The Pettinaro Company recently filed a development plan to build 264 homes on the remaining 18 holes of the Delaware National Country Club.
Pettinaro, which bought the golf course property last March for $9.2 million, is proposing a mix of townhouses and single family homes on 205 acres.
The plan has sparked concerns from nearby residents who recently wrapped up a legal battle with developer Toll Brothers, which has begun construction of Greenville Overlook, a 162-home community on the older nine holes of the 27-hole golf course.
The residents, led by the Milltown-Limestone Civic Alliance, sued for a temporary restraining order against Toll Brothers over concerns the developer would do a sub-par job remediating golf course soil contaminated by fertilizer and pesticides. The suit was dismissed.
Those same environmental concerns have residents riled about this project, said Bill Dunn, vice president of the MLCA.
“We’re not opposed to development for development’s sake,” Dunn said. “We’re opposed to jeopardizing the health and welfare of the people in the community.”
The soil on the Toll Brothers part of the golf course contained a buildup of arsenic from years of spraying pesticides and had to be cleaned up before houses could be built. Arsenic-contaminated dust, kicked up by construction and blown through neighboring developments, is a major concern, Dunn said.
What remediation needs to be done is still up in the air, but Pettinaro should follow similar steps to the ones Toll Brothers took before starting work on Greenville Overlook, said Kathleen Stiller, site investigation and remediation branch manager.
And there are rumors of an agricultural research facility that sat on the Pettinaro-owned part of the course when Hercules was still in business, Dunn said. Research on chemicals like Agent Orange could have been conducted there, he said.
The Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control has no information about any agricultural chemical testing on the property, Stiller said.
However, DNREC recommends the developer work with the site investigation & remediation branch to test the soil, sediment and groundwater for contamination and remediate as necessary, she said.
Pettinaro is no stranger to remediation; the company has spent more than a decade cleaning up and developing the Wilmington Riverfront, which had been the site of an industrial shipyard.
The company’s development plan will be evaluated through the state’s Preliminary Land Use Service, which involves reviews by all applicable state agencies, including DNREC.
