An Open Letter From Castlegate Development UPDATED

The following was submitted as a comment, but I believe it deserves its own post. Again, I am embarrassed to admit that I live in a community that counts garbage cans, but pays little attention to environmental hazards and toxins.

This is a member of Castlegate Development. I just want to let you know we really do appreciate that you care and we feel for you, too. We know Mt. Lebanon Commission is a dead end, but we will continue to show up. We are still seeking environmental groups in Allegheny County to help us and we continue to work closely with ACHD, our councilperson and her office, and every politician who will listen. We are worried not only about lead-
bad enough, right? But a hundred years ago, asbestos was also used in paint, and we worry about that, too, and whatever other nasty hundred year old toxins might remain.

These buildings are/were immediately across the street from our homes, separated by about fifty feet. In addition to the pollution we've had to breathe in for over a month while they demo-ed without water or without enough water, at one point laughably using a garden hose (!) the debris of the multiple buildings has been sitting everywhere on the lot for over a month, as well, drying out in the sun, settling in with the land, polluting our air further every time the wind blows. Our houses and yards and cars are covered with soot, dust, insulation, no matter how many times we clean them.

We believe the next phase of the demolition is this: With Mt. Lebanon's approval, once this part of the demo is finished, if the debris is removed without environmental safeguards as the demo was done, we will have another exposure event. Or--a potentially even more dangerous and likely scenario, Residential Resources, Sota Construction/Green Construction (who wins awards for being green!!!), will have Continental Enterprises or some other low budget company dig out all the bricks, mortar, walls, cement that have been dropping into the basement foundations during demo or left in tremendously large piles all across the land and they will move and pollute and grind everything up in grinders on site--again releasing even more toxins into the air and earth and environment--and then use them as fill on this lot. Unbelievable. All this directly across from where people live.

Already two neighbors have had a son and a daughter with pneumonia since this started, another kid has epilepsy, previously well controlled, and her seizures have increased. 10 out of the 12 closest homes have had continuous headaches and/or lung and eye and nose and respiratory symptoms. Another neighbor who is due to give birth any day has been told by her doctor that it's probably not safe for her to stay here. Yet, this is where we all live. All this approved by Mt. Lebanon Commission and backed by their demo permit. They could rescind the permit. Residential Resources could fire the whole lot of them. Sota Construction/Green Construction could make sure basic safeguards are in place and/or fire Continental Enterprises. But none of them have shown the least bit of concern in our month long pleas for safety. They didn't even put up tarps until less than a week ago, after a month of exposure and we offered to buy and hang them ourselves! Instead, the whole group of them all prove that their own agendas and profits mean more than human lives or air or earth.

And then get this-- after all this is over--three more buildings remain-- awaiting funding for another round of demo and then clean up. And they'll get the funding. You know they will, just like we know it. They are poisoning our neighborhood and poisoning our kids, and then they will do it all over again, just like they did to yours with that turf. They don't care. I don't know how they sleep at night, the whole lot of them. Sorry for taking up so much space on your page. Just to let you know, even if it's not worth much of anything, we stand with you, too. Neighbor to neighbor.

Update April 14, 2017 5:50 PM Keith McGill strikes again. In the PG's Mt. Lebanon hears concerns about toxic dust at demolition site, 

Mt. Lebanon manager Keith McGill said the municipality doesn’t have air quality requirements as part of its demolition permitting process.

I'm confused. We just tore down almost half the high school, and we don't have air quality requirements?