By Seth Daniel
An Environmental Notification Form (ENF) filing for the redevelopment of the Bunker Hill Housing Development on Vine Street has identified amounts of asbestos in the properties, and the developer indicates it will be removed with non-asbestos materials and shipped out in trucks through the Town.
“Due to the presence of Asbestos on site, almost all of the brick and some of the concrete will be disposed of as Asbestos Containing Materials (ACM),” read the filing. “With respect to the demolished non-ACM containing concrete, it will likely be trucked offsite to a crushing facility for re-use due to the lack of space available to set up an on-site crushing operation and to store the crushed material.”
Beyond that, staggering numbers are reported for new vehicle trips associated with the project, nearly rivaling numbers reported in the MEPA process a few years ago by the Wynn Boston Harbor casino just over the line in Everett.
The numbers on the ENF indicate that vehicle trips per day would go from 7,648 to 21,995 – a change of more than 14,000 trips per day primarily using an entry point – Chelsea Street – that is currently choked with traffic for most of the afternoon every day.
The principles from Corcoran Development filed the ENF with the state’s environmental regulators in what is now as the MEPA process – a review that looks at everything from traffic to stormwater drainage.
The filing came last week and was made public in the Environmental Monitor on Thursday, Sept. 22, and signals the first step in what is to be a long process to redevelop the Bunker Hill Housing Development into a much larger mixed-income, mixed-use development on the 27-acre parcel under the Mystic/Tobin Bridge.
Beyond the removal of construction materials, a key piece of the review will likely focus on traffic.
The ENF identified three thresholds that were triggered to require a possible environmental review. The MEPA process can take months, if not years to complete. For One Charlestown, which lies in the Mystic River Watershed and in other environmentally sensitive zones, they exceed the thresholds for new discharge or expansion of a sewer with more than 100,000 gpd, generation of 3,000 or more new trips on roadways providing access to a single location, and construction of 1,000 or more new parking space in a single location.
Parking spaces created would go from 280 off-street spaces to 2,080 off-street spaces; 233 on street spaces to 320 on street spaces; and a total of 513 spaces to a total of 2,400 spaces.
Some of the other numbers include:
- Acres of impervious areas going from 20.1 acres to 23.3 acres.
- Gross Square footage going from 848,500 sq. ft. to 3.3 million sq. ft.
- Numbers of housing units going from 1,100 to 3,200 units.
- Maximum building height going from 32 feet to 240 feet.
- Using 271,403 gallons per day (gpd) of water to using 662,516 gpd.
•Sewer usage of 246,730 gpd to 602,287 gpd.