Source: http://registerguard.com, January 25, 2015
By: Saul Hubbard

Reviving an abandoned, contaminated site could cost $850,000

Nestled between the always-bustling Eugene Public Library and The Kiva grocery store, the one-story building that until five years ago housed a dry cleaners and a shoe repair store is a boarded-up afterthought in the heart of downtown Eugene.

The property should be a prime candidate for redevelopment in downtown’s boom.

In recent weeks, plans surfaced for a Chinese restaurant in another long-vacant building on the same block, as well as for a new four-story Hilton hotel less than a block away.

But chemicals from the longtime dry cleaning operation, McAyeal’s Wardrobe Cleaners, have badly contaminated the groundwater under the property.

The contamination, first discovered in 2000 when the library was being built, is not deemed a threat to people visiting or working near the site, the state Department of Environment Quality says. But it must be mitigated before the site can be redeveloped, because long-term exposure to the primary contaminant, perchloroethylene or perc, would pose a serious health risk.

Perchloroethylene is considered a “likely human carcinogen” by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, and it also can damage the nervous and reproductive systems.

Seth Sadofsky, a local DEQ remedial specialist, said it remains unclear exactly how the contamination occurred.

“Whether it was leaks (in the dry cleaning machines), dumping (of perchloroethylene) at the site, or other poor practices, we don’t entirely know,” he said.

The total estimated price tag for the cleanup — including work that’s already been done — is at least $850,000. That’s for a land parcel that is only worth $330,000, according to Lane County property records.

The county foreclosed on the 9,600-square-foot lot in 2012 after the McAyeal family failed to pay a total of $50,000 in property taxes over a number of years. While the county owns the site, it isn’t legally liable for the cleanup.

Under a settlement reached last year with the state, an insurance policy that the McAyeal family carried on their business will provide $410,000 towards the work. The remainder will likely have to come from government funds.

Or the DEQ might permit a cheaper, less thorough rehabilitation.

Either way, the property may not be marketable for another two years, when the cleanup is finished.

“Clearly, this is a worthwhile location to support a cleanup project,” Sadofsky said.

Virtual time capsule

Today, the former dry cleaners in some ways appears frozen in time.

On the interior, the 4,800-­square-­foot building is in poor shape, its floor covered in broken glass and pigeon droppings. But there are still stacks of never-picked-up clothes in protective plastic, boxes full of old order receipts, and racks of empty clothes hangers.

Near the front counter, a handful of dusty business award plaques hang on the wall. In the back, by the remains of a large dry cleaning machine, sits a empty tank labeled “Perchloroethylene — dry cleaning grade.”

Since 2000, the DEQ has spent about $210,000 on in-depth evaluations of the site’s contamination levels and on the primary mitigation done so far: the installation of an “air stripper” behind the building. The machine continually pumps groundwater out from underneath the library, and blows air through the water, evaporating the volatile dry cleaning chemicals.

The fumes from the evaporation are vented into the air; the cleaned-up water goes into a stormwater pipe. The idea is to keep drawing the underground plume of pollution back toward the source rather than let it radiate outward.

But an estimated $640,000 in additional mitigation work still is needed.

Last spring, after a year of back-and-forth, the state reached a settlement with the McAyeal family’s insurance company, Travelers, for $410,000, including $210,000 to cover the past DEQ costs. The settlement released the McAyeal family and Travelers from all liability for the perchloro­ethylene cleanup.

Sadofsky said the settlement was reached after Travelers argued it wasn’t liable for the full cleanup. Moreover, two of the three former owners of the dry cleaning business have died, Sadofsky said, and the third is in a nursing home and doesn’t have any significant assets.

“At some point, we can leave (a claim) open, we can sue someone or we can settle,” he said. “In this instance, given the involvement of the county and the city, we were motivated to make sure there was a good result.”

Now, the state and the county are trying to find money to pay for the rest of the cleanup.

Earlier this month, the Lane County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to apply for a $412,000 grant from state economic development agency Business Oregon’s brownfield cleanup fund. That fund disburses federal EPA dollars, through grants and low-interest loans, to help public and private entities rehabilitate contaminated sites.

“In this instance, the landowner walked away and left us sitting with this piece of property,” Commissioner Faye Stewart said during the board discussion. County staff members have taken something “that looked like a loser and hopefully will find a way to make it something positive.”

Moving on with mitigation

So what does the remaining cleanup work entail?

The DEQ’s Sadofsky says the building must be torn down, after the asbestos in it is removed. Then, the most contaminated soil — located directly under the old dry cleaning machine — needs to be excavated. An underground diesel tank that was discovered on the site recently also must be removed.

“Then we need to ensure that groundwater with (perc) concentrations that concern us is not seeping into other areas,” he said.

Preferably, Sadofsky said, cleanup crews would inject a food-based mixture deep into the ground in the alley between the former McAyeal’s property and the library. The mixture would contain bacteria that would attack the chemicals and render them harmless, he said.

Under that plan, the air stripper that cleans the library groundwater could be shut off after three years, according to DEQ plans.

Alternatively, if the county receives a grant that is less than $412,000, Sadofsky said that DEQ may forgo the injection treatment and leave the air stripper in operation for several additional years.

However, that means someone would need to pay to keep the air stripper pumping — an estimated $40,000 a year.

Dry cleaners history

Along with gas stations, dry cleaners are notorious as contaminating sites.

That’s because, for many years, dry cleaning business owners were unaware of the risk perchlorethylene poses to humans and how severely it can pollute the ground. Solvents such as perchlorethylene are particularly problematic because they are heavier than water and can sink deep into the earth. Oil-based wastes, by contrast, typically float on top of the groundwater.

During the discussion about the county grant application, Lane County Commissioner Sid Leiken, who owned a Springfield dry cleaners during the 1990s, said that many business owners didn’t treat perc with much caution, even using it as a weed killer on their properties.

“People come down on some of these older dry cleaners, but the reality is you didn’t have the information (back then) that you have today,” he said.

In the early 1990s, owners of dry cleaners around the state began realizing the liability they might carry for cleanups. In 1995, they supported the creation of a state fund that would, in some cases, help rehabilitate dry cleaner properties, using fees paid annually by dry cleaners who wanted the coverage.

In 2014, using its annual revenues of $400,000, the fund contributed to 10 projects statewide, said Joe Westersund, the DEQ coordinator of the fund.

But the fund doesn’t generate nearly enough money to cover all the needed cleanups, Westersund said. According to national data, the average rehabilitation cost is $500,000.

“There are a lot of projects out there,” he said. “An estimated three-quarters of dry cleaners, including ones still in operation, have some degree of contamination.”

The fund isn’t being tapped for the McAyeal’s cleanup, however. Typically, Westersund said, the fund doesn’t pay out to businesses that have separate business insurance.

“We can’t solve the whole problem,” he said.

County maps road ahead

If the grant for the cleanup doesn’t come through, Jeff Turk, a county property manager, wrote to the board that they “may want to consider providing funds to ensure the property is cleaned up sufficiently so it can be developed.”

Turk said he is eager to remove the asbestos from the building and knock it down. That would cost about $50,000, he said.

The county could then try to sell the property before the perc contamination is cleared up, Turk wrote. In that scenario, prospective buyers would have to reach an agreement with the DEQ to pay for a portion of the cleanup themselves, he added.

At the recent board meeting, Commissioner Pete Sorenson expressed dismay at “the huge amount of money that is being expended … because of a bad decision that was made a long time ago.”

“Spending taxpayer money to clean up a site is a good thing; it does make the economy better that we’ve cleaned it up,” he said. “But you know what? It would have been a lot better if we didn’t have to clean it up in the first place. And I think prevention is a lot cheaper in the long run than cleanup.”

Over the years, the state has tightened its rules on dry cleaners, requiring that they be much more careful in handling and tracking solvents. The state now classifies dry cleaning wastes as hazardous waste subjects them to strict disposal rules.