Old mill in park coming down
Work is set to begin in March to remove an old factory, in disrepair and a threat, in the CuyahogaValley.
It will take about three months to remove what's left of the Jaite paper mill, on the east bank of the CuyahogaRiver south of West Highland Road in SagamoreHillsTownship, said Bill Carroll, deputy superintendent of the CuyahogaValleyNational Park.
The skeletal building is falling apart and is a threat to park visitors. It is filled with asbestos and was the site of a big fire in 1992. Park officials have talked about demolishing the building for years.
The demolition is the first step of a long-term project to restore the river along the Jaite site to its natural state and other improvements.
All structural materials above the mill's floor level will be removed, the National Park Service said in a statement.
Select features of the site will remain for future display, including a paper-making machine. The water tower will be examined for structural integrity and may or may not be preserved.
The paper mill was constructed in 1905 by Charles Jaite, a German immigrant.
The town of Jaite was started in 1906.
The mill produced flour sacks and grain bags, along with multilayered cement sacks, corrugated cardboard and paper linings for cereal boxes.
At one time, more than 250 workers labored in the mill. Women worked in the mill in large numbers, and Jaite also attracted Polish immigrants.
The mill was bought in 1951 by National Container Corp. It closed and was acquired by the National Park Service in 1984.
Demolishing the old mill will not affect the use of the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail that runs next to the mill, and the work will be done Monday through Thursday, Carroll said.
The park service and TetraTech, a Colorado-based environmental contractor, are managing the project. The on-site work will be done by a subcontractor, McCabe Engineering of Richfield.
Removing the old building will cost about $1.1 million, Carroll said.
About $450,000 is coming from federal funds and $650,000 is from a settlement fund paid by polluters who dumped toxic chemicals at the long-closed Krejci Dump in the park, he said.
The final $30 million cleanup of the 47-acre Krejci site got under way last October.
Removing 100,000 tons of contaminated soils and debris from the two sites off Hines Hill Road at Interstate 271 in Boston and NorthfieldCenter townships is expected to take two to three years.
The old dump is contaminated with solvents, paint waste, industrial sludge, pesticides and herbicides.
The final cleanup is being paid for by the Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp., which dumped material there from their Cleveland-area auto plants.
The federal government spent an additional $30 million on the initial Krejci surface cleanup. It reached $20 million in settlements with six companies that had dumped at the site.
The dump was closed in the 1960s. The federal government bought it in 1980. Park officials thought the site was an old junkyard.
In 1986, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found 5,000 leaking drums on the site.
There is no evidence that the contamination has polluted streams or moved off the site, officials said.
The automakers and other companies that used the Krejci site paid $1.45 million into a settlement fund that the park service is using for the Jaite demolition, Carroll said.
The park will have about $800,000 remaining in that fund after the initial Jaite work is complete, and it is not known how those funds might be spent, he said.
The park has not yet finalized plans for the next step of the Jaite restoration, he said.
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