Thursday, February 10, 2000
Brownfields could get taxpayer help
If Taft plan survives likely political fight
BY SPENCER HUNT
Enquirer Columbus Bureau
COLUMBUS — Amy Joy-Adams never knew about the pollution lurking under an old furniture factory near her Norwood home. Not until the current owner, General Motors, tried to sell it.
Now Mrs. Joy-Adams, her equally surprised corporate neighbor and the city of Norwood are caught in a dilemma facing every Ohio community with an industrial past.
As cities struggle to revive their urban cores, they must find money to clean up land left dirty by owners who either are long gone or unwilling to do it themselves.
Ohio Gov. Bob Taft wants to supply some of that money. In his recent State of the State address, Mr. Taft asked the General Assembly and voters to spend $200 million to help clean up abandoned industrial sites, also known as brownfields.
Although civic leaders praised the governor, unhappy environmentalists say taxpayers would end up picking up the tab for polluters. A political tussle appears likely, but Mrs. Joy-Adams is concerned about results.
“I don't care who pays to clean it up, as long as it is cleaned up,” she said. Ohio records list about 1,600 polluted and potentially polluted sites statewide. There are 184 such sites in the Cincinnati area, 133 of which are in Hamilton County.
These sites can be anything from a gas station with a leaky underground fuel tank to an abandoned factory that used hazardous chemicals. These properties are tough to sell because state and federal laws can force anyone connected to the land to pay cleanup costs.
The federal Superfund program, for example, lets government officials clean or contain the pollution first and then sue polluters and landowners to pay for it.
This legal process is very slow. Only about 150 contaminated sites have been taken off the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency's list during the past two decades.
Mr. Taft's $200 million idea is the latest in a series of state and local efforts to speed cleanups.
The money would be given to cities and qualified not-for-profit groups to help them buy, clean and modernize brownfields, which could be sold to build businesses or homes.
Mr. Taft wants lawmakers to put the issue before voters in November. If voters approve, the state would sell $200 million in bonds next year after lawmakers pass rules governing how the money could be spent.
Environmental groups are suspicious about how the money would be used. They have no objections if the money is spent cleaning up “orphan sites,” places where polluters can't be found or where businesses have long since gone bankrupt.
But Jack Shaner, a lobbyist with the Ohio Environmental Council, the Ohio Sierra Club and Ohio Citizen Action worry the state may let businesses tap the taxpayers instead of their own pocketbooks to pay their cleanup costs.
“If you can find the responsible party that caused the pollution, that person ought to pay,” Mr. Shaner said.
These groups will push Mr. Taft and lawmakers to pass rules that would keep polluters' hands off the money. Taft spokesman Scott Milburn said the governor is likely to support those restrictions.
In Cincinnati, local government officials say the money is needed — even in cases where there are polluters that could pay.
“There comes a point where as much as you want a polluter to pay they either can't, or they won't, or there isn't enough legal muster to make them,” said Lisa Lange, director of the Port Authority for Brownfields Redevelopment in Cincinnati and Hamilton County.
“You have to decide what's the best use of (taxpayer) money,” she said. “Government can spend a lot of money in court on legal fees trying to squeeze blood from a turnip.”
City and county officials created the Port Authority in 1997 to select and buy brownfields for redevelopment. The group is trying to buy and redevelop 9 acres in Sharonville once used by electroplating firm Green Industries Inc., for about $8.1 million.
Ms. Lange said the state money could help her agency target more sites.
Cincinnati officials involved in a separate cleanup agree with Ms. Lange. Bonnie Philips, the city's environmental compliance manager, said the state money could fund city cleanups like one under way near Mill Creek in Carthage.
The city is spending $8 million to redevelop a 15-acre site that once was a linoleum factory. Once the cleanup is done, the site is to be sold to a developer to build homes.
While these two projects are examples of what the governor wants to fund, Ms. Lange and Ms. Philips say they are only a beginning. There are about 1,500 acres of brownfields in Hamilton County, 500 acres of which are located along Mill Creek. Both said they could spend the entire $200 million in Hamilton County alone.
“I don't see this ($200 million) getting polluters off the hook,” added Ms. Phillips. “I think it will be spent in places where you can't find the owner, or where an owner bought a site never knowing there was a problem.”
General Motors officials said they didn't know about chemical wastes at the Globe Wernicke Co. furniture factory when they bought it years ago and turned it into a parking lot. When they tried to sell the lot, a survey turned up soil contaminated with a potent solvent called trichloroethylene, or TCE.
The company wants the state to grant it and any future buyer of the property immunity from future cleanup lawsuits in return for cleaning up some or all of the contamination. GM spokesman Terry Holmes would not say how much the carmaker plans to spend on the cleanup effort.
“We don't abandon these sites,” Mr Holmes said. We try to take responsibility.”
Though GM does not plan to seek state funds to pay for the cleanup, Mr. Holmes and Bob Hare, GM's Ohio environmental project manager, supported Mr. Taft's proposal.
Mrs. Joy-Adams worries the site near her home could still pose a health risk if the chemicals aren't properly removed.
“I can understand GM's position, that they were not the ones who contributed to the contamination,” she said. “I want it cleaned.”
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