Former Site of Kurt Iron & Metals Co. (Baltimore, Maryland)

 production, historical layer / disappeared object

Kurt Iron & Metals Co. operated a large scale shipbreaking, industrial demolition and metal salvage facility on this site from 1987 to 1997. Benefitting from the demise of the US merchant shipping fleet and numerous closures of industrial sites in the Baltimore area, Kurt Iron & Metal enjoyed a few profitable years of operation before several environmental groups began exposing serious problems with the handling of toxic materials onsite.

Mired in legal problems through the early 1990's, Kurt Iron & Metal was forced to lease part of their land to Seawitch Salvage Corp, which subsequently received the largest ship scrapping job ever conducted in the United States when the former USS Coral Sea (CV-43) arrived to be broken up in 1993. Seawitch was soon beset with similar legal woes to Kurt Iron, with particular focus on the amount of Asbestos present in the 50-year old ship, as well as other potential environmental contaminants.

By 1997, stop work orders and legal fees had pushed Kurt Iron and Metal out of business and their property was abandoned with no attempts at remediation. Seawitch Salvage remained in extremely limited operation through the completion of their scrapping project on the Coral Sea, which was finally completed in 2000 after most of the board of Seawitch Salvage were indicted on Federal charges ranging from environmental damage to racketeering to tax fraud.

The site of Kurt Iron & Metals remained fallow from Kurt's shut down in 1997 until its purchase by the Maryland Port Administration in 2000. Large scale environmental remediation efforts were undertaken to return the land to a usable condition, but the process was hampered by the presence of approximately 25,000 tons of solid waste, scrap metal, concrete rubble, tires and creosoted timber onsite. In addition hazardous wastes including 40 lead acid batteries, 35 PCB containing transformers, 1 ton of PCB containing materials, 50 pounds of mercury-containing equipment, 515 explosive compressed gas cylinders and 80 cubic yards of friable asbestos were found onsite in the cleanup of the remaining Kurt Iron infrastructure which was completed in October 2004.

When remediation efforts were completed in removing topside materials, the soil beneath the site was removed to prevent further contamination of the groundwater and Baltimore Harbor through runoff. This process was not without its own difficulties, as small amounts radioactive materials, oil contaminated ground water from leaking underground storage tanks and the discovery of several 500lb inert bombs (initially suspected to be unexploded ordnance which resulted in the temporary closure of the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel) delayed the completion process until 2005.

Finally declared completed in September 2006, the former site of Kurt Iron & Metal became a new lot for the Maryland Port Administration's Mercedes-Benz Auto Terminal, and has been ringed by parkland. Though all of Kurt's topside infrastructure has been removed, their legacy is still quite visible in the numerous sunken and unscrapped vessels which line their former dock space.

wbcm.com/pdfprojects/Kurt_Iron_3pg.pdf