Lead testing...coming soon to a lot on Olive Street near you

As a part of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Olive Street Block Club (OSBC) and SEND, the soil on the property must be tested for lead prior to use as a garden.  Let's back up a bit actually, and explain the MOU:

The 1401 lot belongs to SEND.   They own it.  Before they would allow the neighborhood group (OSBC) use the property, an MOU was drafted.  The MOU required a land use plan detailing projected improvements and alterations to the property as well as denoted responsibilities for the maintenance and upkeep of the lot after the acquisition and agreement is signed, such as mowing of the grass, monitoring the use of the property and obtaining a soil test to indicate the presence of hazardous materials.  Remember, there was a home on the property prior to it becoming a vacant lot, and that home likely had lead based paint all over it at some point.

Recognizing that lead testing is an important step prior to creating a community garden (and required by the MOU in our case), we needed to find an inexpensive (i.e. FREE!) way to get the soil tested, for we have little money at the moment to spend.  Knowing that Debra Boyer, 2012 Vice President of the Fountain Square Neighborhood Association (facebook page), has recently been active with another local garden, the Southeast Model Urban Garden across from the Fountain Square Center at 901 Shelby Street, I figured she'd be a good source.  See below for a couple pics of their garden:

Love the fence.  Basic pickets, but they're set at varying heights to create a very nice wave.

Small but effective garden plots.  I hope ours can be more sizable.

I think these are some kind of squashy / pumpkin kind of thing.

Debra pointed us toward IUPUI as a resource and is still looking on my behalf to see if the program she used is available.  I went a step further and contacted another friend who had their home's soil tested for lead a few years back.  They went through "the City."  The dreaded CITY.  What does that mean?  Well I started with the most logical choice:  Health and Hospital.  By searching for Health and Hospital Indianapolis I was pointed to their web site.  Further investigation to determine what local source would be best sent me toward the Marion County Public Health Department.  A search of their programs and services yielded this result:  The Marion County Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program.  We signed up by calling (317) 221-2155.  After confirming that they test soil for lead, we await someone to schedule an appointment to visit the site.

If any residents of Marion County are concerned that their soil may have harmful lead, don't hesitate to call the program mentioned above.  It's a great resource to have; I hope it works out for us and we can move forward from this point without needing to field an additional testing agency, it was almost too good to be true to find someone willing to do the test so quickly.

Stay tuned for a post upcoming with some examples of a few of the other urban gardens around downtown (the ones I know of at least).