From Employer to Nuisance: 3 Stories : Economy: As plants close and leave thousands jobless, cities must cope with the residue. That can include health hazards and pollution.
A health hazard. A drain on the economy. A toxic trouble spot.
One abandoned factory can have a dramatic impact on a community. Here are three tales:
The Dayton Tire & Rubber Co. factory has gone from proud employer to public nuisance.
Since it closed in 1980, it has become an eyesore and potential hazard. Scavengers have ripped open pipes, scrounging for aluminum and other valuable metals. Some have set fires to burn insulation from wires.
Others have stripped electrical transformers, causing 1,600 gallons of oil contaminated with PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, to spill into a creek and river. That prompted a $5.4-million cleanup by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Finally, the Ohio city said enough is enough.
“We consider it an absolute atrocity out there. We just can’t tolerate it any longer,” said Jan Lepore-Jentleson, Dayton’s superintendent of the neighborhood development division.
Dayton recently allocated $856,000 to remove remaining asbestos from the block-long factory. In October, workers wearing respirators and protective gear began the task.
One of the biggest worries is that asbestos ripped loose by scavengers will blow into the surrounding residential area.
“We’ve become more and more acutely aware of the danger that it poses for the neighborhood,” Lepore-Jentleson said. “We felt we had to respond.”
The building, which was sold in the early 1980s, already has decayed: Parts of the roof have collapsed, the windows are broken, doors are missing. “The only potential for it was to start all over again,” she said.
Demolition probably will start early next year. It could cost as much as $3.2 million--about 10 times Dayton’s annual budget for leveling public nuisances, Lepore-Jentleson said.
“This is no small sacrifice to make,” she said. “(But) this is considered one of the most significant and serious problems in Dayton. . . . It really is a symbol of the industrial abandonment of our community.”
After the demolition, the ground will sit idle.
“We’ll let it go back to nature, let it heal itself. In a decade or so,” Lepore-Jentleson said, “maybe development can occur.”
When the city of Duquesne, Pa., lost its big steel mill, the workers were the most visible losers. But they weren’t alone.
The closing of the Duquesne Works in 1984 shook up local government: The city lost about 45% of its real estate tax base, $900,000 annually from water bills, and was forced to trim its work force from 117 to 41, said financial officer David Poljak.
“You can compare it to Sherman going through Atlanta in the Civil War. . . . The losses were devastating,” he said.
The effects linger even today. Poljak noted that parking-meter revenue, a major source of income from steelworkers around the plant, fell from $64,000 in 1982 to $1,800 last year.
Population in this Pittsburgh suburb dropped too--from 10,080 to 8,525 in the last decade.
Once the plant closed, the community was reluctant to accept that it was gone forever, Poljak said. “There was a widespread belief . . . all somebody had to do was turn on the switch and everything would be back to normal,” he said.
That attitude slowly changed, and, in the last year, some of the massive mill that stretches nearly 2 miles has been razed. But Poljak said, “They’ve only scratched the surface as far as leveling down there and starting over.”
“I’m 42 years old. I wonder if I’ll live to see complete progress down there,” he said.
“If there’s a lesson to be learned, it’s that it’s not a good idea for any community to be solely dependent on one employer.”
Paul Bienvenu wanted to inject new life into an old textile mill in Bennington, Vt. He never expected such a struggle.
The plan was for his group, the Southern Vermont Development Council, to buy and remodel the mill, which closed in 1984, and then sell the 22-building complex to different companies. It would mean jobs and tax income for the recession-bitten town.
The federal government and others invested $3 million. But two years after renovations were completed, the old Holden-Leonard mill has no tenants.
The problem? Pollution.
The Environmental Protection Agency, called in to inspect the area after a complaint from an ex-mill worker, found that the soil is tainted with polyaromatic hydrocarbons, which are found in coal tar and other materials. Some are carcinogens, but the dangers posed are debatable.
Bienvenu says an engineering firm his group hired has concluded “there is no health risk,” but government officials disagree.
The EPA says it needs to conduct more tests. Dave Shepard of the state’s Agency of Natural Resources said, “They need to do some level of cleanup before we feel the site is safe.”
Bienvenu is angry.
“I’ve got a big building, $3 million of public money and nothing going on,” he said. “We can’t do a hell of a lot until we get everyone to buy into the notion that there’s not an environmental problem. . . . Nobody wants to go to work on a site suspected of being contaminated.”
