*>EPA



Superfund

Redevelopment

Initiative

Celebrating	Success

Welsbach & General Gas Mantle

Camden and Gloucester, New Jersey





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Historic Welsbach Factory in Gloucester, NJ.

(Source: http://www.gloiicestCTcitvnews.net/clearvsnot
ebook/gloucester city history/)

"We are here to serve the community - its
adults and children - and we exist to
provide hope for the rebirth of our city,
while providing a voice and a stage for
those who live, work and dream here."
South Camden Theatre website

Excavation efforts at the Site.

(Source:http://w'ww.npr,org/templates/storv/storv.php?
storvId= 103 817778)

For more information, please contact
Melissa Friedland at
friedland.melissa@epa.gov (703) 603-8864
or Frank Awisato at
avvisato.franki'giepa.gov (703) 603-8949.

With the help of funding to continue remediation provided by
the Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and dedication on
the part of EPA, local municipal management and community
stakeholders to restoration efforts, the Welsbach & General Gas
Mantle Superfund site supports a new community theater.

The Welsbach & General Gas Mantle Contamination site is a
multi-property site located in an industrial/residential area in
Camden and Gloucester City, New Jersey. Between the 1890s
and 1940s, the Welsbach Company (Welsbach) and the General
Gas Mantle Company (GGM) were involved in the production
of gas mantles. Welsbach extracted the radioactive element
thorium from monazite ore to use in the gas mantle
manufacturing process. When electric lighting replaced gas
lighting in the early 1940s, the two companies went out of
business. In May 1981, EPA conducted an aerial radiological
survey of the Camden and Gloucester City area to investigate for
radioactive contaminants. By the 1990s, detailed investigations
identified radiological contamination at the two former gas
mantle facilities and on about 100 properties in the areas around
the facilities. In 1996, EPA placed the Welsbach/GGM site on
its National Priorities List (Superfund Site List). Cleanup efforts
began in 2000, and included excavation and removal of soil and
waste materials with radiological contamination from the site
and surrounding areas and disposal of the radiologically
contaminated materials at a licensed, off-site facility. Cleanup is
ongoing and with recent help of $28 million in 2009 Recovery
Act funds for site-wide remediation.

As portions of the site meet their cleanup goals, community
groups waste no time in finding new productive uses for the
land. The South Camden Theatre Company, a not-for-profit
theater located in Camden, New Jersey and the Pleart of
Camden, a not-for-profit redevelopment organization, saw the
opportunity for one newly cleaned plot of land - a community
theater. With financial support from several local organizations,
in April 2008, the two groups announced the groundbreaking of
the 99-seat Waterfront South Theatre. The facility will be used
not only by the theater company but also by local high school
and elementary school programs and creates a space for theater,
music, and art in the center of the Waterfront South
redevelopment. South Camden Theatre Company opened their
first season in the new building in September 2010.

The new Waterfront South Theatre.

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