State and federal environmental officials have cleared the way for two weeks of air quality testing at Harbor Point – and have told the developer they will withhold final environmental approvals until after those results are in.

In a letter from Edward M. Dexter, administrator of the solid waste program of the Maryland Department of the Environment, Beatty Development Group LLC was given the long-awaited green light for the air quality testing that will take place at three locations near the site where the Exelon Tower is slated to be built.

The air quality testing and monitoring reporting was ordered late last year by the MDE and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Harbor Point is the former location of Allied Chemical, a site now owned by Honeywell International. The waterfront property was contaminated by toxic hexavalent chromium during decades of industrial work by Allied and predecessor companies.

The three sites to undergo air quality testing beginning tomorrow are Harbor Point, the National Aquarium in the Inner Harbor and the Oldtown Fire Station on the east side, “where MDE maintains an ambient air quality monitoring station for other parameters,” Jay Apperson, a spokesman for MDE, told The Brew today.

Sensitive Method to Test for Chromium

Apperson said the MDE and EPA are requiring the best method for the detection of hexavalent chromium in air that is available, using a California Air Resources Board standard that “is more sensitive than those being used at other remediation or development sites where hexavalent chromium is the contaminant of concern in the Mid-Atlantic region.”

The air quality testing was required by both agencies as part of a detailed design plan for development at Harbor Point, where Beatty plans to pierce a six-foot-thick protective cap that was placed over the chromium-laced soil in the 1990s.

So far, Apperson said, both agencies have approved the air monitoring program quality assurance project plan, a pre-construction sampling and analysis plan and a pre-construction air monitoring plan.

All will be posted on the MDE website this week, he said.

15 Days of Testing

“MDE and EPA are requiring 15 days of continuous pre-construction air monitoring to be able to determine the background levels of dust and chromium for the area, so that they can be used to establish benchmarks to ensure that the work at the site does not adversely impact the local air during the construction project,” Apperson said.

“The background air monitoring program calls for continuous monitoring for particulate [dust] levels at three sites, together with 24-hour sampling for hexavalent chromium in air at these locations. The dust levels are read and reported essentially continuously; the chromium is collected for 24 hours and submitted to the laboratory on a daily basis, but a few days are needed for the analysis and reporting to occur.”

The results will be used to determine whether Beatty Development will get the final go-ahead to break ground for the 23-story Exelon Tower, the first of several buildings planned for the 27-acre site.

“While approval of the pre-construction sampling plan allows the developer to move forward with sampling whose results will be used to establish background levels, the air monitoring program for use during construction remains to be finalized,” Apperson explained.

Groundbreaking in April?

He said the agencies will review the pre-construction air monitoring procedures before giving final approval on the procedures that would be used during construction.

The air sampling results will also be used to set baseline figures, known as action levels, for use in ensuring that construction does not increase ambient air levels of particulate matter or chromium.

That process is expected to be completed by the end of March.

Beatty Development Vice President Marco Greenberg did not respond to a request for comment today.