HAMDEN — — The largest residential environmental cleanup in state history has begun in the town's Newhall section, a venerable neighborhood of closely clustered former factory housing built on what amounts to a massive landfill.



The project, a decade in the planning, has been received all along the way with skepticism and uncertainty by this community of largely African American homeowners. They are tired of living with sinkholes and digging up car batteries and shell casings from the old Winchester Repeating Arms factory in their back yards, but do they don't have a great deal of faith in the cleanup either.



State officials are confident. They say removing up to four feet of contaminated soil from the yards of 232 homes should lift a stigma that has clung to these close-knit blocks like a fog for 100 years.



The area, including a former middle school, ball fields and a park, was polluted by arsenic, lead, heavy metals and partially burned waste from decades of dumping in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to fill the mosquito-infested swamplands of south Hamden. The unfettered dumping solved one problem, but spawned another.



The officials say it will take three to five years and $50 million to $70 million, half paid by state taxpayers, to truck away the dirt and replace it with hundreds of thousands of tons of clean material. The houses will remain, but decks, porches, shrubbery and anything else in the way will be yanked out and replaced.



Some trees have already been removed; the big dig starts in earnest this week on the first wave, 22 homes.



Tough Decision



The contamination goes down 18 feet or more on some of the properties, and residents are questioning whether the 4-foot dig goes deep enough. The state Department of Environmental Protection says four feet of fill is enough to bury any potential threat, but the uncertainty lingers even as the backhoes get to roll Monday morning.



First stop for the heavy equipment: the yard around Charlie Patterson's tidy brick home on Morse Street. Late last week, the 80-year-old former New Haven police officer, paper-supply salesman and small-business owner was wrestling with what to do. His face was creased with consternation.



On Wednesday afternoon, he said he shared the concerns that the cleanup didn't go far enough but was ready to accept the work. Wednesday night, he spoke with the indomitable Elizabeth Hayes, the neighborhood resident leading the opposition, and after that conversation, Patterson decided to sign a statement rescinding the permission he gave to contractors for Olin Corp., the company that is shouldering the other half of the cleanup cost, to come on his property.



Thursday afternoon, Patterson got a visit from the DEP's Raymond Frigon, the project manager, who said Patterson and the rest of the homeowners had the right to reject the service, but if they did, they'd "own'' the contaminated soil and would be responsible for paying for it to be removed. On Thursday evening, Patterson went to visit attorney Howard Lawrence of New Haven, who is advising the coalition that opposes the DEP plan.



Thursday night, Patterson reported on his session with Lawrence.



"His advice was to go ahead and let them do the work,'' Patterson said, adding that he'll heed that guidance. "If they don't do the work properly, then there would be some sort of a course of action in the courts.''



On Friday, Lawrence said: "I've reviewed the science and the promises made by the DEP. My best advice to the homeowners in phase 1 is to accept the service. If the state does it right, then we've done the right thing. If they do it wrong, we can pursue an action. In the spring, when the next phase is about to start, we can see how it went.''



The properties in the first wave have the least amount of contamination, and the DEP has promised that for this group, 100 percent of the tainted soil will be removed, Lawrence said.



Hayes, who lives in the neighborhood but does not have contamination on her property, said she is trying to get the DEP to go down eight feet and needs the whole neighborhood pushing together for that effort to have a chance.



She asked why, if the four-foot cap is sufficient, homeowners are required to disclose the presence of any remaining contaminated soil to prospective buyers when selling their homes?



"If four feet is enough, why not call it clean?'' asked Hayes, who is convinced property values will remain depressed in the neighborhood even after the cleanup.



Frigon, of the DEP, said the disclosure is intended to protect owners of properties with deep contamination in the event that they want to dig down below four feet to build an addition. He said properly owners can dip into a fund being set up to pay for the removal of the deep contamination.



Other than that, Frigon said four feet of clean fill, layered on top of a barrier, is more than sufficient to bury any remaining contamination and neutralize any potential health threat.



'Complex Project'



Richard Pearce, a popular local businessman, has been hired by the town as a liaison between the neighborhood and officials.



He said he understands the angst.



"It's a complex project. A wrong was done many years ago; now we have to right that wrong. I'm here to facilitate clear communication and answer concerns. I have found that when I sit down with a resident one-on-one and explain the details, they have felt comfortable with the project,'' Pearce said.



State health officials have concluded that there has no elevation in the number of cancer cases, blood poisonings or any other illness in the neighborhood.



A separate fund, containing $5 million in proceeds from the sale of state bonds, will be used to correct any structural damage caused to the homes by uneven settling of the fill material under and around the foundations.



Dale Kroop, Hamden's director of economic development, said he has so far identified 51 houses with structural damage. He said about 20 of those probably will have to be bought through the fund and demolished. Others can be repaired, he said.



Kroop sees the cleanup, coupled with the repair and replacement of some of the houses in Newhall, as an opportunity to permanently improve the neighborhood. He is considering employing a deconstructionist, rather than a demolition company, so that flooring and other material from the houses can be saved and reused. He said he would like to see some jobs created for Newhall residents during the razing and reconstruction.



Some of the homes with cracked foundations, tilted walls and sinking garages date from the late 19th century.



The South Central Regional Water Authority and the town of Hamden are responsible for cleaning up of the old middle-school campus and the park, respectively. That will be done later in the project.



'A Few More Years'



The least contaminated soil — that is, dirt that can be reused for an industrial purpose but not a residential one — will be trucked across Hamden to the town's other iconic environmental problem: the country's largest tire pond. A lagoon with millions of discarded tires is being covered over by a small mountain of fill.



Shannon Pociu of the DEP said most of the soil from Newhall has been cleared to be used to cap the tire pond, an operation that is in its final stages.



Tainted soil from Newhall that can't be used again will be trucked to a hazardous-waste landfill.



Removing and replacing the soil from the 22 Newhall homes in the first wave will require 400 truckloads. The clean soil is coming from a housing construction project in Orange.



Specific truck routes from Newhall to the tire pond off State Street have been approved by Hamden police.



"You can expect a tremendous amount of activity in Newhall for the next few years,'' said Kroop.



"Been living in this neighborhood since 1948,'' said Patterson, who was born in North Carolina. "Guess I can wait a few more years to see how it all turns out.''