GM plant too tainted to save

MASSENA — Excessive pollution underneath the General Motors Powertrain plant almost certainly means the plant will have to be razed to clean the site fully.

Local officials had hoped the 800,000-square-foot factory could be cleaned up and eventually reused, but further investigation of pollution within the facility's underground tunnel system has revealed contamination that may be simply too extensive to fix.

The North Country Redevelopment Task Force has been working to come up with a use for the former casting facility since GM announced the closure of the plant in May 2007.

But the group altered its course Tuesday, shifting focus from a battle to bring in new industry to fill at least a portion of the abandoned site to a push for federal brownfield funding to help market the site as vacant, remediated riverfront property.

Task force members had held onto hopes the vacant plant, with its access to low-cost hydropower and convenient proximity to the Seaway International Bridge, would attract new industry to help revitalize a community battered by the loss of thousands of industrial jobs.

Task force members have given up on the idea of saving the buildings, they said Tuesday.

"From everything we are being told, it seems pretty clear the plan is to demolish the building," task force member Jason A. Clark said.

Officials said the fate of the building depends largely on what sort of cleanup action will be required by the Environmental Protection Agency, which has just begun to investigate the scope and severity of polychlorinated biphenyl, or PCB, contamination beneath the facility.

But from the reports they have been getting from EPA project manager Anne E. Kelly, Mr. Clark and Task Force Chairman J. Patrick Turbett said they no longer think the plant can be saved as cleanup continues.

Rather than mount a losing battle to save the doomed facility, the task force agreed Tuesday to focus its efforts on ensuring adequate funding is made available through the bankruptcy courts to complete the cleanup, which EPA estimates will cost as much as $160 million, and to begin searching for funds to help market the site once it is remediated.

"Anne Kelly said they toured the tunnels and suggested pollution there is much more significant than we might have anticipated," Mr. Turbett told the task force.

Mr. Clark said the EPA found sections of the tunnels where the integrity of the concrete walls had been compromised and a section of the floor that was dirt and rock, where it was likely that contamination had seeped directly into the ground.

"There was also oily residue permeating through the concrete walls," Mr. Clark said. "If you think about concrete like a hard sponge, which it essentially is, that indicates the walls are saturated."

Because the GM property here is a federally designated Superfund site included on the EPA's National Priorities List of the most polluted sites in the nation, considerable federal and local attention has been focused on whether removing the building or leaving it standing would provide the greatest protection against the contamination.

The St. Regis Mohawk Tribe also has advocated the removal of the building, to ensure a more comprehensive remediation of contaminated soils and water on the site, according to task force attorney Gary S. Bowich.

Ms. Kelly and Motors Liquidation representatives have suggested knocking the building down also may help to increase the marketability of the property, which could be more thoroughly cleaned up if the structures were removed.

Motors Liquidation had no comment Tuesday afternoon on the possibility of demolishing the plant. Spokesman Tim Yost said the firm is working with federal officials and the task force to develop a plan for the use of the site.

The Associated Press reported this week that of the 128 manufacturing facilities closed by Detroit's Big Three automakers since 1980, three of every five sit empty.

Massena's Powertrain plant has been empty for less than a year, but with significant contamination problems and so much empty manufacturing space on the market, the rural facility's future as a busy industrial site seems increasingly unlikely, Mr. Deighan said.

"It's an old building," he told the task force. "Pollution issues aside, it's a very large building in an area that is not readily serviced by highway transportation. We may make the determination that the only way to effectively deal with this is to take the building down."