REACHAmblerA PROJECT ABOUT THE COMMUNITY, HISTORY, & ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH OF AMBLER, PENNSYLVANIA

An evening of new short plays about thecontinuing legacy of Ambler’s industrial past

Saturday, April 25, at 8 p.m.

These exciting, entertaining, and thought-provoking new plays are inspired by oralhistories, and written by some of Philadelphia’stop playwrights. They will be presented as“staged readings.”

To purchase tickets, or for more information,visit act2.org and click on “Education.”

A unique collaboration between Act II Playhouse,the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and theUniversity of Pennsylvania Perelman Schoolof Medicine.

REACHAmblerResources for Education and Action for Community Health in Ambler

REACH Ambler explores the history, environmental health, and community identity of Ambler,Pennsylvania, through a partnership between the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicineand the Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF).

From the 1880s to the mid-20th century asbestos production was the cornerstone of Ambler’slocal economy. In more recent years Ambler has grappled with its legacy of material production,including a Superfund site and piles of asbestos in various states of remediation, as well as changesin demographics and the local economy.

Through methods connected to oral history, public history, and science studies, the REACH Amblerproject team has collected diverse viewpoints and information from Ambler residents and institutions.This research informs a variety of interpretive pieces, including one-act plays produced by Act II Playhouseand videos produced by camra, which demonstrate how history can help a community define its presentand shape its future.

For more information, visit chemheritage.org/AmblerPA.

This project is supported by the Office of the Director, National Institutesof Health, under award number R25OD010521-01.

As you enter Ambler via Butler Pike, welcomingsigns suggest the quality of life in this community.Most prominent is the large “Welcome to Ambler,Inc. 1888 … A hard-working, friendly community,founded on harmony and commitment.” Nearbysigns remind parents to register their children forsoftball and baseball at the Ambler Savings Bankand to attend a summer camp fair at TempleSinai. These signs indicate that Ambler is a livelycommunity, with social activities and communityinstitutions that bring neighbors together.

On Butler Avenue in downtown Ambler you mightpass a local resident who calls Butler Avenue “MainStreet,” even though another road formally namedMain Street intersects Butler. Newcomers lookingfor the central shopping area may be surprised tofind it on Butler and not on Main. As in manycommunities, newcomers eventually learn the localnicknames and the location of the best spots, thusbecoming old-timers. But as neighborhoods shift,grow, and shrink because of economic influences,racial and environmental issues, and transportationand regional trends, the population of smallAmerican towns like Ambler ebb and flow. Amblerhas experienced many changes; former and currentresidents describe the town at its most bustlingand most deserted. Butler Avenue has been a mainthoroughfare since the 19th century but saw aboom in the 1950s and has recently seen anotherresurgence. Salvatore Boccuti, a second-generationAmbler resident, speaks about the boom times andthe lean times:

We used to have a cop directing traffic on Friday nights,it was so busy. And people would come in to shop,and we had a men’s store, we had a women’s store,we had a jewelry store. You could buy ties and shoesand dresses, and everything. The malls came in, andthat went away. And Ambler fell on some pretty hardtimes. I mean, we weren’t destitute, but it was nothinglike it was before, you know. And now it’s starting tocome back. I think we could still use a few stores tosell ties and shoes and dresses, but we’re on the way.

Ambler: Our Town

Cover: Signs on Butler Pike, 2013. Photo by Matthew Tarditi. Far left: Butler Avenue andMain Streets, 2014. Photo by Jabari Zuberi. Above: Welcome to Ambler sign andstorefronts, 2014. Photos by Matthew Tarditi.

Sharon Cooke Vargas grew up in West Ambler andremembers the variety of needs fulfilled at shops onButler Avenue: “They had everything there. You hadthe Acme grocery store. You had a dress shop forupscale dressing. You had the Woolworth’s. You hada shoe store. You had a furniture store. You had adrugstore. You had a taxi cab. You had schools.”

The Ambler American Legion also serves as a valuablegathering place in West Ambler; Ruth E. Weeks,who grew up in West Ambler and now lives inPhiladelphia, refers to the Legion as “home” anddiscusses the leadership roles her aunt and motherplayed in the women’s auxiliary, and the crucial rolethe Legion plays in the African American community.

Well, the Legion, they have a little bar downstairs.You can go out to dinner, but you’re always going toend up at the Legion. It’s a lot of fun. And the Legion,we got so used to it because our parents were soinvolved in it. Not so much Daddy, but Mommy was.She was the president of the Women’s Auxiliary.One of my aunts was the president of the Women’sAuxiliary. My uncle was in the male part of it. So itwas just the culture that we grew up with. When I gotmarried the second time, I didn’t think about goinganyplace else to have my reception. It was the Legion.It was like, that’s where I’m going to have it. Eventhough we could have been squeezed in there likesardines, I didn’t think about a bigger hall becauseit’s the Legion. It’s home to me.

The American Legion and the St. Francis Societyexemplify the numerous Ambler institutions thathave been and are still so integral to communitylife—spaces that provide a second home forAmbler residents, their friends, and their families.

Left: St. Francis Day parade, 2014. Photo by Jabari Zuberi. Above: St. Joseph’s Churchschool, 2014. Photo by Matthew Tarditi. Top center: St. Francis Day Festival Parade, 1930s.Newton Howard Photograph Collection, Historical Society of Montgomery County.

Above right: Sons of Italy lodge, 2014. Photo by Matthew Tarditi. Far right: Zion BaptistChurch, exterior, 2014. Photo by Jabari Zuberi.

Although Butler Avenue remains the core of Ambler’scommercial and civic life, neighbors gather in civicand religious spaces throughout Ambler’s residentialareas to celebrate, organize, and worship in groupsthat reflect the diversity of the community. Activegroups include the St. Francis Society and AmericanLegion, along with many congregations, such asZion Baptist, St. Anthony’s, and St. Joseph’s.Jack DelConte, who grew up in Ambler and is nowthe manager of 34 East Tavern on Butler Avenue,speaks about the St. Francis Society, home of theSons of Italy, an Italian American social group,in South Ambler.

Everybody knew everybody. Everybody went to thesame schools. Everybody [was] mostly Italian. Ona Sunday morning, you could smell the sauce fromthree blocks away, you know. And it was a great,great neighborhood, a lot of fun. Baseball teams.There was a Sons of Italy Club right there. We hadfeasts, like St. Francis Day was a big day.

Salvatore Boccuti also recalls both the food andthe celebration:

The St. Francis Society has a parade all throughAmbler, and they have pasta and ceci [garbanzo]beans and stuff like that as a celebration. Well,in those days, we used to gather in that field, in thatbaseball field, and at night, they had fireworks,and the fireworks were on top of the dump, on topof the asbestos pile [remains of asbestos waste fromthe Keasbey and Mattison plant].

Everything about Ambler was built on asbestos.You know, Dr. [Richard] Mattison lived here, ownedfour hundred houses, or built four hundred houses,had that big castle over there on Bethlehem Pike.Everything was based on [asbestos]. And when heand his partner came here originally in the late 1880s,they came for pharmaceuticals because of the lime-stone deposit.

They were making milk of magnesia. And then theyfound out the insulated qualities, when they mixedthis and this, and then, poof, they took off when theygot involved with asbestos, and shingles, and liningcurtains for stages, and all that stuff. We had theworld’s largest manufacturer of asbestos productsin our town.

—From Bernadette Dougherty, author of ahistory of Ambler in Montgomery County:The Second Hundred Years and who is activein regional civic and historical institutions

Ambler: Work and White Mountains

Left: Fire insurance map of Keasbey and Mattison plant and surrounding area, 1922.Sanborn Map Company. Pennsylvania State University. Above: Richard Mattison withlife-sized cast of deer outside his home, Lindenwold, ca. 1920s. Photo by John McIlroy.

Historical Society of Montgomery County, Newton Howard Photograph Collection.

Above right: Keasbey and Mattison Company, attached row house type, 100–114 South

Chestnut Street, Ambler, ca. 1933. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division,

HABS PA,46-AMB,10R-1.

From the 1880s to 1981 Ambler’s economy andidentity were based primarily on one industry,similar to many industrial towns that becamenotable leaders in steel, coal, or textile production.Ambler was even nicknamed Shingleton for itsproduction of asbestos shingles. Ambler became a“factory town” as Keasbey and Mattison (K&M)employed residents, built and rented homes, createdutility companies, and wielded influence over localbanks. K&M’s asbestos business was bought byTurner Newall in 1933, and later by Nicolet andCertainTeed, which ceased operations in 1981.

While asbestos products were widely hailed and usedas fire retardants and insulators, workers in asbestosproduction were exposed to a variety of hazardsfrom breathing airborne asbestos fibers, which affectthe lungs and lead to such diseases as mesothelioma.Tim Hughes, a resident of Ambler since 1994, speakshere about the levels of asbestos exposure his brotherexperienced while manufacturing pipes at Nicolet:

I actually had a brother, my brother Ed, [who had ajob with Nicolet]. They [made] tiles and [large] roundpipes that were used in construction, I suppose, forwater mains or sewer lines. Ed’s job was to wear aheavy set of gloves and spin the pipes and break offthe [imperfections] of not perfectly formed concreteon the end of the pipe. Just sort of break it up so it’snice and smooth. He only did it for about a weekbecause he hated the job, but that’s what he did.If you think about that, how many hundreds orthousands of workers had those kinds of jobs,where they’re breaking this stuff up [and makingit airborne and all] right in front of their faces?”

As awareness about the health effects of suchworking conditions increased, workers filed lawsuits.By 1987, 61,000 suits had been filed against NicoletIndustries. Those who lived near the plant also facedairborne exposure to asbestos, as did family membersof workers, who had contact with a worker’s clothing.Carol DiPietro, a member of the Ambler BoroughPlanning Commission whose grandparents came tothe area in the early 20th century to work at K&M,describes her mother dusting asbestos off of her suitafter visiting the factory floor and returning to theK&M office where she worked as a secretary:

She said that you could walk into that factory, andyou saw all of the asbestos fibers floating in the air.And she said when she came back into her office,she used to have to brush her suit off. But from herdescription of that at the time, I don’t believe thatthey thought that that was a health hazard.

DiPietro also recounts taking pieces of asbestos toher kindergarten class for show and tell:

When she [Carol’s mother] stopped working, therewas a box. This is unbelievable. It was a box this big.It was orange, and all the lettering on it was black,“Keasbey & Mattison, Keasbey & Mattison.” Youopened it up, and it was asbestos in there. It was theraw asbestos. It was pieces that they made, like a pieceof fabric. I took that for show and tell in kindergarten.

While shingles from Ambler protected the roofsof many American homes from fire, asbestosmanufacturers in Ambler left piles of white wastethat contained asbestos and other materials. Fromits earliest days K&M dumped debris like magnesiumcarbonate, calcium carbonate, and asbestos-containingcement behind the factory. Aerial photos from 1937show these piles growing into the “White Mountains”of Ambler. After the factories closed, the wasteremained. Victor Romano, an Ambler native whospent most of his childhood there, reflects onsledding down these mountains:

And then about three football fields long wasthe mountain. That was the mountain of wasteasbestos. And they would have trucks that would,of course, go around, and as they dumped it, it waslower here, and it got higher and higher and higher.And I would guess it was about 50, 60, 70 feet high.And then on the ground floor, there was just a littlecreek running there and they had two sections. Whenthey cut the shingles to size, they had some scraps,this and that, [that] would be on the one section.But the other section had sawdust asbestos, and it

would be powdery,and we as kids,when it would rain,it would get slick asice, and we wouldget cardboardboxes, and we’d go60, 70 feet up, andslide down to thecreek down below.

Other neighbors who lived near the White Mountainsrecall dust landing like snow on summer windowsills.Gioia Smith, a lifelong Ambler resident who is activein various local community groups, reminisces:

All that white, in the summertime, when they wouldopen the windows up, we could never figure out whymy aunt’s windowsills were all white. And later onwe found out that that was asbestos.

In the 1980s Smith played a significant role in effortsto clean up the local playground adjacent to theAmbler Asbestos Piles site.

Asbestos waste was also located directly behindworkers’ houses on “Back Street,” formally namedWest Chestnut Street. Flo Wise, who grew up inWest Ambler and was a community activist formany years, recollects:

And so they lived on what they called the Back Street.It was crowded, and it was a whole slew of houses onthat Back Street where the people lived. We all justplayed together. I mean, you could come out [of]their house and go right up on the bank where theasbestos was.

Though the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)declared the piles of waste safe in 1977, in 1983 theagency reconsidered its position and added the AmblerAsbestos Piles site to the Superfund list. During the1980s citizens pressed for further action on theseissues. In a 1986 Inquirer article Gioia Smith wasquoted as a speaker at a public meeting: “WhenI can’t drive down Locust Street to visit my familybecause there’s a slide of red mud that might becontaminated with asbestos, that’s the problem youshould be addressing. Take care of it now.” The EPAcleanup finished in 1993; today the waste is coveredwith a thick layer of cement, soil, and vegetation.

Above: American Builder, April 1923.

Wissahickon Valley Historical Society.

Top right: White Mountains and K&M

factory, 1937. Photo by Victor Dallin.

Hagley Library. Right: Advertisement,date unknown. Wissahickon Valley Historical

Society. Far right: Looking through fenceat Ambler Asbestos Piles site, 2013.

Photo by Jabari Zuberi.

K&M encouraged schools to teach about asbestosas a material by distributing a school exhibit ofasbestos products, such as a small box full of fabric,twine, and other asbestos products. Such marketinghighlighted the properties of asbestos and furtheraffiliated Ambler with asbestos production.The 1923 cover of American Builder proclaimed,“Ambler asbestos shingles last forever. Nothing torot, rust, burn or require painting. Gets strongerwith age.”

Developing and maintaining free and safe publicspace that meets the needs of people and wildlife isa difficult process propelled by dialogue and debateamong individuals, citizen groups, governmentagencies, and business interests. In Ambler, sitescontaining asbestos include or are adjacent to publicparks and streams. The BoRit Superfund site, nextto Wissahickon Creek, includes a waste pile,Whitpain Park, and a contaminated reservoir.

Members of the Ambler community remember thereservoir as a swimming hole, a prime fishing spot,a public dump, and an industrial water supply.The reservoir is now owned by a local environmentalorganization, the Wissahickon Watershed Association,which hopes to rehabilitate the site once EPA cleanupis complete. Resident Victor Romano recallsswimming and fishing at the reservoir while waterwas being pumped into the factory to make shingles.

They needed a lot of water to make the shingles, andthey got that from the Wissahickon Creek. They builta dam on the creek, and then they had a pumpingstation there, and they pumped the water. It wasabout 50, 60 feet high from the Wissahickon Creek towhere the reservoir was, okay? And then they wouldpump the water from the Wissahickon Creek up tothe reservoir, and then the shingle plant would drawthe water from the reservoir, and make the shingles.And that’s how it was. And we swam in it. It wasclear water. We fished in it.

Safe places to play and spend leisure time areessential to community life, but in Ambler a play-ground was created atop an asbestos site and laterforced to close. In the 1960s Whitpain Townshipacquired land formerly belonging to Keasbey andMattison and turned it into a park that served WestAmbler for two decades. Ruth E. Weeks discussesher good memories about the place she perceivedas safe: “It was the safest place to be. We [wouldsay], ‘Mama, I’m going to the playground.’ It wasfine. I don’t even think we had to tell her. I thinkthey just knew that’s where we were.” Governmentofficials closed Whitpain Park in the mid-1980s whenthey found it contaminated with asbestos waste.Despite assurances from Whitpain Township andthe Pennsylvania Department of EnvironmentalProtection that the park would be cleaned, it hasnever reopened and is now part of the BoRitSuperfund site.

Ambler: Questions and Debates—Removal, Reuse, and Safe Places

Far left: Asbestos site and Wissahickon Waterfowl Preserve signage, 2013. Photo by

Matthew Tarditi. Top left: White Mountains with mother and child, ca.1960s. Courtesy of

Salvatore Boccuti. Top right: BoRit reservoir, 2014. Photo by Matthew Tarditi.

Center: Ruth E. Weeks gives a tour, 2013. Photo by Matthew Tarditi.

Some community members, such as SharonMcCormick, are highly skeptical of suggestions forother kinds of reuse of the site and of the EPA stepscurrently under way; McCormick has often pushedfor total removal of asbestos from the site. A lifelongresident of the Philadelphia area, McCormick movedto Ambler in the 1990s. In 2004 she founded Citizensfor a Better Ambler, first to advocate against thebuilding of the Kane Core high-rise and then to getwhat is now the BoRit Superfund site on the NationalPriorities List. She is now a member of the AmblerBorough Council. Speaking of reuse options at theBoRit site, McCormick says,

Now, I’m not against reuse. But I want it cleaned up.I’m against putting people on top of this dump, forreal, unless they were going to encase it in concreteand tell us that we have this liner and this liner andthis liner and it’ll absolutely not get into the creek andblah-blah-blah and this and that—fine. But they’renot. They’re talking about three feet of dirt and ageotextile covering that a groundhog can dig into inthree minutes.

Gordon Chase has been a resident of Ambler foralmost a decade and is an active member of theBoRit CAG. He is aware of the health risks andthe cost of attempting to move large amountsof asbestos.

I think there are extreme costs to removing it all,and a very long period of time. The physical act ofmoving 300,000 cubic yards will take years. If youhappen to be living down in West Ambler by that site,the thought of having dump trucks rolling past yourhouse every day for the next four or five years[is unpleasant]. Being on the freeway, if you haveone truck have an accident, topple over, and all thisasbestos went up, you know, these are the risks. Plus,as I said, all the pollution that all these movementswould make, plus the possible dangers to workerswho are having to dig all this material up, plusthe residents.

Flo Wise advocates strongly for safely securing theasbestos in place and redeveloping the land in waysthat would replace Whitpain Park, which was closedbecause of asbestos contamination.

With the CAG, I could understand what theyrepresented, because they wanted to make sure ofsafety. That was their main thing, is safety. And whereI went astray from Sharon, Sharon said, “Move it all.”You can’t move it all. What I was saying to Sharon—because I’m protecting West Ambler—if you say moveit all, that means my community goes. You can’t moveit all because you have a reservoir full of it.

Where I split with Sharon is, I want them to do likethey did before. They covered it up. They put dirt onit or something. Stuff is more modern now that theycan do. I’d rather for them to do that and let us haveour park back. I even compromised to the point whenthey said, “We can do all this, but you won’t be ableto run and play on the park like you used to yearsago.” So I said, “All right then. Put benches up there.Make a walking track for us. We walk. Black peoplewalk.” Because they want to walk from the Mont-gomery Community College. My buddy told me this,they want to go up from Montgomery CommunityCollege, through West Ambler, down to Philly.

So I said, “That’s fine. Give us some benches.Leave our park there so we can walk up and havesomewhere to sit outside of our porches and on thestreet. Give us some benches, and have a walkingpath for us, too. We have to walk, too.” You know?But they don’t hear that.

How to make the voices of different communitygroups heard and how to build allies to influencechange are questions that often arise over contestedspaces, such as the BoRit site. What seems safe forsome may be inadequate for others. Visions of thefuture are affected by what has been gained and lostin the past. Ruth E. Weeks speaks about theselegacies and her hopes for the future:

Why keep talking about the asbestos? It’s in the past,but it affects what’s going on now. But the township,to me, still won’t acknowledge that. Because to me, ifyou took the park away because of the asbestos, thengive the community something else in place of, in asafer place, like where my cousins used to live. It’s onthe opposite side of where the asbestos dump was.Why not put something there? There’s too manyholes in the community.

What and whose priorities will be addressed remainsa question as planning and work on the BoRit sitecontinues. Perhaps Anne McDonough’s thoughtsabout considering many needs and perspectives canguide future decisions. McDonough is a high-schoolscience teacher for the Wissahickon School District inAmbler. “I feel like this is a small enough communitythat you can’t say it’s happening to them, becausewe’re small. It will impact our entire community.It’s not somebody else’s problem. It’s all of ourproblems.” As of 2013 Whitpain Township hadpresented the West Ambler Revitalization and ActionPlan, which lays out strategies to address stormwatermanagement, reutilization of the BoRit site, andimprovement of infrastructure. At present the EPAis completing the last phases of the project.

Center: EPA sign, 2013. Photo by Matthew Tarditi. Top left: Aerial view of BoRit Site with

reservoir drainage in progress, 2014. © 2015 Salvatore A. Boccuti, www.salboccuti.com/.

Left: EPA restoration work, 2013. Photo by Jabari Zuberi. Above right: Wissahickon Creek

with EPA reinforcements to riverbanks, 2013. Photo by Matthew Tarditi.

Commercial interests have pushed for a differentreuse of the BoRit site. In 2004 developer DavidF. Kane of Kane Core, along with his businesspartner Mark Marino, bought a six-acre, asbestos-containing waste pile in West Ambler and proposederecting a 17-story condominium building on it.Citizens swiftly objected and formed Citizens fora Better Ambler (CBA), an advocacy group to stopthe development. Though members of the BoroughCouncil initially supported the plan, public outcryconvinced them to vote against the proposal. Whiledevelopers were presenting architectural drawingsto township officials, members of CBA deployed avariety of grassroots tactics. The group distributedfliers and floated a large balloon to the height of theproposed building to document the visual impactthe structure would have. Fighting the high-rise alsofocused attention on the asbestos present on the site.

Tim Hughes was closely involved in the founding ofCBA and the efforts to stop the Kane Core high-risefrom being built. He discusses his response to thehigh-rise project:

I began to look into it, to see really what was beingproposed. And it startled me. I’d have to say the veryfirst response was, “I’m going to lose the view in theback of my home.” That’s exactly what I was mostconcerned about [initially]. Then I thought about allthe other neighbors who have moved here for specificreasons. They’ve moved here not to live next to ahigh-rise, or to have a potential high-rise in theirfuture, not that I have any particular issue withhigh-rises, but I think there’s appropriate places toput them, and in the middle of this area, it [seemedinconsistent]. So [my first negative response hadnothing to do with the asbestos factor]. I rememberit was towards the end of 2004, in the fall, and I hada business trip to go on the next day, but I felt likeI had to do something, because I was going to be gonefor about 10 days. So that afternoon, I created a flierthat showed the high-rise looming over the neighbor-hood in two different perspectives, and it was justreally kind of Photoshopped in, but it was as closeto scale as I thought I could make it.

[While] I drove the car [with my wife, Aurora] in thepassenger seat, we put about a hundred of the fliers inmailboxes the night before I went away, and left myphone number, and the next day, while I was flying,my phone just blew up. People wanted to know moreabout [the high-rise proposal]. And I think the imageof the high-rise, rather than just saying there’s ahigh-rise going up, really got people concerned andworried. So the grassroots effort began that night[and CBA was formed]. And shortly after my return,we began to meet, and we had literally hundreds ofmeetings over a long, long period of time. I was, andstill am, very impressed with the expertise of themembers and what they were all capable of doing.It was just the perfect blend of skills, personalities,and knowledge. And [if we needed informationimmediately, we had members that would workthrough the night to get it].

It started out with 60 or 70 or 80 people, but at theend of a [relatively] short period of time, it reallyboiled down to the people that really cared. We beganwith concerns about the high-rise, but it becameobvious to us all very quickly that this was about somuch more. The developers’ plan for the high-risewas the catalyst that got it going.

What “got going” was further action and dialogueconcerning the BoRit site and the creation of theCommunity Advisory Group (CAG), a group ofcitizens who communicate with the EPA andPennsylvania Department of EnvironmentalProtection to recommend improvements to thesite. Views differ about what would improve thesite. As Salvatore Boccuti, CAG member andAmbler resident says, “The agencies don’t alwaysagree with us, but we make our recommendations.”

Ambler Boiler House

Real-estate developer John Zaharchuk decided torenovate the Ambler Boiler House after he sawthe then vacant building, which had generatedsteam-powered electricity for asbestos production,in the movie Spellbound. The film depicted the sortof children you would want to celebrate; one of thespelling-bee contestants in the film was the daughterof the owner of the bar next to Deck’s Hardwarein Ambler. To show her hometown the filmmakerflashed an image on the screen of the formerboiler house.

Zaharchuk saw an opportunity to restore thisproperty, but doing so would require money, athorough remediation process, and tenants whowould value a renovated building. In 2002 SummitRealty of New Castle, Delaware, began amassingwhat eventually totaled $14.7 million in privatefunding and government loans to develop theAmbler Boiler House, vacant since the 1980s,into energy-efficient office space. The “green,”LEED-certified offices opened in December 2012.

Describing the process of asbestos removal that wasalso monitored by the Pennsylvania Department ofEnvironmental Protection and EPA, Zaharchuk says,

We also are in the development business, so we deala lot with environmental contamination, and in truth,asbestos is one of the easiest contaminants to actuallydeal with. It’s identifiable, and it can be capped onsite. You just can’t put it in the air. It just can’tbecome airborne. So as long as you follow somefairly simple rules of remediation, it’s actually nota bad contaminant to deal with. It doesn’t lead togroundwater problems. Once it’s capped, it’s inert.

Conclusion

Jean Thompson Park and the Ambler BoilerHouse project offer success stories about the roleof citizens, business, and government in makingpositive changes in a community that was once abusy “factory town.” Industrial production hasleft a large environmental and cultural footprintthat continues to affect towns such as Ambler.Pristine landscapes are hard to find in a countrythat has been industrialized and is full of townsand cities that have been left polluted by thewaste from manufacturing.

By harnessing the political will, skill, and resourcesto remediate contaminated sites, options exist toredevelop communities into places that are healthy,safe, and full of opportunities to live, work, andenjoy life. While that remediation occurs, childrenseek places to play, families grow and change, andcustomers drink coffee and eat lunch along mainstreets such as Butler Avenue in Ambler.

However, the Boiler House renovation did requireadditional steps to remove asbestos from bricks.Zaharchuk describes the process:

So what we had to do, we had to wash, hand wash,all of those bricks, to get all the asbestos fibers offof them. We created a clean product that we couldactually use to fill elsewhere on the site, and thenwe harvested all the asbestos that was collected,very labor intensive, very costly. That was probablythe most costly component of the environmentalremediation.

These efforts proved valuable as Zaharchuk andother tenants now feel satisfied and safe workingin the building.

And clearly, I mean, I moved my company into abuilding that was a former asbestos manufacturer.I wouldn’t let my people inside of a building Ithought was dangerous, or proximate to somethingthat was dangerous.

Some tenants were quite attracted to the buildingbecause it is a successful example of reuse. Speakingof satisfied tenants, Zaharchuk adds:

The other reaction was, “Wow, this is exactly whatI’m looking for. This is the image I want for mycompany. I want to be in a green building. What doI have to do to get here?” And the good news is thebuilding is filled with those types of people.

Zaharchuk is now working on another project inAmbler that will require remediation of magnesiumthat must be capped. When completed, The Crossingswill be a residential project in which tenants canlive and work.

Far left: Boiler House before renovation, 2010. Photographer unknown. Top left: Basketballcourt at Ambler Piles site after renovation, 2013. Photo by Jabari Zuberi. Left: Inside BoilerHouse before renovation, 2010. Photographer unknown. Top center: Ambler Boiler Houseafter renovation, 2013. Photo by Matthew Tarditi. Above: Ambler Manor, recent construction,2014. Photo by Matthew Tarditi.

Jean Thompson Park

Locust Street playground, adjacent to a former Keasbeyand Mattison dump site in South Ambler, was thesecond public park closed by the EnvironmentalProtection Agency (EPA) for asbestos-related issues.In 1983 the EPA found traces of asbestos on play-ground equipment; the playground was closed andthe equipment removed. Jean Thompson, whosehome on Locust Street looked out over the site,fought to ensure that when the EPA completedcleanup, a safe park would reopen. “I’m notconcerned about myself. I’m concerned about mygrandchildren. Why did [the government] wait allthose years to tell us the asbestos piles could bedangerous?” When the park reopened in 1990,it was named in her honor. Thompson was AmblerCitizen of the Year in that year; an Inquirer articlewritten about her receipt of that award was titled“Her Persuasive Voice Is Heard and Honored.”

Thompson’s niece, Gioia Smith, discusses her aunt’sactivism in closing and reopening the park:

It was shut down because of the asbestos and stuff.Back then, and I think they were talking about itmore, and she fought for them to close it down.And then after they closed it down, they startedworking on it, and she was a real advocate. I mean,if you look up Billie Jean Thompson, she was anadvocate on all that. And then after she was fussingabout the conditions on the playgrounds and all,so the borough, they shut it down. [She] nevermissed a borough meeting. And she was reallyan advocate for getting her community safe.

Ambler:Success Stories of Reuse