Land Recycling Program Hits a Home Run for Shippensburg
Shippensburg, PA

PPL Services Corp., Key Environmental and DEP representatives discuss the finishing touches to the ball field prior to its completion. Residents of the area—whose front porches once offered a view of an overgrown brownfield—now look onto their own “field of dreams.”

In Shippensburg, Cumberland County, a former brownfield site is taking shape—the shape of a baseball diamond. Once home to a manufactured gas plant and railroad yard, the now vacant lot is trading the distant whistle of a train for the enthusiastic clamor of parents and baseball aficionados.

It’s All About Teamwork
On the edge of town on Garfield Street, a manufactured gas plant (MGP) and railroad yard began operations in the late 1800s. After producing manufactured gas for 50 years, the plant shut down and was decommissioned in 1948. The Shippensburg Gas Plant occupied the site until Penn Fuel Gas, Inc. (PFG) bought the property in 1948 and converted it to natural gas in 1953. PFG then was acquired by PPL Corp. in 1998 and became part of PPL Gas Utilities. Upon assessing the site, PFG discovered that the original MGP site and its contaminants extended to the adjacent property owned by the Borough of Shippensburg. Through a Multi-Site Agreement with DEP, PFG planned to clean up this site in 2003.

However, when the borough expressed interest in building baseball fields on its portion of the contaminated site, PFG offered to accelerate its own remediation schedule and clean up the pollution on the borough’s property, as well as its own property.

In a mutually beneficial arrangement, PFG, the borough and the Shippensburg Little League agreed to clean up the whole site under the Land Recycling Program. PFG directed, managed and paid for cleaning up the entire site, while the borough passed an ordinance restricting the use of groundwater at the site. The Shippensburg Little League contributed in its own way, helping PFG build community support and agreeing to maintain the land and the monitoring wells on the borough property once the remediation was complete.

As the Shippensburg Little League was losing its current field, getting a new field up and running in a timely manner was really important. “DEP understood that a lot of children were waiting to play on the fields and did a good job making sure the area would be safe to play on, while not holding up the project,” Todd Sherman, former president of the Shippensburg Little League, said.

“The Land Recycling Program was a real selling point for getting the borough and the Little League involved,” Michael Hasel, senior environmental professional. for PPL Services Corp, said. “The biggest help was politically. People were very comfortable knowing that DEP was involved.”

The borough, the Shippensburg Little League, PFG and DEP worked together from the beginning to design the cleanup process. “The whole remediation was completed with very few out of pocket costs for the Borough of Shippensburg and the Little League,” Hasel said. “It was just a matter of everyone sitting down for a few months beforehand to make sure the endpoint was where we all wanted to be. It has been a superb cleanup because of cooperation.” When the project is completed in 2003, the Land Recycling Program will grant relief of liability to all three groups—PFG, the Borough of Shippensburg and the Shippensburg Little League.

“The Land Recycling Program is doing exactly what it was intended to do—it’s addressing a site with potential environmental issues and transitioning the site back into productive use,” John Mahfood, the site’s project manager and an environmental consultant with Key Environmental Inc., said.

End Use Drives Remediation

Play Ball! Shippensburg Little League started its 2002 season on a new, lush field thanks to PFG's accelerated remediation efforts.

Taking advantage of the Land Recycling Program’s flexibility, PFG is remediating the site with three different end uses in mind. The area designated for the baseball fields is located on a portion of the site that was unaffected by previous gas plant operations. A portion of the site that was designated as a parking area has been cleaned up according to site-specific standards, with a restriction on future groundwater use. On another area of the site, owned by the borough, PFG excavated an old tar storage area and met statewide health standards for a new wetland and the outfield of the baseball fields. PFG also is cleaning up its property for continued use as a natural gas regulator that feeds the town of Shippensburg. A portion of its land will be made available to the Little League for greenspace and additional parking. Having completed the cleanup on the borough’s property first, PFG plans to finish the remediation on its own property by the end of 2002.

“The strength of the Land Recycling Program lies in its focus on end use,” Hasel said. “DEP asks the question: What are you going to do with the property? And then allows you to do the cleanup specifically for the predetermined end uses.”

Sherman summed up the enthusiasm of the partners: “Knowing that the area is all cleaned up and that the children have a nice, clean area to run and play on, makes parents and the Little League board feel better.”

For more information about the Shippensburg Little League Baseball Park contact DEP’s Southcentral Regional Office at (717) 705-4705.

Pennsylvania’s Multi-Site Agreements (MSAs)
MSAs expand the Land Recycling Program process to help organizations owning more than one contaminated site or brownfield property in the state to remediate their lands in an efficient and financially sensible manner. The sites outlined in the PPL Gas Utilities MSA, executed in March 1996, are former manufactured gas plants (MGPs) that processed coal to produce gas for lighting and heating. Environmental assessment work has started at all 20 former facilities in the agreement with Penn Fuel Gas, Inc. (PFG) and North Penn Gas Co., which were owned by Penn Fuel Gas Co. PPL Gas Utilities now owns PFG and North Penn Gas Co. operations after PPL Corp. acquired Penn Fuel Gas in 1998. PFG has conducted soil removal actions at five former facilities, totaling more than 30,000 tons, in preparing the properties for reuse. In addition, after DEP granted an Act 2 relief of liability for PFG’s Lewisburg and Jim Thorpe sites, these sites were removed from the multi-site agreement. The agreement also covers the plugging of about 340 abandoned gas and oil wells owned by North Penn Gas Co. Since starting in 1996, North Penn has plugged more than 155 gas wells.

Statewide Health Standard
This standard is derived from medium-specific chemical concentrations that take into account use and non-use as well as residential and nonresidential exposure factors at a site.

Site-Specific Standard
This standard allows the remediator to consider exposure and risk factors to establish cleanup levels appropriate for the intended use of the site.

Shippensburg Little League Baseball Park
27 W. Garfield Shippensburg, PA 17257

DEP Information
Department of Environmental Protection
David E. Hess, Secretary
Mark Schweiker, Governor
Access through the PA PowerPort at www.state.pa.us PA Keyword: “Land Recycling”
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