6 // S T R E E T S E N S E M E D I A // A P R I L 2 9 - M AY 1 2 , 2 0 2 0
NEWS
801 East redevelopment on track to finish in September 2021, but stakeholders say there isn’t enough transparency BY BEN COOPER ben.cooper@streetsensemedia.org
A
fter two years of planning, construction of a replacement for the crumbling 801 East Men’s Shelter is getting underway after multiple delays. Community advocates, however, continue to voice complaints alleging a lack of transparency and questioning whether District officials are doing enough to address potential environmental hazards. In March 2018, Mayor Muriel Bowser included $40 million in her proposed fiscal year 2019 capital budget to replace the 801 East Men’s Shelter due to “deteriorating conditions.” The facility — which had “outlived its life cycle,” according to the budget proposal — is one of six shelter facilities targeted for replacement in the city’s strategic plan to reduce homelessness. “Conditions in the vast majority of the District’s shelters are simply unacceptable and offer very little to help reduce the trauma of whatever life events have led individuals and families to shelter,“ reads the plan, which was first published in 2015. But environmental reviews conducted in October 2018 raised concerns about the proposed location of the new shelter, which would be on top of a former landfill and a tunnel for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s Green Line. Assessments identified soil contaminants that exceeded standard guidelines as well as structural complications with the site atop the Metrorail tunnel. Like the current shelter, the new site is on the St. Elizabeths East campus in Southeast D.C. Additional soil tests were conducted in February 2020 after the project boundaries were altered slightly, but those results have not been released, fueling transparency concerns among stakeholders about what was found and how any potential hazards will be handled. Department of General Services Director Keith Anderson said in a statement to Street Sense Media that the findings didn’t alter the original request for proposals, and the project is on track for completion in September 2021 — even as community worries about the site remain. “That [concern] is not going to change until we get confirmation that they’ve done sufficient testing and they’ve determined how it can safely be built on that specific site,” said Caitlin Cocilova, a staff attorney at the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. “We don’t have additional information to kind of answer the questions that we posed to them.” Cocilova raised those questions in her testimony before the D.C. Council’s Committee on Facilities and Procurement at a performance oversight hearing in February. She described the Legal Clinic’s efforts over the past year to discuss concerns about soil contaminants with DGS, the agency that oversees most of the D.C. government’s construction projects. At that hearing, Anderson said “having contaminants in the soil unfortunately is not uncommon.” In the later statement to Street Sense Media, Anderson said proper measures have been taken to handle any hazardous materials on the site. “The Design-Build team has provided a soil management plan, as required by the Department of Energy and Environment
A rendering of one entry perspective for the new facility. COURTESY OF THE D.C. DEPARTMENT OF GENERAL SERVICES
(DOEE) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to properly manage hazardous materials on the site,” part of the statement says. *** Engineering firm Hillis-Carnes Capitol Services PLLC conducted the environmental site assessments and the geotechnical report before the request for proposals was released in January 2019. The review concluded that the project, if it proceeded, would need to address several problem areas. The initial concern involved the foundation of the new shelter being atop a portion of Metrorail’s Green Line, just north of Congress Heights Station. “Our preliminary findings suggest that the development of the site as currently proposed would require difficult foundation design and construction and would place a significant amount of risk on the Owner,” the geotechnical report read. “There are subsurface conditions at the site that make foundation design and installation difficult, at best.” The project’s design-build team is working closely with WMATA to ensure there is no impact on the subsurface tunnels, Anderson said in the statement. The results of soil borings yielded additional issues. Among the soil contaminants found in amounts that exceeded recommended maximums were hexavalent chromium, dioxins,
volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and total petroleum hydrocarbons - diesel range organics (TPH-DRO). Hexavalent chromium can pose a risk if present in a groundwater supply that is being used. In the case of 801 East, however, no ingestion would occur because the building is slated to use the municipal water supply, said Sally Brown, a research professor in the University of Washington’s College of the Environment and an expert on contaminated soils. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that petroleum hydrocarbons are common and not usually labeled as hazardous wastes. According to Brown, VOCs would be the primary concern, as volatile compounds could have a pathway into the building. “The issue that you have to think [about] when any contaminants are in the soil — how can they get to residents in the building? How could they harm residents in the building?” Brown said. “And there has to be an arrow that the thing in the soil could get to the person in the building.” The 2018 environmental assessment conducted by HillisCarnes acknowledged that while the presence of VOCs is not unexpected due to the “urban nature of the site and the vicinity,” measures should still be put in place to counteract them. The recommendations included installing engineering controls such as a vapor barrier or a subsurface ventilation system to prevent VOCs from migrating into the ambient air of the building.
COURTESY OF THE D.C. DEPARTMENT OF GENERAL SERVICES
