Source: http://registerguard.com, May 19, 2015
By: Dylan Darling

The government-funded cleanup of a prime piece of property in downtown Eugene is finally beginning.

After years of planning by the state Department of Environmental Quality and searches for money by Lane County government, an excavator Monday cracked the concrete covering the former site of McAyeal’s Wardrobe Cleaners along Olive Street. The land is between The Kiva grocery store and the Eugene Public Library. The big earth mover Tuesday dug up soil tainted with perchloroethylene, a solvent long used in dry cleaning.

“That really is the main focus of our work here,” Don Hanson, a DEQ hydrologist, said while watching the digging. Contractors working for DEQ continued the perchloroethylene cleanup Wednesday.

Heavier than water, the solvent can seep deep into the ground. Below where the old dry cleaner stood, the solvent contaminates the groundwater. The pollution was discovered in 2000, when the library site was excavated and the library’s foundation was built.

Before the 9,600-square-foot former McAyeal parcel can be redeveloped, it must be cleaned up, Hanson said. The cleaner closed in 2010. The county took over ownership of the property in 2012 through foreclosure and demolished the building in 2015.

This phase of the cleanup should cost $200,000 to $300,000, depending on how much needs to be done, Hanson said. The total cost ranges from $400,000 to $600,000. The county secured a federal grant and a federal loan and collected money from an insurance company representing the McAyeal family to help cover the cost of the cleanup.

The county expects to put the land up for auction once the cleanup is done. The market value of the bare land is just more than $330,000, as estimated by the county’s assessor’s office.

There was some initial interest from potential buyers in the land when the county took it over, but there has not been any new interest, said Jeff Turk, Lane County property management officer. No one approached the county with specific plans for it, Turk said.

“I got a few calls from various folks who were inquiring about the property and what had to be done if they wanted to buy it,” he said.

Even if someone made an offer, Turk said state law requires the county to first try to sell it at public auction, because of its value. But first it must be cleaned up.

“Nobody is going to buy it now, because if you buy it you are buying the liability,” Turk said.

Finding someone with hopes for the vacant property does not take much of a walk. Melissa Brown owns The Kiva with her husband, city Councilor George Brown. The grocery store has been there since 1983. On the wall of her back office, Brown has drawings of her dream for the land next door.

She would like The Kiva to expand onto the McAyeal’s site with an extension featuring retail space, a patio and covered bicycle parking.

“We would be able to offer so much more for our customers — it’d be great,” she said. The construction would double the size of the grocery store, which the Browns lease from owner Diamond Parking Services.

But much has to happen before Brown’s dream can become reality, including completion of the cleanup and a county auction of the property.

As part of the cleanup, a contractor working for the DEQ on Wednesday put into the ground 2,000 pounds of Daramend, a chemical that prompts naturally found bacteria to consume perchloroethylene contamination, and then filled much of the hole with crushed rock, Hanson said. The contractor will wait a couple of weeks before hauling away to a landfill the 175 cubic yards of tainted soil it pulled from the ground. Plastic covers the dirt pile. An analytical lab working for the state will test the dirt to determine whether it can be taken to a standard landfill or must go to a specialty hazardous waste landfill.

Depending on what testing of the ground under the property shows, crews may have to drill deeper and inject more Daramend later this year and in 2017, according to the state.

The state several years ago put in an “air stripper” on the McAyeals site. The device draws out groundwater from under the library and forces air through it, to evaporate the solvent. The state may need to continue operating that, because the excavation and Daramend treatment may not remove all of the pollution.

“We are hoping two or three years (more) at most,” he said.