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Monday, September 10, 2007
Is the New Jail Site a Ticking Time Bomb?
Posted by Michael Earl Patton
Photo courtesy of here.
There is an old saying, “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” I asked a friend of mine who worked with horses all his life about this saying and he explained that there are many reasons why one SHOULD look a gift horse in the mouth, in fact, one would be a fool not to. Similarly, one should always check out free gifts of industrial property. Anybody who has paid attention to the news in the past thirty years knows about toxic waste sites, poisons, lead paint, Superfund, groundwater contamination, and underground storage tanks. Cleaning up such sites can cost many millions of dollars.
So it is surprising to find out that Hamilton County accepted the “gift” of the old Kahn’s site without doing an Environmental Site Assessment (ESA). An ESA is the equivalent of looking a horse in the mouth and gives an indication as to what environmental problems there may be. They are routine for purchases of industrial sites. Cleaning up environmental problems may cost more than what the land and building are otherwise worth. In any event, it would be against the law to tear down and build a new jail on the site unless an ESA is done and the environmental contamination is cleaned up.
The “Comprehensive Safety Plan” booklet boasts that building a new jail on the donated land will save about $7 million (p. 13). But without doing an ESA it is impossible to guess if there will be any clean-up costs, let alone what the clean-up costs would be.
The deed where the commissioners accepted the “gift” of the Kahn’s site specifically states that the county will not hold Kahn’s liable for any hazardous or toxic wastes or substances found in, on, under, or related to the site. That should have served as a warning to the commissioners. See for yourself.
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10 Sep 2007 at 05:17 pm | #
MEP: specifically, what toxic wastes do you expect to find on a site once used for hog penning and slaughter, and within the pork processing plant itself?
10 Sep 2007 at 05:26 pm | #
Wow. All this talk about not sticking people in warehouses, and here we find out they might be sticking them on a toxic dump!
10 Sep 2007 at 05:41 pm | #
After three seconds of surfing Google:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/12840743/porks_dirty_secret_the_nations_top_hog_producer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters
10 Sep 2007 at 05:48 pm | #
I don’t think these people can contract their way out of liability for the environmental destruction they might have caused. The commissioners have acted on our behalf again and it hurts. The corporate buddies win and we taxpayers are left to hold the mess. What a gift.
10 Sep 2007 at 07:21 pm | #
Was the property a pig raising farm or a slaughter house?
I thought it was a slaughter house.
10 Sep 2007 at 08:17 pm | #
From the Dean’s link (see comment #3):
An initial Environmental Site Assessment would also look back in time and try to determine what other industries may have used the site before Kahn’s.
10 Sep 2007 at 08:53 pm | #
Uh, someone needs to do their research. If I understood this deal, the Sara Lee Corporation has pledged to bear the largest percentage of costs for demolition, land feasibility, testing, the whole bit. I believe the Camp Washington residents & community volunteers were insistent about this when they gave the OK for this area to be considered for a new jail.
Before the Kahn’s plant settled there, it was the Cincinnati Union Stockyards & a commodities exchange. Long before clean food & product safety was ever invented. Had someone did their research, they would have found this.
MEP, with articles such as this, you won’t break the top 15 in November. I’d do some background work before publishing your treatises. Do you realize how many voters actually look at your stuff?
There isn’t going to be a jail put on this site anyway. It’s going to get voted down. Find another button topic that has the populace upset for resolution.
10 Sep 2007 at 09:33 pm | #
And another farm animal said, the sky it falling the sky is falling!
This is stupid - if you want to blame someone, figure out who it is first - I believe the person who reviews contracts for the BOCC is the county prosecutor—sorry to disrupt your hysteria
10 Sep 2007 at 09:42 pm | #
This will turn out just like the Stadium deals. Oh my, another “unexpected expense”. Does anyone really believe this tax hike would only last 15 years? Fortunately for us, it’s a theoretical question because it won’t pass in November.
11 Sep 2007 at 05:01 am | #
And it also may have been the site of a suspected alien landing which made the negative ion forces conflict with the earth’s pull increasing the potential for a solar eclipse and thus the potential for brain aneurysms a real threat. As credible a reason for opposing the jail as any other proposed so far.
11 Sep 2007 at 05:28 am | #
cincysue, anon2000—Really? You just blow off real concerns like that when they counter your hard-lined political beliefs?
11 Sep 2007 at 08:04 am | #
Go to the last page in the link provided at the end of the article. The county accepts the “gift” regardless of how much it will cost to clean up.
All the more reason to have done an Evironmental Site Assessment. The Camp Washington residents obviously were concerned about something.
I hope the jail tax will be voted down, but regardless, the county is responsible for the clean-up.
11 Sep 2007 at 09:02 am | #
In effect we are hearing, “move along, there is nothing to see here”. Which means somebody doesn’t want you to look at these issues. Must be something here that is hidden.
11 Sep 2007 at 09:03 am | #
MEP,nice work. This is a very interesting question. I am wondering if the owner of the site is getting a tax write-off based on a dollar amount which would reflect an uncontaminated site. In other words, if you are correct about the possibility of an expensive environmental clean-up, it might not have been possible to sell the property, and donating it for tax reasons made financial sense for the owners. Who owns the property? According to Wiki, the Kahn’s company cycled through several owners until, if I recall correctly, it ended up owned by Sara Lee.
11 Sep 2007 at 09:36 am | #
MEP- I also wonder if the idea might have been to unload a contaminated site onto the county, in order to shift the burden of a cleanup onto the public sector. Any jail building may have been beside the point. A professor of environmental sciences will be able to suggest what kinds of issues the plant might have. Anyone know any UC profs with expertise?
Finally, if there is contamination, it would be interesting to know if the idea was to hand off a juicy cleanup contract to a favored company.
11 Sep 2007 at 12:27 pm | #
The site was used for highly processed meats, such as hot dogs, sausage, etc. A well-known carcinogen used in processing those products is sodium nitrite. Another question is whether there could be soil or ground water contamination by nitrites.
11 Sep 2007 at 04:45 pm | #
Leave it to the Beacon to post stories that are based purely on innuendo and not fact.
If any of you believe there is some extraordinary contamination risks - call the Sierra Club and ask them to do an assessment. Because it would be a high profile case, I’m sure they’d be very willing -IF THERE WAS ANY CHANCE IN HELL THERE WAS A PROBLEM
11 Sep 2007 at 06:53 pm | #
XU’s Stan Hedeen’s (sp ?) book about the history of the Mill Creek discusses the sort of crap a plant like that would generate.
12 Sep 2007 at 01:26 am | #
Anon2000, the point is there has been no assessment. We took the land, without assessing whether it would require funds to clean it up and how much. This does not appear to be an environmentally responsible nor a fiscally responsible move.
12 Sep 2007 at 05:07 am | #
Why didn’t you report on this when the plant was actually in operation for the past 50 years if it’s so dangerous? I guess that would have been important to employees, neighbors wouldn’t it?
12 Sep 2007 at 05:16 pm | #
MEP is correct.......NEVER accept propery without that impact statement. A number organizations have accepted properties only to have huge liability for clean-up.
The MEP logic is straight out of envirionmental law seminars that I took in my corporate days.
This is one voter that IS impressed with the depth of MEP knowledge and research.
On the fashion front.....he may want to re-think the black Converse high tops with formal wear.
13 Sep 2007 at 12:05 am | #
If Sara Lee knows of any environmental hazards/risks and doesn’t disclose them - the contract can be voided or the county can get restitution for any expenses.
Now, if they had no knowledge thereof that a “reasonable man” would know identified a hazard/risk ---- then, it becomes incumbant on the buyer.
I hardly doubt that the Sara Lee company -since the movie on the real life story Class Action - would DARE to conceal knowledge of an environmental impact. In that story they were ordered to pay the largest fines in history for the damage and for concealment thereof.
It’s a non-isssue
13 Sep 2007 at 05:51 am | #
http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/dukenvironment/sp06/log2.html
13 Sep 2007 at 06:09 am | #
My apologies, again, for not thinking of everything, and being everywhere, at once.