The Pine Street Barge Canal is a 28 acre undeveloped piece of land that sits between Pine St. and Lake Champlain in Burlington’s southern end. Composed of both public and private parcels, it includes approximately 20 acres of wetlands.

The original Abenaki inhabitants of the area considered it an abundant source of fish and food and protection for the lake. The pre-colonial natural communities were wetlands, likely cattail marsh, lakeside floodplain forests and silver maple-sensitive fern floodplain forest. In the 19th century, early industrialists considered it a swamp, and began to fill it with sawdust and wood chips from Burlington’s lumber industry.

In the 20th century, it got worse, and the land became the site of a coal gasification plant. While coal gas provided light and heat for Burlington’s homes, it was an extremely dirty industry, and the coal tar, heavy metals, and numerous other toxins produced were simply dumped on the adjacent land and water.

This plant closed in 1966, and thanks to former U.S. Senator Jim Jeffords, the site was added to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund Priority List in 1982. An initial EPA “remediation” proposal involving scooping up contaminated soil and creating a giant toxic dump was defeated by citizen activism. In 1997, a panel made perhaps the wisest possible choice: leave the land alone. Over the years the land has begun to slowly heal itself, as various plans for development have failed.