Groundwater on Long Island will soon be healthier. A new Soil Wash Plant facility recently opened on Long Island that will help to protect groundwater and facilitate more brownfield site remediation. It is the only such facility in the world and will bring a new level of capacity to facilitate the cleanup of contaminated sites in the New York Metropolitan area.
The concept and need for the plant sprung from trying to develop a contaminated parcel of waterfront land in the Harbor Island community of Island Park known for five decades as the Cibro Oil Terminal, with 14 above ground and one underground oil storage tanks on-site. Sitting along the shores of the already-impaired Western Bays, the land had become a blight to the neighborhood in and around Island Park.
And the remediation clearly worked. Forty thousand tons of contaminated soil have already been excavated and remediated.
The treatment facility is the world’s largest soil washing facility of its kind and the first in the United States. It will treat hundreds of thousands of tons of unsuitable construction materials and contaminated soils per year, removing harmful contaminants in the process. When the soil wash process is complete, a percentage of the original soil and its contaminants are processed into a solid cake and trucked out of the area. The cleaned soil and stone will be available for sale and used for construction projects.
Guest blog by Michael Martino. The plant is owned by NYLCV Board Member Michael Posillico.