Rather than sue county commissioners over a remark that the proposed school central office site is fit only for a parking lot because of past contamination, city officials should take another tact. Instead of litigation, try education — as in educating folks about the virtues of brownfield development.
Brownfields — contaminated sites that once housed leaky fuel tanks, chemical-laden finishing plants, solvent-heavy dry cleaners and such — are being cleaned up and adapted for reuse across the state.
In northwest Charlotte, for instance, a former EPA Superfund site is being redeveloped into an eco-industrial park. The project, dubbed ReVenture Park, will transform a former dye-manufacturing plant into a complex housing energy industries, research and training facilities.
Working with a developer, Kannapolis intends to transform the contaminated Pillowtex Plant 1 site into a sports, entertainment and office complex. In another brownfields project, the city will convert a former landfill into a public recreation area.
Conover took over a former furniture plant site, with contaminated soil and water, and converted it into a multimodal transportation complex. Similar to the site in Salisbury, the project required excavation of tons of dirt, backfilling and continued assessment through monitoring wells.
In Greensboro, an abandoned shopping center, contaminated with dry-cleaning chemicals, is being redeveloped into a retail/office complex.
Those are just a few examples of sites being redeveloped through the state’s brownfields program. You can find a description of many others at the N.C. Division of Waste Management website (http://portal.ncdenr.org/web/wm/bf/success#15).
The South Main school site isn’t part of the brownfields program, which is designed to limit private developers’ liabilities. But the city has undertaken the same state-approved strategies successfully used to address contamination issues elsewhere. The N.C. Department of Health and Natural Resources found those efforts satisfactory enough to proceed with the project. But, citing another environmental report, Commission Vice Chair Craig Pierce says lingering contamination and soil stability issues preclude the county from greenlighting the latest plan, in which a private family would provide upfront financing.
No surprise there. A majority of the commission has made it abundantly clear it won’t approve a downtown central office in any form, even if it included pearly gates and harp music. But to go beyond that and suggest the site is unsuitable for development flies in the face of many brownfield success stories.
Elsewhere, government entities and private developers have worked together to transform once-contaminated sites into projects that enhance the community and boost growth. As citizens here and across the nation are experiencing, however, it’s easier to remove toxicity from soil than from politics.