Issue link: https://nebusinessmedia.uberflip.com/i/716505
Pfizer staying the course on $143M North Haven cleanup W hen pharmaceutical giant Pfizer purchased drugmaker Pharmacia Corp., the parent company of Pharmacia & Upjohn Co., in 2003 for $60 billion, one of the many assets it acquired was a dormant, contaminated property in North Haven near the Quinnipiac River. Pfizer has been working with state and federal regu- lators since then to clean up the 78-acre site at 41 Stiles Lane, and today, the bulk of the work is complete. The property formerly housed a chemical manufac- turing plant that operated for much of the 20th century, leaving behind PCBs, volatile organic compounds, lead and other contamination. Cleaning up a contaminated property is good for the environment, but Pfizer, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, and the federal Environmental Protection Agency also sought to ensure that the approved site-wide environmental remedy, which began in 2011, was as green and sustainable as possible. So to build a sub-surface hydraulic barrier wall to pro- tect the river from groundwater contamination, Pfizer's contractors used repurposed slag from a blast furnace, rather than a natural resource like bentonite clay. And instead of using emissions-emitting dump trucks to haul away sediment and soils dug up at the site, crews instead used it as sub-surface grading fill. The project also employed solar-powered air monitor- ing equipment. This year, Pfizer decommissioned an in-situ thermal remediation system installed in 2015 to treat the most contaminated area of the property. Completion of the western portion of the property is scheduled within the next three years, and there will be ongoing monitoring and maintenance of the groundwater treatment facility and the completed environmental remedy. Pfizer intends to make a portion of the land — ap- proximately 17 acres — available for commercial or light industrial development, while 60 acres are slated to become an ecological preserve. Plans also include in- terpretive trails within the ecological preserve. www.CTGreenGuide.com FALL 2016 • CONNECTICUT GREEN GUIDE 11 Pharmacia & Upjohn Company LLC/Pfizer PROJECT ELEMENTS: Facility-wide; energy and climate change; water; material management; civic improvements; innovation START DATE: March 2011 ESTIMATED COMPLETION DATE: June 2018 A habitat planting event at the Pharmacia & Upjohn property in North Haven, which is nearing the end of a major remediation. PHOTO | CONTRIBUTED GreenCircle Sustainability Awards 2016 CATEGORY: Business