CASE STUDY

After being contracted by PMX to conduct a Phase I Environmental Site Assessment on the property in 2000, CTI scientists and engineers developed a Corrective Action Plan (CAP) for the property designed around the findings of the Phase I. The CAP activities managed by CTI ultimately took three years and an expenditure of nearly one million dollars to put the 83-acre site into a condition where PMX, a Korean-owned firm, would be able to sell the property to the current owner for redevelopment.

Many Greater-Cleveland families had members who worked within the 600,000 square foot factory, where raw materials were mixed, melted, cast, rolled, and annealed into finely gauged sheets of copper and brass to be used in the making of ammunition casings. These industrial processes required the storage and use of thousands of gallons of oil, water, acids, and bases within intricate systems which ultimately needed to be cleaned and removed once production ceased. Process equipment was cleaned and resold. Air pollution collection mechanisms and ductwork added in later operating years were cleaned of hazardous dusts, and wastewater systems had to be emptied, cleaned, and disassembled for sale and reuse. Storage tank systems were emptied and cleaned to meet regulatory standards. Facility soils and groundwater were tested and analyzed to determine if more than 50 years of production had caused any problems. Ironically, in spite of all of this remedial activity, a herd of 13 whitetail deer, hawks, falcons, red fox, geese, and other animals thrived within the confines of the fenced site.

Ultimately, CTI’s work, and subsequent environmental reports totaling hundreds of pages, allowed PMX to successfully market the property for resale and allow for its rebirth happening now. The PMX site is just one of several heavy-industry sites in the Cleveland area upon which CTI has designed and completed remedial action plans to allow for the beneficial reuse of the properties by its customers or others.