Both Sides Like Cleanup Legislation Former Owners Get Protection From Suits, While Neighbors Spared Long-Term Pollution

What began as a way to revive vacant, big-city industrial sites could end up helping mom-and-pop businesses in Idaho.

The Idaho Land Remediation Act being considered by lawmakers would encourage property owners to voluntarily clean up pollution. They’d pay for the work and for state oversight.

In return, the landowners - and their bankers - would get written assurance that they had met their responsibility. They’d get a tax break. And they couldn’t be sued.

“It’s in keeping with the direction we’re moving in to protect the environment,” said Sen. Gordon Crow, R-Hayden. “It’s one of those carrot-vs.-stick ideas whose time has come for Idaho.”

Crow introduced the legislation at the request of real estate lobbyists. Its boosters include bankers and the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry.

Their interest is simple. It’s hard to sell and risky to loan money on property with a potentially big cost for cleanup.

“We don’t know how many properties are out there that the seller doesn’t put on the market” because of liability concerns, said Pat Acuff, who sells commercial real estate in Coeur d’Alene.

The bill breezed through the Senate Health and Welfare Committee on Thursday. It even won the endorsement of the Idaho Conservation League - its only apparent opponent - after Crow added an amendment requiring stricter attention to the health of neighbors of the contaminated property.

Environmentalists like voluntary cleanups because they can happen more quickly than those that are required by government.

Besides, if industrial property can be cleaned up and put back into use, that can keep businesses from gobbling up undeveloped open space and wildlife habitat.

Twenty-seven states already have such “brownfield” legislation, which gets its name from those tainted industrial complexes. The closest thing to those in the Panhandle - except for the Bunker Hill smelter site - are former sawmill locations.

An Idaho voluntary cleanup law would be used mostly by small concerns, such as corner gas stations with leaking underground tanks.

That would include such places as Pioneer Square and Connie’s Cafe in Sandpoint, said Norma Blanchette of the Idaho Division of Environmental Quality.

Pioneer Square is owned by a bank that got the land by default and can’t sell it until the state sends a letter saying cleanup efforts succeeded. The cafe’s owner is paying to find out how polluted the ground is, so she can clean it up and make it salable.

Crow’s bill would apply to any contaminated property, not just abandoned or underused sites.

It would grant property owners who clean up their land a seven-year reduction in property taxes, equal to half of the increase in assessed value. If the land is sold, the tax break would be canceled.

Crow said he’s confident the law would “pay off environmentally and economically.”

That’s what’s happened in Indiana, whose 1992 brownfield law is most similar to the Idaho proposal.

“It’s been successful on all three scores: Returning property to reuse, remediating the level of contamination at the sites, and protecting surrounding human health,” said Gregg Romaine, state attorney for Indiana’s voluntary cleanup program.

No one can say how many landowners could benefit from an Idaho brownfield law.

The state has 2,500 to 3,500 underground storage tanks alone that require upgrading. Of those, 219 are in the six nothernmost counties, said Brent Olmstead, vice president of the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry.

Among those who might benefit from a brownfield law are people in the Coeur d’Alene River basin whose land has been tainted by mining-related metals.

Their land already is covered by federal Superfund law (even those lands outside the Superfund “box” surrounding Bunker Hill). Because of that, the state could deny voluntary cleanup offers there, said deputy attorney general Curt Fransen.

But the state also could work out a three-way agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency and the landowner.

“Let’s say a farmer wants to turn his farm into a mobile home park,” said Fransen. “He could approach the state under this program and enter an agreement to voluntarily clean that up.”

In the case of the Silver Mountain ski gondola parking lot, Idaho and the EPA agreed that paving was adequate protection against mining-related metals that tainted the ground there.

The state reached a similar “covenant not to sue” with the developer of Boise’s regional mall. Faced with ground-water pollution from an old industrial site, the developer approached DEQ wanting to know what to do about it, Fransen said.

Obviously, voluntary cleanups already are an option in Idaho. A brownfield law would formalize the process, Fransen said, and make it more available to more than “the folks with lawyers and technical advisers who know how DEQ works.”

, DataTimes