County may pay dump’s taxes

Spokane County commissioners may use tax money to pay the delinquent taxes on a solvent-soaked West Plains property they don’t want to acquire through foreclosure.

Ordinarily, that might be considered an illegal gift of public money. In this case, though, the commissioners’ attorney, Deputy Prosecutor Jim Emacio, thinks the county would be getting a good return on its money.

“We wouldn’t have to assume the financial burden of acquiring the property at the tax foreclosure sale,” Emacio said.

He said he plans to tell commissioners during their Tuesday briefing session that no one is likely to buy the abandoned family-operated Marshall Landfill at a sheriff’s auction. According to the state Department of Ecology, the 38.5-acre landfill is contaminated with a long list of “volatile organic compounds” – mostly solvents such as benzene, toluene and trichloroethene.

The landfill is ranked 4 on a five-point Ecology Department scale in which 1 represents the worst contamination. It is adjacent to the old Marshall township landfill for which the county already is responsible.

Emacio said county officials estimate it would cost $6 million to $7 million to close and cap the private landfill.

Even measures to secure the site and study the contamination would cost much more than the back taxes, which were slightly more than $26,600 last month.

County officials estimate the albatross property would cost taxpayers $59,000 to $109,000 in its first year of public ownership, and annual maintenance costs would exceed $4,000. And that doesn’t include imponderables such as negotiating the closure of a private road to stop illegal dumping, trash removal and the cost of monitoring wells.

The financial dilemma sprang up in March when new county Treasurer Skip Chilberg announced he wouldn’t follow his predecessor, Linda Wolverton, in refusing to foreclose on the landfill and an abandoned Plaza Grange Supply gasoline station and store near Rosalia, on Old State Route 195.

Generally, state law requires county treasurers to foreclose on owners who are more than three years in arrears on their property taxes. The defunct Plaza Grange Supply Co. has been in arrears since 2001; the Marshall landfill, since 1997.

“I feel it’s my legal responsibility, my responsibility to the taxpayers, as well as a moral obligation to clean up the environment,” Chilberg told commissioners.

He said he thought state grants might pay for the landfill cleanup. Anyway, he said, state and federal laws that say county governments aren’t considered “owners” for environmental cleanup purposes when they acquire polluted real estate through tax foreclosure.

Commissioners and other county officials didn’t share Chilberg’s optimism.

There was agreement that leaky gasoline tanks probably won’t keep someone from buying the former gasoline station at auction, but no one thinks a buyer will emerge for the landfill. After consulting the Department of Ecology, the county assessor’s office has reduced the landfill’s assessed value from $41,160 to $400.

The new assessed value means future taxes will be nominal, so commissioners won’t have to dig so far into their coffers to keep from owning the landfill.

“That delays the pain, anyway,” Chilberg said. “That takes it off my hands and meets the requirement of the law. Of course, it doesn’t do anything to clean up the property.”

Chilberg also worried that the proposed action “could encourage a lot of people not to pay their taxes” on contaminated properties.