The town of Hamden has spent years and tens of millions of dollars to remove industrial waste buried under hundreds of homes in the Newhall section of town. On Friday, a completion ceremony will be held to mark the end of the largest residential cleanup in Connecticut history.
According to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, the entire neighborhood was built over a swamp that became a landfill that was full of trash from an old factory.
In 2000, were plans to build an addition to the middle school on Newhall Street uncovered unsafe amounts of chemicals in the soil. http://www.newhallinfo.org/html-history/html-linkpages/history1a.html
Soon afterward, the state started investigating soil and groundwater conditions and developed a plan to remove contamination from the neighborhood.
In all, more than 130,000 cubic yards of waste fill that was buried under 240 properties was removed.
The multi-million dollar project also focused on restoring all pre-existing features on the properties, including sidewalks and driveways.
The completion ceremony will begin at 11 a.m.
Photo Credit: NBC Connecticut