By Mark Wert
For nearly 60 years, the Sixth Street Viaduct has carried cars and trucks over the top of Lower Price Hill. Noise and vehicle emissions rained down from the bridge on the mostly poor and working-class people living in the bypassed neighborhood three stories below.
A replacement for the viaduct, now under construction south of the existing structure, is likely to be a better neighbor. It won’t be as tall, opening up better views of the Ohio River beyond it, for example.
But a key step remains before then.
The old viaduct, covered with lead-based paint, has to be taken down sometime in July or August. Because of the lead hazard, the teardown of what’s sometimes called the Waldvogel Viaduct has to occur without raining a blizzard of paint chips or lead-tainted dust over a neighborhood that has had its share of environmental problems in the past.
Residents of the neighborhood, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, generally think they’re ignored or overlooked by City Hall. But they mostly give high marks to the project and the way officials have kept them informed about it – including the potential for a lead hazard.
“When that viaduct comes down, there’s going to be a great deal of noise” and some dust, said Eileen Gallagher, outgoing secretary of the Lower Price Hill Community Council. But she believes city officials “have made every possible contingency for containment” of lead.
Cincinnati and the state of Ohio started the $37 million project to replace the viaduct, which carries more than 50,000 vehicles a day, last August. The half-mile-long structure is in such poor condition that a weight limit, restricting its use for trucks over 16 tons, has been posted for nearly 20 years.
It’s both the length of the viaduct and its location – just a block from residential housing in some spots – that make a particularly careful removal a necessity. The added dimension of the lead-based paint has spurred a health impact assessment now under way by the city Health Department.
…
Officials study health impacts
Lead has to be removed from old buildings with care because of the health problems associated with the heavy metal.
Exposure to lead is especially dangerous to children 6 and younger because their brains are developing. It can cause cognitive and behavioral problems, learning disabilities and, at high levels, seizures and even death.
City health officials are reviewing the viaduct removal plans, said Dr. Camille Jones, the city’s assistant health commissioner for community health and environmental services. The assessment now under way is only the fourth the department has ever made.
Jones said the idea is to look at a situation and avoid problems instead of waiting for complaints, which is the way the department typically responds.
For example, the assessment could recommend that people living near the construction site be given instructions to take off their shoes when entering their homes, to avoid tracking potentially lead-tainted dust through their home.
The assessment could include recommendations on what to do if the work isn’t completed before Oyler Elementary School, now under renovation, reopens in August.
Finally, city health officials will monitor the viaduct’s removal as a followup to the assessment.
“Taking it down? It’s gotta be done.”
The assessment could include recommendations on what to do if the work isn’t completed before Oyler Elementary School, now under renovation, reopens in August.
Finally, city health officials will monitor the viaduct’s removal as a followup to the assessment.
…