[ infrastructure ]
Samer Petro
Ella Belling
Repurposed for Recreation
How an
Abandoned
Brownfield
Property
Became a
Community’s
Bright Spot
Visit the Van Voorhis Trailhead on a
sunny weekend afternoon, and you will
find it packed with locals of all ages.
College students, families and seniors
alike use the trailhead to experience
nature and keep fit, and each one sees
it as a valuable recreational asset in
the community.
As they admire the greenery along
the trail, it’s probably hard for them
to imagine that the site used to be the home of a manufacturing facility with potential environmental contaminants, but just
three years ago, that’s exactly what it was.
The location of the Van Voorhis Trailhead is the former site
of the Quality Glass manufacturing facility, which operated
there from the 1930s until the late 1980s. For years the site sat
vacant, as former manufacturing facilities often do, since potential owners feared environmental liabilities associated with
its previous use.
Monongalia County Commission officials recognized the site’s
potential for redevelopment that could benefit the community,
and they commissioned an environmental assessment to begin
the process of clearing it for new construction. According to
the report they commissioned, arsenic, lead and benzo(a)pyrene
were among the chemicals present.
In 2012, the Monongalia County Commission used an Environmental Protection Agency Brownfields Cleanup Grant to
remediate the site by placing a clay soil cap over the property
and covering it with new top soil. They then agreed to deed
restrictions that would prevent anyone from breaching the cap
and potentially releasing contaminants. The deed also restricted
withdrawing groundwater from the site for any purpose except
monitoring and remediation.
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west virginia executive
With the remediated brownfield area cleared for red evelopment, the Monongalia County Commission began seeking an
organization to redevelop the property, and the Mon River Trails
Conservancy approached them with a vision of a new trailhead
that would link the community to the Mon River Rail-Trail.
This 48-mile trail links urban and rural communities in Marion,
Monongalia and Preston counties and provides an outlet for
walking, cycling, running, jogging and cross-country skiing to
its inhabitants. Eight miles of the trail are paved, allowing for
inline skating as an additional use.
To make the trailhead truly useful for guests, the Mon River
Trails Conservancy wanted to expand parking on the site and add
restroom facilities. It sounds simple enough, but due to the site’s
former use and its location within a flood plain, engineers had to
accommodate numerous environmental constraints. In designing
the site, they needed to balance the needs to locate the restroom
facility outside the flood plain and provide accessibility for those
with disabilities while also siting the facilities in a way that avoided
contact with contaminated material. They also had to locate the
restroom facility to take advantage of the prevailing wind on site
because the Mon River Trails Conservancy wanted to construct
what is known as a sweet smelling toilet at the trailhead as an environmentally friendly, sustainable restroom facility. This waterless
restroom technology, which was originally developed by the U.S.
Forest Service, eliminates the odor typically associated with traditional outdoor restroom facilities when properly sited and vented.
The Van Voorhis Trailhead now has a parking lot that can
accommodate up to 32 cars, including several handicap-accessible parking spaces; connecting pathways; landscaping; a trail
map kiosk and a sweet smelling toilet facility for rail-trail users.
“This work has transformed a degraded, abandoned property
into a valuable, useable site for trail access,” says Ella Belling,
Mon River Trails Conservancy’s executive director. “It has not
only had a positive impact on reducing public exposure to contaminants through the remediation process but has allowed for
new community investments that will soon also include a canoe
and kayak launch for the Upper Mon Water Trail.”
The Van Voorhis Trailhead project was designed by Morgantown-based civil engineering firm Herbert, Rowland & Grubic,
Inc. and was partially funded by a grant from the Federal Highway
Administration’s Recreational Trails Program, as administered
by the West Virginia Department of Transportation’s Division of
Highways. Other contributing partners include project contractor AllStar Ecology, LLC; the Town of Star City; the Monongalia County Commission; the North Central Brownfield Center;
the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection and
the Mon River Trails Conservancy.