought to you by Mainstreet Daily News and made possible by our generous members. You can access more free news at mainstreetdailynews.com. We'll be back next week with more stories that matter to you because they take place right here in Alachua County. Take a minute to share StreetSmart and help us continue the work.
Lillian:Our theme music is Sunset Sonata by Gainesville Scott Band now leaving space. This episode is a production of MARC Media.
