Companies Return to Clean Up Toxins Left When They Closed Factories : Pollution: Growing numbers of firms are hoping to dispel the notion that they are the bad guys in black hats.

When Mayor Bob Pastrick decided to clean up some leaky old refinery land, he knew it would be messy and costly. He also knew he needed help. He needed a white knight.

He found one in his old corporate neighbor, the Atlantic Richfield Co. The oil giant agreed to help with the task--even though it had sold the refinery 15 years ago and the city now owns the land.

“I was actually astounded when they said they were willing to work with us without anyone trying to hit them over the head,” Pastrick said. “I’ve dealt with a lot of different corporations and lots of businesses . . . who’ve said, ‘Hell, you’ll fight us in court.’

“There’s a whole new attitude,” the mayor said of industry. “We’re getting far more cooperation than we did many years ago.”

Growing numbers of corporations in the industrial Midwest are cleaning up tons of toxins left behind when they closed factories, mills and refineries. They are scooping out asbestos, digging out PCBs and hauling away underground tanks, hoping to dispel any lingering notion that they are bad guys in black hats.

“There’s a lot more corporate responsibility,” said Deborah Cooney, who conducted research at the Northeast-Midwest Institute. “Some of it is seeing the handwriting on the wall. If they don’t do it on their own, it may be forced upon them.”

But, she adds: “For every one of them, God knows how many of them are just sitting in it.”

The Environmental Protection Agency also sees a change.

Corporations are handling almost 60% of the cleanup at the EPA’s “Superfund” hazardous waste sites, compared to less than 40% four years ago, said Norman Niedergang, associate division director of the agency’s Superfund office in Chicago.

These aren’t charitable acts, but hard-nosed business decisions. Companies cleaning up pollutants avoid costly court battles, polish their image and head off potentially bigger expenses they could face because of liability laws.

“There actually are very few corporations doing this out of the kindness of their heart,” said David Dabertin, director of Indiana’s Department of Environmental Management office in Gary. “They’re trying to keep one step ahead of the regulators.”

“They have come to the conclusion it’s not in anyone’s best interest to wait for litigation,” said Corinne Wellish, the agency’s assistant commissioner for environmental response. “It’s very expensive and in the end, they end up paying anyway.”

It’s also often the only way to attract investors.

“In trying to rehab these older manufacturing facilities, you’re already trying to make a cow bark. It’s hard enough,” said Mike Owen, an Ohio developer.

Federal law says current--or past--owners of old factory and mill areas can be held responsible for the cleanup, even if they no longer own the land.

“The EPA could come after them 20 years from now or 50 years from now, and say, ‘You’ve got to clean up,’ ” said Carol Andress, senior analyst at the Northeast-Midwest Institute.

That black cloud hovers over many corporations, including Arco.

“We don’t like the liability hanging around our necks,” said Susan Parelle, Arco’s project manager in East Chicago. “If you were a stockholder in Arco, I don’t think you’d like it either.

“We don’t want to be responsible for health risks,” she added. “We want to do the right thing. . . . Companies understand it’s time to come to action and do something about these problems.”

In neighboring Whiting, Ind., Amoco Oil Co. is working on a plan to clean up nearly 17 million gallons of leaking oil from a 102-year-old refinery.

In Akron, Ohio, the B. F. Goodrich Co. stripped out asbestos and removed underground tanks and PCB-laden transformers that had accumulated over more than a century of manufacturing at a building complex, Owen said.

The 27 buildings, now called Canal Place, were purchased in 1988 and house about 80 businesses, said Owen, a former Goodrich employee who works for a firm that manages the complex.

“A lot of things that are environmental pitfalls were state-of-the-art construction practice,” he said. “You really can’t point a finger of blame at the corporations. . . . In most instances, they want to be good corporate citizens.”

In Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and New York, LTV Corp. says it has spent millions demolishing, cleaning and leveling more than 1,500 acres of old mill areas so they can be redeveloped. Some buildings remained standing; others were razed.

For environmentalists in northwest Indiana, one of the most polluted patches of America, these cleanups are long overdue.

Decades of steel-making and other heavy industry have poisoned the skies, muddied the waters and soiled the earth.

The EPA, for example, estimates that about 50 million gallons of oil and residues, some of it 7 feet thick, are floating on top of the ground water in the region--five times the amount spilled in the Exxon Valdez accident.

And, the agency says, about 180 million pounds of sediment, contaminated with such toxins as chromium, mercury, lead and PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, enter Lake Michigan annually from the Indiana Harbor Ship Canal.

Local activists say folks accepted this as the price of prosperity. But that proved to be false. By one estimate, the region lost more than 50,000 jobs in the last decade.

“People were blackmailed into not complaining about their living standards and they still lost out, and we’re here to foot the bill for a lot of the cleanups,” said Dorreen Carey, director of the Grand Calumet Task Force, a local environmental group. “People are much less willing to let that happen now.”

Carey said the threat of EPA fines also has an impact. “There is more enforcement hanging over their shoulders and they’re more likely to take that seriously,” she said.

“We all work a lot more with industry,” she added. “In the past, no industry would have environmentalists sitting at their table and (would) invite them into their inner sanctum. Now that’s happening. It doesn’t mean we come to an agreement. But they feel they must talk to us.”

The Arco cleanup illustrates a different kind of cooperation.

Mayor Pastrick wrote Arco last year because he thought the former refinery land was one prime piece of property--if it could be cleaned. But the city, he said, would have a very hard time picking up the tab.

It was only logical to seek out Arco, he said, because the company had been responsible for part of the pollution. It immediately agreed to help, even though it had sold the land in 1976 to Energy Cooperative Inc., which went bankrupt. The city later took over the property.

Though the refinery was removed years ago, Arco says hydrocarbons--or petroleum products--appear to have leached into a canal that feeds into Lake Michigan.

Arco’s Parelle said the company will pay the lion’s share of the ground cleanup but added that she has no idea how long it will take or how much it will cost.

She discounts as preliminary EPA estimates of 3 million to 17 million gallons of oil floating underground in the refinery area and a minimal cleanup cost of $2.7 million.

State and federal officials say they don’t care about the company’s motives--just the results.

“They’re saving the taxpayer,” said Robert Tolpa, the EPA’s northwest Indiana coordinator. “Why not accept a corporate gift like this?”

“At least we have any environment that is cleaner than it would be otherwise,” said Wellish, of the state agency. “I try not to question why.”