Neither Pulver nor his attorney, Mike Malloy, returned phone calls yesterday.
``The one option that is not open is leaving it there,'' DEP attorney Andy Hartzell said yesterday. ``We want that stuff out of there, and we want it out of there pronto.''
DEP spokesman Rob Goldberg said that, although the large dirt and slag mound - dumped with Conshohocken's permission over the summer on a hill at Seventh Avenue and Wood Street - is contaminated, it poses no ``imminent danger'' to nearby residents or park-goers.
Conshohocken officials have said repeatedly that, although they agreed to accept extra dirt from the Three Tower Bridge office complex site now under construction along the Schuylkill, they were given assurances by Pulver that each truckload of dirt would be tested.
The 500 truckloads of fill later were found to be contaminated. Twenty random samples of the mound showed either lead or arsenic levels to be above allowed residential limits.
Hartzell said that, if the dirt was not removed soon, the agency would consider seeking court orders to force the cleanup, fining the two parties, or hauling away the dirt and billing one or both later. Or all of the above.
``It's sort of unbelievable that it did occur,'' Hartzell said. ``There are a lot of people that should've known better.''
Fines could be as high as $25,000 per day, Schwartz said.
``To some extent, DEP is taking a harder line on wanting progress,'' Schwartz said at Wednesday night's Borough Council meeting. ``They are not going to change their position. That decision has a dramatic impact on this site.''
Specifically, the costs of a cleanup would run much higher than if the agency had ordered only removal of highly contaminated pockets. Borough Solicitor John DiPietro has said Pulver estimated that a complete removal of the mound would cost somebody ``hundreds of thousands of dollars.''
If Pulver does not agree to work with Conshohocken on removing the dirt, the borough will begin on its own and seek reimbursement from him either in negotiations or in court, DiPietro said.
Schwartz said he estimated the cost of hauling the mound to the Pottstown Landfill to be at least $300,000, a figure that does not include consulting fees and assumes DEP will allow the dirt to go there.
Wednesday, borough officials told residents they had assumed the DEP was watching over Pulver. Yesterday, DEP's Hartzell said the agency did not know Pulver was removing the dirt from the construction site and never would have allowed it.
DiPietro told residents: ``There's never going to be any dumping in the borough ever again.''
