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Internet Links to Gas Works Sites Presently Undergoing Public Attention

 Once discovered in the course of urban renewal, land redevelopment or infrastructure improvement, former manufactured gas plants quickly rise to public attention and activities generally go to quick resolution, not always to favor the environment or public health, however.

Here are a selection of Internet sites that will allow you to judge the broad spectrum of response, non-response and inaction and action.

Professor Hatheway would like to know of other links and will consider putting them up on this website for everyone's benefit.

GAS WORKS PARK, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

Here is a former manufactured gas plant, of the Pacific Coast Oil Gas variety, known then as Lake Station, constructed in 1937 and decomissioned in 1960. The owner, Seattle Gas Light Co., donated the gas works to the City of Seattle in the early 1970s and the site has been proclaimed safe enough for daily visitations by citizens. It seems that most visitors are joggers and dog-walkers, but the old Compressor House has been cleaned-up and serves as a brightly-attractive children's energy-absorbing playground. The compressors are clean and brightly painted and undamageable from kid-climbing.

By no means is the site completely safe from the environmental and public health standpoint, but institutional controls have limited access to those portions of the site felt by the City to represent incidental dangers to visitors.

Visit the site at http://www.seattlephotographs.com/photos/gasworks_park/Gasworks_Park_photo_gallery.htm

http://www.cityofseattle.net/parks/parkspaces/GASWORKS.htm

EXCELLENT website with 360 degree Virtual tours. You will need to have Apple Quicktime installed to view them, but they are a must see: http://www.vrseattle.com/html/vrlist.php?cat_id=64

Arial Photograph: http://www.cityofseattle.net/parks/_images/maps/gasworks.jpg

Map: http://www.cityofseattle.net/parks/history/GasWorksPark.pdf

"Brownfields to Parks Examples, 1998, Gas Works Park, Seattle, WA The Trust for Public Land
http://www.tpl.org/tier3_cdl.cfm?content_item_id=937&folder_id=729

AOL City Guide: Seattle - Gas Works Park
http://www.digitalcity.com/seattle/entertainment/venue.adp?vid=33311

REMNANTS of the SEMET-SOLVAY BY-PRODUCT COKE OVENS, MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN

By-product recovery of valuable ammonia and PAH compounds was perfected in the early 1890s by the Belgians who marketed their technology throughout Europe and in North America. The result was the By-Product Coke Oven Plant, making gas for sale by owning utilities ("Utility Plant") or as a commercial venture to make coke (from the roasting of coal) for sale to industry ("Merchant Plant") and to market the by-product gas to local utilities for distribution in their own systems. Consequently not all derelict coke- oven plant sites are owned by the utility industry.

The first American by-product coke oven plant was constructed at Syracuse, New York in 1895 and a steady rise in their popularity quickly followed, culminating with an outbreak of plants

FORMER CICERO GAS LIGHT COMPANY GAS WORKS at OAK PARK, ILLINOIS

The former manufactured gas plant was installed in 1896 and decommissioned in 1924 as consolidation of manufactured gas at Chicago eclipsed the works with higher-pressure carburetted water gas piped to Oak Park from central stations in Chicago. On demolition, the gas works site was donated to the City of Oak Park and was converted to Barrie Park, about 3.5 acres of public ground and playing fields. The north side of the plant site abuts the Eisenhower Expressway, at Lombard Avenue.

Over the years local residents began to take notice of what has turned out to be a cluster of cancers and the site has been under a State-ordered remediation since 199_, wheren the cleanup costs have escalated upward from an estimated $3-5 million to a current tag of some $120 million. As more is learned of the site, through attention to details discovered during remedial activities, the threats become more apparent. Consequently, most of the homes surrounding the park are no vacant and a variety of protests and legal actions are in the works.

Excavation and removal of toxic gas manufacturing residuals and wastes have drawn national attention and the degree of excavation, following the trail of coal tars (PAHs) down into the hard glacial geologic lodgment till soil has reached more than 50 feet vertically. This is a case example of how light-oil tar residuals and former gas liquors (effluents) take up favored migration pathways in which their dense, nonaqueous liquid (DNAPL) nature is highly affected by gravitational attraction along natural fractures in the glacial till.

Web sites are:

http://vil.oak-park.il.us  (using the Barrie Park link)

http://www.vil.oak-park.il.us.

http://www.barriepark.org.

http://www.lurm.com