East River glass cleanup set Broken glass discovered in this area (near East bank; top of photo) of the East River at the end of Amy Street is suspected of being an old dumping site (photo by Tina Gohr). City sets aside money for the job By Monique Balas News-Chronicle The city's Parks Department will begin cleaning up glass embedded in the soil along the East River sometime this summer, a project estimated to cost the city between $85,000 and $100,000. The glass was discovered last fall when a person walking in the area, off of Amy Street near Bellevue Street, reported its presence to the Parks Department, said Jim Robertson, superintendent of design and development for the Parks Department. The department inspected the area and called the Department of Natural Resources, who requested the cleanup. "It is the right thing to do," Robertson said. "It could be dangerous, with people walking in it or falling." He estimated the area is about two or three city lots in size, and said the glass has probably been there for at least 50 years, likely tossed there as an informal dumping site. The removal will probably be done with a backhoe or a trencher and will be done by either a contractor or the city's Public Works Department, Robertson said. He said some vegetation will need to be removed first, but once that is done the actual cleanup will only last about three weeks. "The game plan we had come up with that was approved by the DNR is to go into those areas, strip the vegetation, remove 18 inches to 2 feet, which is how much we're going to clean up," said Ed Wiesner, director of engineering at the city's Public Works Department. The soil that is removed will be replaced to its previous elevation, Robertson said. The glass will then be disposed of at a land disposal facility; it can't be recycled because there is so much garbage mixed in with it, he said. Wiesner said the easiest solution - simply covering the area with clay, or "capping" it - is not viable because the area is in a floodway, and changing the grade of the flood elevation would be expensive and would involve complicated regulatory processes. "Our intention is not to remove everything, just remove enough to put a new soil cap in," Robertson said. "A 2-foot cap is enough to keep material in place and not keep pushing it through with frost action." He also said the Parks Department would replace the vegetation growing in the area, getting rid of the overgrowth that has taken over the area and putting in native species of plants and trees. "This is one of those projects that kind of came up out of the blue, and we're trying to fit this in between everything else," Robertson said.