LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Demolition is officially underway in the Highview neighborhood.
After three months of meetings and planning, the Environmental Protection Agency has confirmed that demolition work has started at 6213 Applegate Lane - a home filled with chemicals and explosive substances.
Applegate Ln. is blocked off to traffic and littered with heavy machinery. To protect the neighborhood, a barricade of shipping containers surrounds the home.
A Nicholasville, Kentucky company, CMC Environmental Services, is taking the home apart piece by piece.
"At the end of the day, it's going to be a dismantled house in a dumpster that will be hauled off," Highview Metro Councilmember Jeff Hudson said. "When the EPA pulls out of here, it'll be an empty lot that has been graded and sowed with grass seed."
Hudson has been going door-to-door since the beginning of the process, and started a text group for neighbors to answer any questions and keep the community informed.
"That’s the role of the government, to listen to constituents and make their voices heard. If I’ve had a part of that, I hope I have," Hudson said.
Hudson describes the neighborhood as a quiet one, going through a long and difficult three months and just looking for some light at the end of the tunnel.
"In two weeks, once all that is gone, then I think we'll have a sigh of relief. Until then, there's still the hassle of the roads being closed and the noise of the deconstruction. So, it's still going to be a hassle for a couple of weeks," Hudson said.
A neighbor we spoke to tells us he's lived in the neighborhood since 1961 and would have never imagined something like this to happen to his neighborhood.
"These people have been through it, my heart goes out to them," Hudson said.
The EPA estimates the dismantling process could take up to 12 days. Until then, the Highview neighborhood will hold its breath and wait for quiet to be the normal again.
More information is expected to be released Friday.
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