Source: http://www.timesunion.com, January 15, 2015
By: Brian Nearing
The owner of the badly polluted site of a long-abandoned dry-cleaning business said Thursday she had no idea of the property’s troubled history. She now faces what could be a million-dollar cleanup bill, which she says she cannot afford, and pressure from the state to act.
“I got into the middle of this, and now I am stuck in a disaster,” said Ninamarie Crisafulli, who owns 1205 Central Ave., a boarded-up building that was the former Damshire Cleaners.
This week, the state Department of Environmental Conservation said it will investigate a toxic underground chemical plume beneath her property that is moving underneath Central Avenue toward nearby homes and businesses.
Damshire closed in 2001 when owner Paul Dambrowski went bankrupt after a $775,000 DEC fine for repeated pollution violations that stemmed from antiquated machinery leaking dry-cleaning solvents. It is these chemicals, which are likely carcinogenic, that DEC believes is causing the plume.
Crisafulli said she knew nothing of that history when she bought the property in 2007 from the late Charles Yund, who was Dambrowski’s landlord. In 2001, the state obtained judgment against Damshire for the unpaid environmental fine. That judgment remains unpaid, according to the state Attorney General’s office.
Crisafulli said the state judgment was against the company, not the property, so a title search done prior to her purchase did not reveal it. She said she learned of the pollution issues in 2009, and later spent about $10,000 to have her property tested. The tests revealed unsafe levels of dry cleaning vapor in the ground underneath the property and in the air inside the former business.
“Now DEC is telling me that I have to clean it up. If this is so important, why have they waited 15 years to do something?” asked Crisafulli, who said she is a real estate developer in the region. When she attempted a bankruptcy filing, DEC told the judge that the cleanup bill could be $1 million.
“I do not have that. DEC is trying to take advantage of me,” she said. “I do not deserve to be dragged through the wringer on this.”
Crisafulli paid Yund $212,500 for the property and has been unable to develop it, she said. Crisafulli has unpaid property taxes and penalties on the property that total nearly $73,000 and date to 2008, according to Albany County property tax records.
Under state law, the current owner of a polluted property is liable for pollution, even if the new owner had nothing to do with creating the problem.
A neighbor told the Times Union that the site must be cleaned up. “It feels like nothing is being done, and this past summer I had a conversation with the owner who feels it isn’t her responsibility and couldn’t even name the chemical pollutant,” said Peter Hoffman, a resident of Rooney Avenue.
A DEC spokesman declined to address the agency’s stance with Crisafulli. However, according to DEC records, after Crisafulli was “not willing to conduct further investigation of the onsite soil and groundwater,” DEC added the property to the state Superfund pollution cleanup program in 2012.
There are unsafe levels of a dry-cleaning solvent — tetrachloroethene (PCE) — and its byproducts, trichloroethene (TCE) and dichloroethene (DCE) in groundwater and soil at the former cleaners, according to a DEC notice issued this week.
Exposure to PCE likely increases cancer risk, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Primary effects from chronic, long-term inhalation exposure are neurological, including impaired cognitive and motor neurobehavioral performance, according to EPA. PCE exposure may also “cause adverse effects in the kidney, liver, immune system and hematologic system, and on development and reproduction.”
An underground solvent plume from property is “migrating southwesterly under Central Avenue toward a commercial and residential neighborhood,” according to online DEC records on hazardous waste sites. Dangerous vapors coming up through the ground pose a potential risk of “intrusion into off-site structures.”
The planned DEC investigation into the extent of the pollution will be paid for by the state Superfund program, with efforts made later to recover costs from Crisafulli, according to DEC.