Asphalt in soil

In digging up an area of our yard to put in a garden, I kept finding chunks of asphalt pavement. Odd, since none of the roads in our subdivision are made of asphalt. So I asked the neighbor, who told me that the previous owners had road crews who were working on the nearby highway dump all the broken up asphalt in the yard to fill in low spots. Argh! What sort of ecological implications am I dealing with? The EPA web site has me terrified. I e-mailed my regional office, but of course I haven't heard anything back and I doubt that I ever will. I plan to grow vegetables in raised beds, but we have well water and now I'm worried about possible contamination of the groundwater. Now I can't let my chickens free-range, either! Any ideas about what I should do?

Why can't you let you chickens free range?
Did you have your well water tesed before you bought the house?

The well water was fine when we bought one year ago -- it was test by the county. But I don't want my chickens to eat bits of crumbling asphalt. It's made with petroleum products and I can't imagine that it would be OK for them to eat.

gggrimes, that truly sucks. I'm sorry.

Having said that, lots of us are building on soil that was treated disrespectfully by previous owners. Your situation's not so unlike (and probably much better than) those faced by inner-city community gardens, where a vacant lot or similar is torn up to make the new soil and space. Those gardens might have tips for you...? http://www.cityfarmer.org/communitygarden7.html

I know you don't have the manpower those orgs do, but then, their gardens are probably a lot bigger too. Good luck to you! I'm sure you can pull off a great garden and make a positive impact on your piece of earth.

If the water test was ok. Are your finding chunks of asphalt on the top of the soil?? If not, wondering if the chickens will even find any scratching around?? Seems that stuff is going to move downward-not up.
Have you heard from the EPA? If you bought the house a year or so ago is there any way to get them to clean up or pay for cleaning up since they didn't disclose this to you? Obviously the neighbors knew about it. And since they did road construction they also knew this stuff just couldn't just be dumped anywhere-even on their own property.

New member, old thread, same problem.

I have a garden that is on fill that was trucked in long ago. Most of my double-dug raised beds are on topsoil that was trucked in for a garden that was abandoned a short time later. In an adjoining area, I began an expansion for next year and with the first shovel into the soil, I hit asphalt chunks. Lots of asphalt chunks between 6 and 24 inches deep.

I've been looking for quite a while and there seems to be little info available concerning the toxicity of asphalt buried in garden soil. I see you've been to the EPA website. I only found concerns about air emissions during manufacturing and paving operations there, nothing about toxic leaching into the soil. My local extension people are of mixed feelings about this, also citing the little available info. One qoted the toxins released during the manufacture and said her personal feeling was that if two feet of clean soil was over it, there would be little concern. Another said she had no concerns about toxins leaching from the chunks but was concerned about it restricting root growth of plants over it.

The course of action I've decided on is to dig the entire area by hand to a depth of about 30 inches and remove all the chunks I can find. Fotunately the soil in these mountains is mostly sand and the diggng is easy. I've finished about 200 square feet so far and am confident that by hand shoveling, raking and scooping I removed all chunks larger than a golfball and most larger than a marble.

I know I can't get every bit but I'm hoping that removing everything of any size, leaching from any of the tiny remaining bits will be minimal and the very pourous soil will have carried off the leacheates.

I wish I could find something that addresses the safety of the effects on soil.

Wayne