A LaSalle Street lot that a nonprofit group deeded to Tampa turns out to be polluted. Officials want to know how it got that way.
By JEFF TESTERMAN
Published May 20, 2003
TAMPA - Last year, as part of an agreement to sever ties with the troubled Tampa Hillsborough Action Plan (THAP), the city of Tampa agreed to take back 123 properties from the nonprofit and pick up mortgage payments totaling $5.6-million.
The plan was to turn a profit by selling the properties to developers. But that's not going to happen with the lot at 1529 LaSalle St.
There, it turns out, the lot had been dangerously contaminated with heavy metals and solvents by the time THAP deeded the property to the city.
Now, city taxpayers are on the hook for state-mandated cleanup costs at the LaSalle property.
"Right now, we're looking at the city for cleanup," said Michael Gonsalves, an official with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. "If you're the property owner, you're responsible. It gets back to due diligence."
Pollution on the LaSalle lot was discovered by a consultant for the Florida Department of Transportation in January 2001 as part of a study on widening the Interstate 275 corridor. The study by Post, Buckley, Shuh and Jernigan was published in July 2002, the same month the LaSalle lot and other THAP properties were conveyed to the city.
But city officials did not learn of the pollution problem on the lot until several months later, when they received notification from the state. Soil borings and groundwater tests at the LaSalle lot revealed 19 compounds - including arsenic and methylene chloride - in concentrations far above the levels considered safe by state environmental officials.
To deal with the problem, the city hired Scott I. Steady, a Tampa attorney who specializes in environmental issues. In a March 17 letter to the Department of Environmental Protection, Steady said he believed a private chemical company was the source of the pollution, but lamented that filing a legal action to seek reimbursement from the company for cleanup would be "very expensive."
Records show that the Industrial Chemical & Supply Co. owned the LaSalle lot from 1972 through 1989 and at some point merged with a Kentucky company called Brenntag Mid-South that is still in business.
"The biggest issue is who caused the pollution and when," said Steady. "Basically, I am looking for a viable company to sue to get a contribution for the cleanup."
In an odd twist, the lot at 1529 LaSalle figured into the federal investigation that led to the city's move to end its relationship with THAP as a low-income housing provider.
In the summer of 2001, THAP boss Chester M. Luney used the LaSalle lot to do one of several favors for Steve LaBrake, then the city's director of business and community services. LaBrake was also the man who controlled millions of dollars in grants to THAP.
Luney used more then $24,000 in THAP funds to hire a structural mover to relocate an old house to the LaSalle lot from its original location at 3608 W Corona St. That's where LaBrake and his aide and girlfriend, Lynne McCarter, were building a dream home.
LaBrake and Luney both lost their jobs and remain targets of a federal grand jury investigation. Facing foreclosure, LaBrake and McCarter sold their 4,200-square-foot dream home in April for $450,000. The home moved to the LaSalle property was never sold, occupied or even hooked up to electricity or water. THAP bought the lot at 1529 LaSalle for $25,000 in April 2001, just three months after the Department of Transportation consultant began its environmental investigation of the site. Attorney Steady said there is no evidence that THAP realized the lot was contaminated when it conveyed the property to the city in July 2002.
The LaSalle site consists of two one-third-acre parcels about a block south of I-275 near Willow Avenue. One local resident suggested that drums of chemicals were stored on the land in the 1960s and 1970s, according to Department of Transportation records, and there is additional evidence that underground storage tanks may be on the property.
Gonsalves, the Department of Environmental Protection official, discounted the possibility of any health hazard in the neighborhood because no potable wells have been found in the area.
The I-275 project calls for a 60-inch stormwater drainage pipe to be installed near the LaSalle property, but cleanup will have to come first. The cost of the cleanup won't be known until the city pays for a comprehensive environmental assessment.
"It could be that (the pollutants) are very localized and the cleanup will be easy," said Gonsalves. "Or, in the worst possible case, there may be high areas of concentration that may require off-site work."
