Cold Spring, NY

Circa 1989, this question came up on an EPA National Priority Superfund Cleanup site, the former Marathon Battery site in Cold Spring, NY named by George Washington, across the Hudson River from West Point Military Academy and across Foundry Cove from Constitution Island, on which fortifications were designed by a Dutch cartographer to the American revolutionaries, Bernard Romans. What at first appeared to be the procedure was that any artifacts found after recording were to be placed in a bunker onsite for storage forever. The focus of a second cleanup, as it was, of cadmium and nickel (and other) it was negotiated to at first to be processed on site by only HazMat trained personnel in trailers on the site, and then by lab personnel without the training as long as that section of the site not associated with the direct contamination was involved, i.e., the mitigation of the designed "haul road" to create the earthen dam in the cove that would be pumped out and the sediments therein combined with concrete and hauled out on rail, utilizing the former rail bed that once was used by the historic West Point Foundry to its large two railroad line dock out into the Hudson River and later. "In 1896/97 J. B. & J. M. Cornell took over the iron foundry at Cold Spring, N. Y. on the Hudson River. The foundry was known as the West Point Foundry Works. These facilities are discussed in the magazine, The Successful American, Vol. III, No. 4, April 1901, p. 202, which also illustrates the extensive works at this location." Constructions of large bridge sections and skyscraper "parts" painted apparently also in Foundry Cove. It was also perhaps where the first "iron clad" ship was created in the US. As the tests in the cove were monitored for hydrocarbons and wipe tests done on some of the artifacts it was determined that there wasn't any threats of contamination and the "bunker" idea was abandoned.