The remedial investigations performed to date sought to characterize the facility’s current and past conditions, delineate petroleum contamination, and form a basis for making predictions of future conditions. Evergreen recognizes that changes to climate are predicted to occur and may impact the facility in the future, and that these changes should be evaluated within the timeframe of the Act 2 remediation.
The question was also provided to Hilco Redevelopment Partners, who provided the following response: Hilco Redevelopment Partners has plans for significant earth work to raise ground surface elevations in areas potentially vulnerable to flooding. Approximately 4 million cubic yards will be moved in order to raise the ground surface elevations on the portion of the Property east of the Schuylkill River above base flood elevations. Some of the ground surface elevations at the Property are currently below base flood elevations while other areas are above base flood elevations. Hilco Redevelopment Partners will move soils from locations with higher ground surface elevations to areas with lower ground surface elevations so that the final grades for all areas of the site east of the Schuylkill River achieve the design standard of being above the base flood elevation (BFE) as established by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Specifically, all parking lots will be above the BFE and all building floor slabs will be more than 4 feet above the BFE. All building floor slabs will also be above the 500-year floodplain. None of the soils that are moved as part of the regrading process will be placed in areas below the groundwater table. Hilco Redevelopment Partners is raising elevations above and beyond what is required by statute and regulations to take resiliency and climate change into account.