Delaware Department of Transportation officials this week reassured local legislators that rumors of arsenic contamination in embankments soils at the site of construction of the new Indian River Inlet Bridge are false.
In a memo to state Sen. George Howard Bunting, and Reps. Pete Schwartzkopf and Gerald Hocker, DelDOT Director of Public Relations Darrel Cole said testing of material by the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) had confirmed what DelDOT officials had held to be the case all along.
“Their testing of the embankment soils has determined there is no arsenic found,” Cole reported to the legislators. “You may remember those rumors floating around months ago,” he added. “We knew them to be false then, but had the material tested by DNREC regardless.”
Cole said DNREC’s findings on the soils had been remarkable, but for a reason other than arsenic contamination.
“In fact, the material is remarkably ‘clean’ of any arsenic, given that the natural background (i.e. what [God] and Mother Nature put here) for arsenic in Delaware is 11 ppm,” the DNREC communication to DelDOT officials read. “Our staff found that the concentration averaged less than 4.3 ppm. Based on this finding, the material would be safe, in terms of arsenic, to be used in residential, as well as recreational land use situations.”
State officials have been planning to dispose of excess soils from the original embankment construction since discovering that the embankments had not settled as required to be the base upon which the new bridge over the inlet will be built.
The state is still pursuing possible action against contractors who built and engineered the embankments. A revised plan for the bridge is now being followed that calls for lower, longer embankments leading up to the bridge’s over-water segment, necessitating some of the existing embankment soils be removed.
About half of the soil is to be utilized by DNREC to raise the level of the Indian River north parking lot, while the rest will head to the state’s borrow pits north of Millsboro and near Millville. Some stone material will be taken to DelDOT’s maintenance yard east of Georgetown.
All of the material is slated to be made available for future projects, necessitating assurances that it is not contaminated.