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Nuclear cleanup completed, Newhallville property ready for next stage

It’s a weedy vacant lot strewn with gravel, but to Dori Salisbury of General Electric, it looks like victory. 

The 2.8-acre lot at 71 Shelton Ave. in New Haven’s Newhallville neighborhood is finally ready for its next life after $20 million and decades of off-and-on cleanup efforts. Formerly owned by United Nuclear Corp., the site served as a research facility for the U.S. Department of Energy and was contaminated with low-level radioactive waste. Now it’s squeaky clean, if overgrown.

“It’s great,” Salisbury said, looking out over the property. “To see this — having seen it in all of its various stages — this is encouraging.”

Salisbury and a spectrum of city and state officials including Gov. Ned Lamont celebrated the completion of the cleanup of 71 Shelton on Monday with a news conference. 

“It brings the community back to life,” Lamont said of the project, undertaken with community support and participation. Other contaminated sites in the neighborhood also need attention, he added. “We’ve got some more to do around here.”

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Newhallville representatives including Rev. Boise Kimber of the New Haven Clergy Association said “real affordable housing” was their wish for the site. 

The owner of the property, Schneur Katz of New Haven, attended the event but said he had no concrete plans for the empty lot as of yet. “We’re looking at all of our options,” Katz said. He ruled out another industrial use but would not comment on potential plans for housing. 

Governor Ned Lamont, right, with Department of Energy and Environmental Protection officials Michael Firsick, far left, and Jeff Semancik at 71 Shelton Ave., New Haven.

Cold War-era research starting in the 1950s at 71 Shelton left the soil contaminated with radioactive waste, in addition to PCBS and other toxic contaminants. After inheriting the site as part of a much later deal, General Electric was on the hook for the cleanup, spending $14 million for the project’s final phase, Salisbury said.  

More than 10,000 tons of contaminated soil were dug up from the ground, then wrapped up in protective “burrito wraps,” sealed in containers and shipped to nuclear disposal sites in Alabama and Utah. With all of the cleanup, no radiation beyond normal background levels is currently detectable at the site, DEEP officials said. 

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Salisbury, an operations manager at GE’s cleanup division based in Boston, first visited 71 Shelton in 2012, when it was still home to a dilapidated 61,000-square-foot building. That structure was taken down in 2020, after years of debate on whether it was acting as a “cap” over contaminated waste.  

The New Haven site with its nuclear element has been one of the most complex handled by the “brownfields” division at GE, which manages more than 200 contaminated sites worldwide, Salisbury said. Tackling the cleanups is a major corporate priority, she added. 

“There’s a big push at the company now on sustainability — this ties right into that,” Salisbury said. “We need to get things done.”

Contact Liese Klein at lklein@newhavenbiz.com.

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