09/19/2006

Editorial

Brownfield sites get cash, real contamination waits

If state politicians and environmental officials want a real brownfield site to clean up, Mancelona has a doozy.

Area residents who have been using bottled water because their tap water is contaminated would probably love the help. But they're not trying to leverage millions in state money to fund major developments.

Tricholoethylene (or TCE) dumped by a Mancelona manufacturing firm more than 40 years ago created a groundwater contamination plume that is now five miles long and up to a mile wide and has contaminated dozens and dozens of area wells.

State officials have said they hope to expand a $6.5 million municipal water system built four years ago to include newly discovered contaminated areas. The expansion is estimated at $5 million, but the state has just $20 million a year to cover such projects; a Department of Environmental Quality official said it was unlikely a single project would get that much.

In the meantime, people like Diane and Robert Simancek, who finished building their retirement home last fall in the Shanty Creek resort, can't drink their tap water.

In 1999, their water was fine. By November, the TCE was at 26 parts per billion and later 31 parts per billion. The state standard for drinking water is just 5 parts per billion.

While the Simanceks and their neighbors wait, brownfield money to jump start commercial sites is flowing.

• In Traverse City, the former Kinney tire site was given $330,000 in incentives from the Michigan Economic Growth Alliance and $1 million in DEQ funds to clean the site.

• The Alliance pledged $9.8 million for redevelopment of West Front Street sites in Traverse City, including a proposed city parking deck and mixed-used development rejected by city voters in August.

Of the $9.8 million, $7.27 million was to go to the city for the deck and other improvements, $1.2 million to Federated Properties for two West Front sites and $1.3 million to developer Gerald Snowden for another mixed-use project on West Front.

When the state gave two of the sites brownfield designation in 2002, their value soared. A state economic development official said the designation could have been worth as much as $2.8 million to the owner, the Harry Calcutt Trust.

• The state set aside $400,000 for cleanup of claimed contamination at the Petoskey Pointe development but slashed that to $25,000 when little contamination was found.

State development officials will correctly point out that the funds involved come from different pots designated for different uses. But it's also true that state lawmakers help decide what goes where, according to their priorities.

In that game, people like the Simanceks don't come first.