Remember those new Bronx parks that New York City paid a couple hundred million dollars to build to replace the ones that the Yankees had obliterated to make way for their new stadium six years earlier? Well, the good news is they’re open now, and full of kids. The bad news: They’re contaminated with leaking underground gas tanks.
Department of Parks and Recreation officials said there are no such dangers from the contaminated groundwater.
“It doesn’t sound good, but again, there’s no exposure to the public here,” said Liam Kavanagh, First Deputy Commissioner at the Parks Department…
CBS2 has learned the cleanup effort has been under way since 2009. CBS2 also uncovered the contracts between the city and the engineering firm doing the decontamination work, and found it has already cost taxpayers $410,000.
If the gas is just getting into the groundwater, then yeah, it’s probably not a threat to kids playing up on the surface. (Or no more threat than it is to all kids in the neighborhood, who live atop contaminated groundwater.) Still, it’s a reminder that Bronx kids used to play on ballfields that had always been ballfields, never gas stations — until this happened.
