MANSFIELD — The former Westinghouse site on the city’s east side is not going away without a fight.
More than a year since demolition began at the former industrial site, and nearly a year since the Westinghouse “A” building on East Fifth Street was felled, efforts continue to dig up, bust up and clean up the adjoining 13-acre “concrete jungle.”
It would help R&D Excavating if the site started by simply drying up.
“We are still dealing with water issues,” R&D co-founder Dave Barnhart said this week. “It’s not slowing down any.”
Officials with the Crestline-based company have brought in larger pumps and hoses to try to keep up with the flow of water, apparently now being caused by at least one natural spring in the area.
That underground flow, joined by winter’s and snow and rains, have slowed the company’s effort.
“Between the snow and the rain, we can’t catch a break,” Barnhart said.
(Below are photos taken by R&D Excavating as the Crestline company continues demolition and clean up work at the former Westinghouse site on Mansfield’s east side.)
Watery issues began cropping up at the site in the summer of 2023 as previously undiscovered city water lines on and near the site were found to be leaking, dug up and closed off.
Those efforts came after crews, ripping out a concrete pad that was 30 inches thick, began to find deep concrete pits, some of which look to be 12-feet deep, which filled with water. They also found tunnels.
None of these were known when the work began on the site, owned by the Richland County Land Bank. It was the Land Bank that launched the demo and clean-up effort in August of 2021, landing a $3 million state grant to help cover the $4 million project.
Actual demolition began in December of 2022.
That project has reached the $4.7 million price range. Land Bank manager Amy Hamrick said additional state brownfield grant dollars have been sought, but no confirmation has been received.
The discoveries beneath the Westinghouse-placed pad had local officials scratching their heads to determine what the pits and tunnels were used for — and by whom.
Perhaps they came from the former Baxter Stove Company, which once operated at the site, beginning in 1883. Its works were located on Bloom Street, today’s East Fifth Street.
The factory was plagued with fires in 1890 and again in 1893. It was rebuilt after a fire in 1899. Another blaze in 1910 nearly destroyed the factory again. Unable to fully recover, the facility closed in 1916.
Westinghouse moved into the site in 1918, beginning a local operation that lasted 72 years.
It would appear Westinghouse simply laid concrete over the existing Baxter pits and operations, including a series of clay pipes to move water from beneath the operation and into the Rocky Fork to the east.
“When Westinghouse was built, it was apparently very aware (of the high water table) and constructed a rat’s nest — and I mean rat’s nest in every since of the word — of pipes under the buildings to disperse water from the site,” City of Mansfield engineer Bob Bianchi said Friday.
Bianchi said it appears those pipes flowed through the underground concrete walls. As R&D dug down deep to remove the concrete, it likely ripped through the clay pipes and disturbed a system of underground water removal that had been in place for more than a century.
The spring itself may be located on the west wide of the railroad tracks that ran by the Westinghouse site. A test hole was recently dug near that site. Bianchi said buildings in that area were built without basements to accommodate the water table.
It may require a storm sewer at the site to handle the water flow, according to Bianchi, who said his office is working with K.E. McCartney & Associates of Mansfield on a design for such a storm sewer system.
The Land Bank would be responsible for paying for any stormwater system on the site.
(Below is a R&D Excavating video showing water at the former Westinghouse site.)
Barnhart said R&D crews continue working at the site and recently discovered hundreds of vehicle tires that been dumped into pits at the site, which were then covered in stone with concrete laid over top.
He said the company has found “literally twice as much concrete underground as there was above ground.”
“And that includes footers that we knew about,” Barnhart said. “There were footers built over footers and pads built over pads. It’s nasty.”
“We are working, making progress, trying to pump the water out and get to the concrete,” he said.
“We want, depending on how the winter keeps going, by late spring or early summer to start the final grading of the entire lot,” Barnhart said.
Once that is done, and final soil samples are tested, redevelopment of the site can be considered and launched.
In November, Land Bank officials announced the U.S. EPA will help conduct a market analysis to find viable plans for a mixed-use development project on the site.
According to the U.S. EPA website, the U.S. EPA Brownfields and Land Reutilization Technical Assistance program is “reusing cleaned up sites (that) protects public health and the environment by preventing sprawl, preserving green space and reinvigorating communities.”
The work will be done at no cost to the Land Bank, officials said in November, even as cleanup work continues on the site.
“You do not apply for this assistance,” Hamrick said. “They selected the site.”
The first phase of the market analysis will be done by March, Hamrick said at the time.
The work will include public input at meetings, according to Hamrick.
“They’ve talked about helping us find developers. They want to to see this through to the end,” Hamrick said.
