Allison's Space 08/06/2012

• ATSDR-PHA-HC-Barrie Park Former Manufactured Gas Plant-p1

  “Barrie Park is an outdoor recreational area in Oak Park, Cook County, Illinois. A residentialneighborhood borders the 3.5-acre park on three sides (Attachment 1). The EisenhowerExpressway (I-290) borders the northern section of the site. Before 1930, the park was the site ofa manufactured gas plant, which left the soil contaminated by chemicals. The Village of OakPark purchased the property in 1959 and transferred it to the Park District of Oak Park in 1965.The site was leveled, regraded, seeded, and converted to a recreational park. In August 1993, a contractor for Commonwealth Edison conducted ambient air sampling at andnear Barrie Park. The samples were analyzed for benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene, xylenes,naphthalene, and 2-methylnaphthalene. Only traces of toluene and xylenes were found (Table 1). The park was used for sledding, ball games, and other activities until the park district closed it inDecember 1998(1).”

  tags: history oak_park illinois

• A Deadly Legacy of Poisons from the Past – Businessweek

  “Barrie Park is the kind of neighborhood you want to raise your kids in. Located just outside Chicago in Oak Park, Ill.–home to Ernest Hemingway and Frank Lloyd Wright–the schools are good and the neighbors friendly. The park itself, surrounded by about three dozen houses, is a gem, with two baseball diamonds and a sledding hill. But it has been more than two years since anybody has played here. Fenced off, padlocked, and festooned with warning signs, the lush green landscape hides a dark secret: a toxic stew of coal tars left behind by a manufactured-gas plant that was closed more than 70 years ago. It will cost the local power company $50 million to clean it up. And if all goes well, residents will never get sick from the poisons in their midst.”

  tags: history oak_park illinois

• KIRRIEMUIR

  “Kirriemuir lies between the Strathmore valley and the foothills of the Grampian mountains in the county of Angus, about sixteen miles north of Dundee and five miles north-west of Forfar. It has been known variously as ‘Kellymoore’ and ‘Killymure’, and the name is believed to mean ‘the great quarter’, deriving from Scots Gaelic ceathramh, an area of land measuring about 48 acres, and mor, Scots Gaelic for ‘great’ or ‘big’. It is believed that the first streets in Kirriemuir may have been planned in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, although the town was not granted a charter, as a burgh of barony, until 1459. By 1589 there were records of a school in Kirriemuir, and a post office was opened in 1715. In 1861 the town’s population was measured at 4,686.”

  tags: history scotland

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