38th and Brown St – Act 2 Environmental Cleanup
The site includes the parcels located between 777 to 787 North 38th Street, 770 to 774 North Dekalb Street, and 376 to 3726 Brown Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Site encompasses fifteen (15) individual parcels/lots ranging in size from 0.02-0.08 acres with a total acreage of 0.4-acres in a residential section of Philadelphia. The Site is currently a vacant lot with an open, grassy field surrounded by a wooden fence and concrete sidewalks.
Historically, the Site was encompassed with residential housing. Based on historical Sanborn® fire insurance maps, multiple dwellings were present on the Site as early as 1922. Between the 1989 and 2000 Sanborn® fire insurance maps, the Site was mapped as a vacant lot with no buildings present. Historical aerial photographs indicate buildings are present as early as 1944, but were demolished between the 1988 and 2005 aerial photographs.
During a geophysical survey, three (3) anomalies were identified at the Site. GPR data collected over the three (3) anomalies did not show GPR profiles characteristic of an underground storage tank (UST) (strong hyperbolic signatures along an apparent short axis and strong, reflections along an apparent long axis). However, strong metallic responses were present at each anomaly, and it is possible that any of these anomalies may be due to a UST or a UST carcass that has been crushed, broken apart, deformed, corroded, or misshapen, and is distinguishable from buried metallic debris. Test pits excavated in these areas identified an UST at one of the anomalies.
The Site is currently owned by the City of Philadelphia though Women’s Community Revitalization Project is developing the property into an apartment complex. Residual soil contamination at the Site will be isolated beneath engineered caps, such as building floors, asphalt parking lots/roads or soil covers, which will be installed during site redevelopment.
The Site cleanup process is being performed under Pennsylvania’s Land Recycling and Environmental Remediation Standards Act of 1995 (Act 2) in cooperation with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
