Berlin council gets presentation, asks questions about Dummer Yard Project

BERLIN — The city learned additional details about the Dummer Yard Repurposing Project and company officials fielded questions about a variety of topics including asbestos and truck traffic for over an hour at Monday’s city council meeting.

LFOD Northwoods, a joint venture between W. L. French Excavating Corporation of North Billerica, Mass., and North-South Construction Services of Portsmouth, has a purchase and sale agreement for the 400-acre site off Hutchins Street that contains the abandoned Dummer Yard landfill. The company has already spent over $800,000 investigating a proposal that would remediate the existing landfill at an estimated cost of $20 million to $30 million. To cover the cost of the remediation, LFOD would establish a soil disposal facility that would accept contaminated soil from across New England. As the host community, Berlin would receive $2 a ton or an estimated $10 million over the five-to-10-year life of the soil disposal facility. LFOD said it would also pay an estimated $150,000 in back taxes owed to the city.