Springdale homeowners describe impact of power plant implosion as decision on second one hangs in the balance

Brittni Bair’s baby was just 10 weeks old the day the smokestacks at the former power plant in Springdale were imploded in June.

Because of concerns about potential toxins and debris being released near her family’s Pittsburgh Street home, she testified Thursday, she and her husband took their newborn to a hotel in Harmarville the night before the blast.

Very soon after the 8 a.m. demolition June 2, Bair said, she got a call.

“I was told my home had been hit by the implosion,” she said.

She and her husband, Travis Bair, raced back to Springdale.

“It was a disaster,” she said. “I don’t know how else to describe it.”

The street, their yard and their home, she said, were covered with a thick layer of dust. There was particulate in the air, pieces of the downed smokestacks in their yard.

Inside their home, Bair said, there was a layer of dust everywhere. Door frames were dislodged, windows were broken, and there were cracks all over their second and third floors.

“We found pieces of the stack in our bed,” she said.

Their family, Bair continued, has not been able to return to live there for fear of the potential heavy metals — she has been told there is lead, arsenic, mercury, barium — inside.

“There are heavy metals on every inch of my house — inside and out,” she said.

The Bairs and 10 other families in Springdale have filed a lawsuit against the parties that own the former Cheswick Power Plant property and handled the implosion: Charah Solutions, Controlled Demolition Inc., Grant Mackay Co., and Civil and Environmental Consultants Inc.

While the lawsuit looks to recover damages for the affected homes, the plaintiffs are also seeking an injunction to halt the scheduled demolition of the boiler house at the property.

“I can’t imagine any other individual going through what we are going through in our community,” Bair said.

The blasting of that smaller structure was supposed to occur at 8 a.m. Friday but has been delayed while Common Pleas Judge John T. McVay Jr. considers the injunction.

The hearing on that issue will resume at 9 a.m. Friday and continue next week.

On Wednesday, McVay heard testimony from two employees with the state Department of Environmental Protection who described the conditions imposed on the companies planning the boiler house blasting.

But on Thursday, Bair and two other Springdale residents testified about the impact from the first round of demolition June 2.

Bair said that when they returned to their street that morning, it was covered in dust. Tree branches had been knocked out of the trees in front of their home, and their car was covered with particulate.

“It looked like we were in a blizzard,” Bair said.

Since then, her family has been living in an Airbnb. Bair, who previously worked from home as a wholesale executive, said she had to quit her job. She’s now working as a server at two restaurants.

“I couldn’t sustain having a normal workload and going through what we’ve been going through for the last three months,” she said.

The Bairs did not take any of their belongings from the home, she said, for fear they would be contaminated.

Thomas Garrigan, who grew up in a house on Pittsburgh Street now owned by his son, have similar concerns.

He and his family watched the implosion from Washington Street on the top of a hill a couple blocks away.

“I put too much faith in them,” Garrigan said. “I should have realized there was going to be more damage.”

Immediately after the blasts, his son got a call.

They raced down the hill to the large house, built in 1901, that had been in their family since 1969.

With bay windows, intricate woodwork and pocket doors, the house they returned to had a dislodged front door, windows pulled away from the home and cracks running down the walls.

“I can tell these cracks are growing and separating, along with the floor, the supports,” Garrigan said.

He and his wife, Patricia, also own an investment property adjacent to their son’s home that they have been working to remodel.

Its basement windows were blown out, Garrigan said, and one whole wall has separated away from the house.

They have stopped remodeling for fear they won’t be able to get any money back out of it.

Bair also told the court that she owns a rental property on Standard Avenue that she is concerned about if the boiler house implosion happens.

It’s closer to that structure than it was to the stacks, and she has an elderly tenant, Bair said.

Patricia Garrigan, a real estate agent, testified that it would be infinitely harder to rent or sell homes damaged in the implosion because the sellers will be forced to disclose the potential contamination and damage.

If the boiler house implosion causes more properties to be damaged, she said, it will potentially devalue the whole community.

“It’s definitely an eyesore and needs to come down, but there have to be [other] ways to do it,” Patricia Garrigan said. “Why not deconstruct it? Why not save the community any further issues?”