The Beatty Development Group has promised to conduct new air monitoring tests and follow other environmental requirements to win federal and state approval of the Harbor Point project.

At a community meeting in Fells Point last night, the developer expressed optimism that groundbreaking of the $1 billion office and apartment complex would take place over the winter.

The project, which has won city approval and $107 million worth of TIF tax financing, was stalled last month when the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) and the Environmental Protection Agency raised questions about safeguards during construction of the 22-story Exelon Tower, the first building planned at the site.

A gaggle of state and federal regulators joined the developer and Honeywell, the current property owner, to reassure about 125 people that construction of the tower would not release hazardous hexavalent chromium into the air or groundwater.

Approximately 2 million tons of chromium-tainted soil – a byproduct of 140 years of chromium production at the site – are buried under a five-foot-thick clay and plastic cap and a surrounding hydraulic wall.

Building the Exelon Tower will require piercing the cap with more than 1,000 piles as well as several 27,000-square-foot excavation pits.

Late yesterday, the MDE released a report from the Beatty Group describing how it will handle construction to reduce the possibility of chromium releases during construction.

“Not Significant”

The report said that the excavation pits would be covered overnight with a geotextile fabric and, when the foundation was completed, with six-inch-thick piles of clean soil over the fabric.

The developer also promised to post daily air monitoring readings on its website and set up an alarm system to sound if low levels of “dust migration” are detected at the site. Procedures to “stop work” and alert environmental regulators if levels exceeded a conservative threshold limit would also be established.

John Morris, an official at Honeywell, said that high chromium readings recently found in test wells near the site are not significant.

The infiltration of chromium into the surrounding area “happened before the remediation – it’s no longer going there,” Morris said at the meeting, which was organized by City Councilman James B. Kraft.

Limits on Audience Questions

The meeting’s format – people had to write their questions on index cards for Kraft to read – prompted grumbling from some in the audience.

A woman who tried to ask a follow-up after her question was read was told she couldn’t. Another complained when Kraft characterized her question as “rhetorical.”

After fairly technical presentations about Honeywell’s remediation of the site and subsequent monitoring, Beatty vice president Marco Greenberg rose to add some reassuring words, particularly about the 1,097 pilings planned for the Exelon Tower, 1,050 of which must pierce the cap.

The cylindrical, concrete-filled pilings “are being driven, not drilled,” he told the crowd. “If we were drilling, we would be bringing up contaminated material.”

How durable are the pilings, someone asked. “I’m told the pilings protects the chromium from corrosion,” Greenberg said, prompting snickers from some members of the crowd.

Asked if any activity is currently taking place at the site (nearby residents have a video of men working there at night), he said that “night-time parking lot repair” was the likely cause of the activity. “We believe that is what was filmed,” Greenberg said to more audience hoots.

Stelios Spiliades, owner of The Inn at the Olive Tree who has pressed for an “independent” review of the site’s environmental safeguards, characterized the meeting as a whitewash.

“The regulators were even more deferential to the idea that the developer could do it. It was just a matter of cleaning up a little bit here and a little bit there, and then construction can start,” he told The Brew after the meeting.