Springdale planners hold off on renewing demolition permit for power plant site

Springdale planners on Wednesday pressed pause before making a recommendation on renewing a demolition permit at the borough’s former Cheswick Generating Station.

Cheswick Plant Environmental Redevelopment Group, a subsidiary of property owner Charah Solutions, and Grant Mackay Co. requested renewal of the demolition permit, which expires Jan. 17.

“The next planning meeting is on Jan. 10, council meeting is on the 16th, and the permit expires on the 17th,” said David Prevost, planning commission chairman. “I’m going to propose that we table it until the next meeting, on the 10th; collect more information; discuss with the borough engineer and everybody else who’s involved, what we need to discuss.”

Tabling the issue allows the deadline to run out from a court order that required parties in the injunction case — 16 Springdale residents, Charah, Grant Mackay and Controlled Demolition Inc. — to meet and discuss a joint comprehensive safety plan for an implosion of the site’s boiler house. Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge John T. McVay Jr. issued his order Sunday, Dec. 10 after 12 days of testimony. It gave the parties 10 days to meet.

Those residents in September filed the injunction to block implosion of the boiler house, alleging the June 2 implosion of two towering smokestacks at the site caused harm to their properties, their health and the community, and that imploding the boiler house would cause additional harm.

McVay’s court order grants the injunction but also sets a process before he will consider ending the injunction and allowing the massive structure to be imploded.

Laura Veith, an attorney representing Charah, told the planning commissioners that, while she can’t comment on the litigation, implosion of the boiler house can’t move forward until conditions are satisfied based on the judge’s order.

That order includes submitting the safety plan to the Department of Environmental Protection and the county Health Department for review, and those parties participating in a public meeting. Once all the conditions are met, McVay will consider ending the injunction.

“In order to put it back into productive use for the community, to benefit this community, we must remediate the site,” Veith said. “So we’re asking for renewal of the demolition permit, which we are currently operating under.

“And what happens with implosion — from the judge, from the pending litigation, from our meeting with plaintiffs — is separate and apart from this demo permit that we’re seeking renewal of.”

She told the planning commissioners they don’t need to wait until the joint comprehensive safety plan meeting occurs because that meeting relates to implosion. Renewal of the demolition permit that the planning commission will consider doesn’t allow Charah to implode — only the DEP has the authority to grant a blasting permit.

“I don’t want you all to think that by renewing the demolition permit, that an implosion is going to move forward. That is not the case,” Veith told planning commissioners. “That cannot happen until Judge McVay lifts his order and the DEP approves it, which are two things that obviously have not happened yet.”

Four residents who are plaintiffs in the injunction case — Brittni Bair, Joe Kern, Linda Schaffer and Stacey Ansell — spoke to the planning commissioners about the harm from the June 2 implosion.

Bair asked them whether they had read McVay’s court order; all three members said they had. She called the permit considered for renewal a “blanket permit.” Others were concerned with what they believed to be the vagueness of the permit.

“There shouldn’t be, in my opinion, a blanket permit granted by our borough that can continue to harm our community,” Bair said. “If we do want to issue a permit through Springdale Borough, maybe we do reevaluate the codes, and we set a code in place that’s appropriate for this type of work being done. Because, as we’ve seen, this isn’t work that we’ve done in the past.

“So there’s an opportunity to make a change now, to do things the right way, and not grant blanket permits. They can still continue to do their demolition work as they are right now until Jan. 17, so we have time to make a change and do things the right way this time around.”

Prevost said he understood the DEP had final authority over the implosion.

“You can still continue with your business up until the 17th; that’s when the permit expires,” Prevost said. “And council meets on the 16th, we meet on the 10th, and we’ll have a recommendation based on what we can glean between now and the 10th, to make a recommendation.”